Saturday, September 26, 2015

New to the TBR Pile (42)



Freebie from Amazon.ca:
Remembering Kaylee Cooper
by Christopher Francis

Kaylee Cooper is certain that Alex will become friends with a ghost this year. Alex thinks that he is far too old to be listening to a first grader and encourages Kaylee to stop jeopardizing his important sixth grade social life. Kaylee doesn’t listen and finds awkward ways to spend as much time with Alex as possible, even if it means following him into the boy’s washroom.

Fed up, Alex develops a strategic plan to ultimately help him get rid of Kaylee Cooper for good.

However, he soon learns about the mysterious legend of Screaming Ridge that pulls an unlikely group of friends together, including the girl of his dreams, and the school’s meanest bully. When they discover that the legend is real, and that Kaylee Cooper is at the core of the mystery, Alex stares death in the face and helps save her from an eternal life of misery and confusion.


What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Review - George

George
by Alex Gino
Date: 2015
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Reading level: MG
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 208
Format: e-book
Source: library

BE WHO YOU ARE

When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.

George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part... because she's a boy.

With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte -- but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is the first book that I can recall reading that features a transgender main character.  The subject matter alone is interesting and topical.  However, I was somewhat disappointed with the book.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

I've seen a few books that have been released lately for middle graders and young adults that deal with transgender characters.  And that's great!  I hope we'll be seeing more in the future.  This is the first one I've been able to get my hands on, and I hoped I would enjoy it.

George certainly starts off strong.  I flew through the first few chapters and really found myself getting drawn into George's life.  The characters here are younger than the ones in many of the middle-grade titles I've read recently, with George herself only being ten.  That wasn't an immediate deterrent for me... but it did cause me some consternation as the book went on.

It's all a matter of taste...

I think perhaps certain things are exaggerated in the story to accentuate George's plight.  The school itself is weirdly sexist, forcing the kids to line up in boys' and girls' lines and walk in said lines through the hallways.  This actually made me think that it was historical fiction... but there's talk of cell phones, so I guess it's supposed to be in the present.  Added to that are the rigid gender roles and stereotypes that are abundant throughout.  Such a big deal is made of George not being allowed to even try out for the part of Charlotte in the play because she's a "boy".

My main reason for not being able to wholeheartedly recommend this book, however, is because of the writing.  It's just not that strong.  The author's very adult voice continually slips into the narrative, constantly reminding us that we're reading a story about a kid written by an adult... who's forgotten what it was like to be a kid.  As a result, the child characters' voices don't ring true, and I rolled my eyes quite a few times.

Let's get technical...

The writing itself is technically okay (with a few exceptions), but a bit inconsistent in places.  The narration is third-person, limited omniscient so we see everything through George's eyes... and yet there are a couple of instances where we slip into Kelly's head and know what she's thinking.  It's jarring and weird, and should have been caught by an editor.

The verdict...

I wanted to like this book more than I did.  The subject matter is important, as is the message about being yourself.  However, the story itself isn't that amazing, and the writing is kind of weak.  George is not a terrible book... but I don't think that it was as good as it could have been.

My hope is that books like this will pave the way for more in the same vein, so that young readers can learn about different life experiences that they might not have read about before.

Quotable moment:

The word man hit like a pile of rocks falling on George's skull. It was a hundred times worse than boy, and she couldn't breathe. She bit her lip fiercely and felt fresh tears pounding against her eyes. She put her head down on her desk and wished she were invisible.

Premise: 4/5
Plot: 3/5
Characters: 2/5
Pace: 3/5
Writing: 2/5
Editing: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Enjoyment: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 ladybugs


Saturday, September 19, 2015

New to the TBR Pile (41)



Borrowed from the library:
George
by Alex Gino

BE WHO YOU ARE.

When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.

George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part... because she's a boy.

With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte -- but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.

Bought from Amazon.ca:
Bloodchild: And Other Stories
by Octavia E. Butler

The award-winning author of The Parable of the Sower explores the paradoxes of power and inequality in this highly imaginative collection of parables for the contemporary world. "Bloodchild, " the title piece, has received both Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Salt & Storm
by Kendall Kulper

You don't know what you must give up to become a witch.

Avery Roe wants only to claim her birthright as the witch of Prince Island and to make the charms that have kept the island's sailors safe at sea for generations, but instead she is held prisoner by her mother in a magic-free life of proper manners and respectability.

Avery thinks escape is just a matter of time, but when she has a harrowing nightmare, she can see what it means: She will be killed. She will be murdered. And she's never been wrong before.

Desperate to change her future, Avery finds a surprising ally in Tane—a tattooed harpoon boy with magic of his own, who moves her in ways she never expected. But as time runs out to unlock her magic and save herself, Avery discovers that becoming a witch requires unimaginable sacrifice.

Avery walks the knife's edge between choice and destiny in Kendall Kulper's sweeping debut: the story of one girl's fight to survive the rising storm of first love and family secrets.


What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Review - Kindred

Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
Date: 1979
Publisher: Beacon Press
Reading level: A
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 287
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I felt like I needed something different, so I decided to try this book, which has been sitting in my TBR pile for a while now.  I'm not quite sure how to review it; this is one of those weird books that's really enjoyable, even though I shouldn't have liked it as much as I did because it has a number of problems.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

I was reminded of two stories as I was reading this book: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.  All three feature married adults who travel through time and have a spouse waiting for them "back home".  My edition had a date of 2004, so I assumed Butler had drawn her inspiration from the other two.  Actually, though, Kindred was first published in 1979... which makes it the forerunner by quite a wide margin!

While this is considered an "adult" title, I might actually recommend it for older teens.  It has less of the crass language that's peppered throughout The Time Traveler's Wife and the few sex scenes are implied more than spelled out (making it a lot tamer than Outlander).  The only thing that some people might find offensive is the use of the n-word... but it's contextually appropriate; the book would have been weird without it.

I'm kind of a sucker for time-travel stories when they're done well.  Kindred sucked me in from the first two-sentence paragraph of the prologue, and that's no exaggeration.  I dare anyone to read those lines and not be curious about the rest of the story.  And it was quite an interesting story, with a fast pace and complex characters.  Even though there's little explanation for the why of Dana's time travel (unlike in the other two books, where we know it's caused by a genetic condition or the standing stones, respectively), it's fairly easy to suspend disbelief.  She gets sucked back in time when Rufus needs her; we don't know why, but we don't really need to for the story to work.

The characters are interesting.  Dana, the main character, is a "modern" black woman from 1976.  She's married to a white man named Kevin, much to the chagrin of both their racist families.  Both are writers, which is kind of cool.  The action starts pretty quickly (which I liked) with Dana being sucked into the past to save a little red-haired boy named Rufus from drowning in a river.  She pops back in time periodically as he grows up, always when his life is in danger.  He's the son of a slave owner, which brings with it all sorts of racial issues when his saviour is a black woman who dresses like a man and speaks like an educated white person.  But Dana has a really good reason for needing to make sure Rufus stays alive (which I won't spoil for you), so she has to overlook a lot of really nasty behaviour on his part.  He's truly a product of his time, and I had sort of a love-pity-hate relationship with him.  He's hard to figure out and his actions are difficult to predict, so any time he's on the page, there are sure to be complications.

The pace in this story is quite good.  The author manages to weave in backstory about how Dana and Kevin met, and though it's annoyingly placed just after a bit of a cliff-hanger moment, its inclusion doesn't make you feel as though the author is just throwing stuff in to unnecessarily pad the story.  Actually, I wish there had been a little more backstory and more explanation during certain parts of the book (the lack of these things leads to a problem that I'll explain in a moment).  And the last few pages... whew!

It's all a matter of taste...

One thing that the author repeatedly does throughout the novel is throw in some telling about a previous time.  The only problem is, we were there... and that would have been the opportunity to show us these things.  It has the effect of making it seem like there's too much telling and not enough showing, and it actually made me feel a little distanced from the story and characters when that happened.  I felt like I'd missed something.

This overuse of telling is also an issue with the voices of the characters, especially early in the book. Dana is distrusted by the slaves because she supposedly sounds like the white folks.  I couldn't figure out what that meant for a while.  Accent?  Vocabulary?  Because, at that point, all the people seemed to talk pretty similarly.  Only later, when some of the characters' speech starts to be written out a little differently and Dana is told she sounds "educated" did I finally get it.  I don't know why this issue isn't clarified earlier in the book; it makes the characterization seem a little inconsistent.

Let's get technical...

Okay, maybe it's some weird 1970s thing, but the punctuation is bizarre.  Half the time it's correct, and half the time it isn't.  There are missing commas, some of which completely change the meaning of the sentence with their absence.  And then there are the question marks.  Or lack thereof.  It was as if the author was trying to depict the tone of voice with her punctuation.  So if someone asked a question flatly, there would be a period.  If they shouted the question, there would be an exclamation point.  (There were an awful lot of exclamation points, anyway.  I was reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine edited a book to include a ton of exclamation points: "It was a damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to put on my sweatshirt!")

The verdict...

Overall, this is a fairly strong story.  It's more of a contemporary/historical fiction hybrid than anything else.  Actually, it probably reads more like historical fiction now (their TV doesn't even have a remote)!  Regardless, it's an engaging story with interesting characters, and I would recommend it with only a few reservations.

Quotable moment:

There was a long silence. He pulled me closer to him. "Do I really look like that patroller?"

"No."

"Do I look like someone you can come home to from where you may be going?"

"I need you here to come home to. I've already learned that."

He gave me a long thoughtful look. "Just keep coming home," he said finally. "I need you here too."

Premise: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Pace: 4/5
Writing: 3/5
Editing: 2/5
Originality: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 ladybugs


Saturday, September 12, 2015

New to the TBR Pile (40)



Borrowed from the library:
Stranger (The Change #1)
by Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed.

Teenage prospector Ross Juarez’s best find ever – an ancient book he doesn’t know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.


What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Monday, September 7, 2015

Review - Stranger (DNF)

Stranger
(The Change #1)
by Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith
Date: 2014
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 400
Format: e-book
Source: library

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed.

Teenage prospector Ross Juarez’s best find ever – an ancient book he doesn’t know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Years ago, I read a book by Sherwood Smith called Wren to the Rescue.  I fell in love with the characters and the world the author created.  That book really stoked my love for fantasy literature.  So when I saw this book at the library and read the synopsis, I thought I'd give it a try... because it really sounded like my sort of thing.

But, after less than a fifth of the way in, I was struggling.  Stranger is just... clumsy.  After a strong start with Ross being chased by a bounty hunter through a perilous desert, during which he 1) almost gets turned into a tree, and 2) almost gets eaten by another tree, I thought things would only get better.  But things got boring and confusing really quickly.

Each of the first five chapters are from different points of view... and each of those points of view introduces multiple characters.  My head was absolutely spinning.  I couldn't keep anyone straight, and part of the reason was because of the weak characterization.  So far, each character is just a name and a trait.  Even the dialogue (which is weak and juvenile) doesn't really help the reader distinguish between characters.

This book also tries way too hard to be diverse... and it makes little sense.  This is supposed to be many years in the future, and yet most people seem to have stayed within their own ethnic groups for mating purposes, leading to characters with certain physical and cultural traits that match perfectly with their surnames.  The only exception appears to be the "mean girl", who seems to be a mixed-race character (she has ancestors with very Chinese-sounding names, laments that her hair is not a "true black" -- at least when she's not dyeing it blond, and has a blue-eyed father with an English surname).  All of those point-of-view characters, and the only one who's even part white is a villain?  It just seems subtly racist to me.  (To be clear, I don't have a problem with a white person being the villain.  But when the only white or part-white major characters in the book are portrayed as the bad guys, it's a little offensive -- just as it would be if it were any other race.  Had one of the protagonists been white as well, I probably wouldn't even have noticed the race issue!)  Aside from ethnic diversity, the authors have also thrown in sexual diversity.  At 18%, I'd already encountered heterosexual characters, homosexual characters, and an asexual character.  Again, it came across as clumsy, because those sexual preferences are some of the only defining characteristics of those characters (so far, anyway).

While the world is definitely interesting, some of the minor characters have amusing stories (like the grandmother who accidentally burned down the schoolhouse with a mutant menopausal hot flash), and I'm curious about what the cataclysm was that caused everything to start mutating, I'm too exhausted from trying to keep all the characters straight to want to continue.  Reading this one already feels like a chore.

So, in the final analysis, the reasons why I didn't finish Stranger are as follows:
  • way too many characters
  • clumsy attempts at diversity
  • subtle racism
  • it's just not holding my interest

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Review - The Demon in the Wood

The Demon in the Wood (The Grisha #0.1)
by Leigh Bardugo
Date: 2014
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Reading level: YA
Book type: short story
Pages: 30
Format: e-book
Source: library

Before he ruled Ravka, before he was the Darkling, he was just a lonely boy with an extraordinary gift. In this prequel story to the New York Times-bestselling Grisha Trilogy, Leigh Bardugo takes us into Ravka's mysterious past, when Grisha lived as fugitives and the Darkling took his first steps on the path to power.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

For a short story, this was pretty good.  Not spectacular, but just okay.  You won't get much out of it if you haven't read the books of The Grisha trilogy, though; in fact, it will probably be rather confusing.

I did like seeing another side of the man who became the Darkling.  If this had somehow been included in the books themselves, it would have helped to develop his character more.  The events in this short little story help us understand him a little better; even so, I kind of wish there had been more.  This is such an early incident in his life, and although I can see how it would have driven him to do some of the things he did later on, there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

So, like I said: it was good, but not great.  It's worth reading, though, especially if you enjoyed the trilogy of full-length novels.

Quotable moment:

He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows did, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing, forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven.

Premise: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Pace: 4/5
Writing: 3/5
Editing: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Enjoyment: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3.38 out of 5 ladybugs

Review - Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
by Kate DiCamillo
illustrated by K. G. Campbell
Date: 2013
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Reading level: MG
Book type: illustrated prose novel
Pages: 240
Format: e-book
Source: library

It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry—and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is the third book by Kate DiCamillo I've read (or listened to), and it's the third one I've enjoyed.  Now I really want to go out and find all of her other books so I can gobble them up!

Please, dear author, I want some more...

This is such a whimsical story.  Of course you have to suspend disbelief a little bit, since it's a book about a squirrel that can fly and use a typewriter to write poetry.  But there is a strong superhero/comic-book flavour to the whole thing, which sort of automatically implies a certain level of fantasy.

All of the characters were well developed and distinct.  From next-door-neighbour Tootie and her squirrel-eating vacuum cleaner to the temporarily blind William Spiver, from the waxing-nostalgic Dr. Meescham to the strange-but-lovable George Buckman, from the chain-smoking Phyllis to the furry ball of fury that is Mr. Klaus, all of the supporting characters put on a good show.  But I really enjoyed the two title characters and their relationship.  It was just so cute.  Flora needs a friend and she finds one in Ulysses; and Ulysses, for his part, loves Flora and everything about her.

The book is pretty fun to read, and the illustrations are adorable.  Some of the illustrations take up a full page, and others are incorporated into comic-book panels.  Most of the book, however, is made up of short prose sections with amusing chapter titles.

What really impressed me, though, was how the story was written.  The author doesn't shy away from using big words or thoughtful concepts.  Even though this is a middle-grade book, it doesn't talk down to kids.  You can tell when an author respects her target audience; that was apparent in this case.

It's all a matter of taste...

I can't think of much to complain about.

Let's get technical...

I read this as an e-book, but I would love to see what it looks like in a physical format.  It was a little fiddly getting Adobe Digital Editions to display everything at a size large enough for reading... while not cropping any of the cute illustrations and comic-book panels.

The verdict...

I'd highly recommend this book to readers (of all ages) who like whimsical stories about friendship and fantasy.  It might also appeal to fans of graphic novels and/or comic books.

Quotable moment:

And then she saw that Mrs. Tickham and the vacuum cleaner were headed directly for a squirrel.

"Hey, now," said Flora.

She banged on the window.

"Watch out!" she shouted. "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"

She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head.

"YOU'RE GOING TO VACUUM UP THAT SQUIRREL!"

There is just no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"?

It didn't make any difference, though, what words she said. Flora was too far away. The vacuum cleaner was too loud. And also, clearly, it was bent on destruction.

Premise: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Pace: 5/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 5/5
Originality: 5/5
Enjoyment: 5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 ladybugs


New to the TBR Pile (39)



Borrowed from the library:
The Demon in the Wood (The Grisha #0.1)
by Leigh Bardugo

Before he ruled Ravka, before he was the Darkling, he was just a lonely boy with an extraordinary gift. In this prequel story to the New York Times-bestselling Grisha Trilogy, Leigh Bardugo takes us into Ravka's mysterious past, when Grisha lived as fugitives and the Darkling took his first steps on the path to power.

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
by Kate DiCamillo
illustrated by K. G. Campbell

It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry—and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.


What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Characters I Just Didn't Click With

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is Ten Characters I Just Didn't Click With.  Most of these are from books I ended up not clicking with... which shows how important it is to have relatable characters.

Ten Characters I Just Didn't Click With:

Angel from Neverland by Anna Katmore

Angel turned this retelling of a classic story into a giant *facepalm*.  She's dim enough to come across as much younger than her seventeen years, and yet she spends the last quarter of the book doing nothing but making out with Captain Hook... who's now a smoking-hot, nineteen-year-old kid with a hook tattoo and the exact same speech patterns as the heroine (except he uses lots of 21st-century swears).  You end up in a magical place where nobody ages, where people can fly, where fairies and mermaids exist... and all you want to do is play tonsil hockey with some guy you've just met?

Bella from Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

Bella was almost insufferably boring for the first three books in the "saga", but I really didn't get her in this one.  She's listened to Edward's moping for years about how it sucks to be a vampire (presumably because he hadn't had much luck in the last one hundred years in luring high school girls into his bed), and she's still going with the "Please turn me into a vampire!" crap.  And then we get to see her as a pregnant woman, going on and on about her little "nudger" and drinking blood like it's going out of style.  I don't know how any of that is supposed to be relatable for the target audience, but... whatever.

Bridget from Here Lies Bridget by Paige Harbison

I couldn't connect to Bridget because she was just so awful.  I mean, most of us have done stuff we're not proud of, or have treated people badly at some point.  Hopefully, we felt some remorse or regret for those actions.  Bridget, though?  I'm convinced she's got some sort of pathology going on.  Narcissistic personality disorder, or maybe sociopathy.  I'd hoped to find a nice mean-girl-learns-a-lesson type of story here, along the lines of what we got in Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall.  But Bridget never seemed to learn a thing... except maybe how to sort of make amends for her own benefit.

Cora from Basajaun by Rosemary Van Deuren

And I thought Bella was bad for wanting to be a vampire.  This kid wants to be a rabbit.  Never mind that they have incredibly short lives and she'll probably get eaten by a predator by the weekend.  She wanted to be a rabbit so she could mate with her rabbit buddy.  Oh, yeah... and she was twelve.  I guess Basajaun the bunny was a bit of a pedophile.

Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I didn't click with any of the characters in this book, but Hazel was the worst because she was the narrator.  I don't know of any teenagers who talk the way John Green's teenage characters talk.  It's like they're all middle-aged philosophers masquerading as kids.
Kaitlyn from Freak of Nature by Julia Crane

This cyborg just didn't make sense to me.  She supposedly had some emotions -- we're repeatedly told this -- but she comes across as so flat and emotionless most of the time... and yet when she does show emotions, they're just a little off.  Her thought processes also made no sense.  Her parents believed that she was murdered... and yet she decides that it's best that she never contacts them again, because it would be cruel for them to find out she's alive!  Yeah, Kaitlyn, I'm pretty sure your parents' reaction to your aliveness would not be, "How dare you?  We want to keep believing you're dead.  Go away."

Lily from Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Lily is the reason I couldn't finish this book.  I hated her.  Hated, hated, hated her.  Seriously... what teenage girl goes around shrieking at strangers who give them compliments?  Especially a teenage girl who's supposedly mature enough to roam New York City on her own.  Sounds like somebody needs a babysitter.
Scarlet from Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

This character was just so... blah.  As I was reading her sections of the book, I kept wishing they were over so we could go back to Cinder's chapters... and I'm not even the biggest fan of Cinder, so that's saying something.

Sophie from The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson

Sophie was another one of those characters whose emotional reactions made no sense.  She cries for no apparent reason, then apologizes to her friend for no apparent reason.  She goes to all the trouble of solving a mystery, and then withholds the information (even though it could save her friends from being lobotomized into man-serving drones) because one of the girls told her to.  She also comes across as about ten... but she's supposed to be fifteen.

Sunday from Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

I really disliked Sunday's character.  She was completely unlikable, and yet I think we were supposed to like her.  I disliked all of her sisters, too; the whole gimmick with their personalities going along with the poem was just silly.  (And I still don't get how their mother managed to time her births to the days of the week.  Maybe Sunday was actually born on a Wednesday; she certainly had the whole "woe is me" thing going at times...)


What are some characters that you didn't click with?