Meg-A-Rae Episode 25: A Very Special Valentine's Day Episode

In this episode of Meg-A-Rae, Meg loves love and I hate love. So Meg reviews Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer and I review Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. Meg get's all gooey with the romance (though there IS a hitman in her book, so it's not overly gooey) and I get emo about zombies and blood and guts (though there's a lot of heart in R&R, no pun intended).

In reality, I prefer romance and Meg prefers horror, so please remember whilst viewing this episode that WE ARE ACTING! Enjoy!

Death plants.

Happy Valentine's Day! OR Boo Anti-Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is one of those mixed emotion holidays.

 Some people love it...

 And other people...not so much.

So I'm going to appeal to the pro-love and anti-love day people by providing books for ANY mood.

First up, Pro Icky Love Stuff Book List:

Populazzi	Allen, Elise
Dreamland Social Club	Altebrando, Tara
The Story of Us	Caletti, Deb
Keep Holding On	Colasanti, Susane
The Almost Truth	Cook, Eileen
In the Shadow of the Lamp	Dunlap, Susanne
Speechless	Harrington, Hannah
If I Lie	Jackson, Corrine
Never Enough	Jaden, Denise
Small Damages	Kephart, Beth
Catherine	Lindner, April
Jane	Lindner, April
Caleb + Kate	Martinusen-Coloma, Cindy
Red Heart Tattoo	McDaniel, Lurlene
Pushing the Limits	McGarry, Katie
The Boy Recession	Meaney, Flynn
Meant to Be	Morrill, Lauren
Anna and the French Kiss	Perkins, Stephanie
Smart Girls Get What They Want	Strohmeyer, Sarah
Love & Leftovers	Tregay, Sarah
Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff that Made Me Famous	Williams, Kathryn

This is by no means a complete list, but just a few good titles to get you started. Also worth checking out, but neglected by this list is anything by Sarah Dessen.

To get you in the mood, check out this book trailer made by moi of Anna and the French Kiss. It's about love and stuff in Paris!

Now, for those of you who think Valentine's Day is just the candy corporations' made-up holiday designed to make people buy chocolate, then check out these great Zombie and Monster novels. Eat your heart out? They don't mind if they do!

Enclave (Razorland #1)	Aguirre, Ann
Zombie Queen of Newbury High	Ashby, Amanda
The Infects	Beaudoin, Sean
Ashes (Ashes Trilogy, #1)	Bick, Ilsa
Zombies Vs. Unicorns	Black, Holly (et al)
Something Strange and Deadly	Dennard, Susan
Zombies Don't Cry: A Living Dead Love Story	Fischer, Rusty
Z	Ford, Michael Thomas
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies	Grahame-Smith, Seth
Bad Taste in Boys (Kate Grable #1)	Harris, Carrie
Zombie Blondes	James, Brian
Rot & Ruin (Benny Imura, #1)	Maberry, Jonathan
Warm Bodies	Marion, Isaac
Bonechiller	McNamee, Graham
A Monster Calls	Ness, Patrick
iZombie (Vol 1-4)	Roberson, Chris
The Forest of Hands and Teeth	Ryan, Carrie
ZOM-B	Shan, Darren
Frankenstein	Shelley, Mary
Generation Dead (Generation Dead, #1)	Waters, Daniel
The Monstrumologist (Monstrumologist #1)	Yancey, Rick

Again, this is not a complete list, but it's a good one! To get you in the mood, check out this other book trailer made by moi of Rot & Ruin. It's about a zombie apocalypse and a zombie-hunter ninja!

So, Happy Valentine's Day OR Happy Chocolate-Eating-Thursday!

Book Review: Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures (Castor Chronicles #1)
By Kami Cross & Margaret Stohl
Four Stars

“So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn't know, and I didn't have any way to find out.

Guys don't talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks.”
 

Beautiful Creatures is lovely gothic romance, the kind that keeps you wondering what is going on with beautifully eerie elements, a historic mystery, and a heavy dose of magic. The story follows Ethan Wate, a teenage boy from a small southern town called Gatlin. It's the kind of place you never leave and anything new is suspicious. Ethan has wanted to get out for years, and now that his mom has died and his dad has been lost to grief, he's more ready to leave Gatlin than ever.

Then Lena Duchannes came to town.

Lena has come to live with family, a family that is not welcome in town due to their strange ways, and Lena isn't welcomed, either. Strange things begin to happen around Lena, and the Mean Girls go on the attack. Ethan, though, is mesmerized by Lena, and doesn't care what the small-minded bullies say. As they grow closer together, solving the mystery of Lena's family and her 16th birthday becomes increasingly urgent, because that's the day that everything will change.

Beautiful Creatures is a book you'll want to burrow into. The story is intriguing and I had to fight the urge to flip to the end to see what happens (or read the description of the next book in the series). It was unique in that it was a romance written from the male point of view - the story was Ethan's and you read it through his eyes. This is the first book in a series of at least four (#4 came out within the last few months) and will be coming to a theater near you this February. I can't wait to see how this Southern Gothic looks on the big screen. I hope it does this lovely book justice. The book is always better, but it's a crime when the movie utterly fails the book. (But Emma Thompson is in this movie, and that woman can do no wrong, so I'm not worried.)

Want more? Check out the book trailer:

Not enough? How about the movie trailer:

Guest Review: Let it Snow

Let it Snow
By: John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson
Guest Reviewer: Alicia Scully
Four Stars

“Christmas is never over,unless you want it to be... Christmas is a state of mind.”

This book gives three different stories from three different authors which all somehow interlock and all take place around Christmas. In the first, Jubilee is stranded without family or friends in a strange town due to a snowstorm. When she meets kind and thoughtful Stuart, she begins to question how good of friends she has and she also starts to seriously think about her current romantic relationship. Next, Tobin and his friends go on a wild adventure through the storm to get to a Waffle House in the hopes of making out with the team of cheerleaders stranded there. Over the course of the journey though, Tobin begins to think about what (and who) he really wants. Lastly, Addie is recovering from a broken heart after cheating on her boyfriend and, consequently, the love of her life. Will he ever forgive her? Addie must look at herself critically to see that she was in the wrong before there can be any hope of a reunion.

What a fun book! Each author brought something original to the book and they each found cute ways to comment on the others' stories. (For instance, Myracle states in her's that the characters in Green's story are witty to the point of intimidation, or something along those lines.) I have never read anything by either Myracle or Johnson, but I will definitely consider it now. The first two stories were hilarious--I laughed out loud in public to the point of people staring at me. The last story was not my favorite, mainly because the girl is so totally not me that it was difficult to relate to her or feel bad for her. Her story grew on me by the end and it was unexpected to have it from her POV since we had seen cameos of her cheated-on boyfriend in the other two stories. I will say that Myracle does indeed capture whiny, teenage girl angst like no other, but it kind of changed the tone and pace of the book. I may have enjoyed this especially because I just watched Love Actually the night before, and in a way, this would be the more teenager-esque version. I had some worries about the romance in the first story as I was going along because of the shortness of the tale, but it was brilliant and very well done. Basically, go read this book!

Guest Manga Review: Kamisama Kiss

Kamisama Kiss Volumes 1-11
By Julietta Suzuki
Guest Reviewer: Crystal Bandel
Four Stars

Nanami Momozono is a normal Japanese teenage girl, with the major problem that her deadbeat father has finally skipped town to avoid his gambling debts and has left her homeless as a result. While wandering around town, she encounters a local god, who transfers his powers to her so she can live in his shrine. When Nanami arrives at the shrine, she faces two problems: one, the shrine’s caretaker, a fox demon named Tomoe, doesn’t like her at all; and two, she’s a human with no knowledge of how to be a god or run a shrine. Over the course of the series, Nanami of course slowly becomes a better god and wins over Tomoe. The problem, though, is that Nanami also falls in love with Tomoe, and humans are forbidden to love demons. What will she do?

Kamisama Kiss follows a lot of the standard elements for a girls’ manga series, from the optimistic, hardworking female lead to her mean-on-the-outside-but-nice-and-kinda-gooey-on-the-inside love interest. Fortunately, this series mostly avoids the big shoujo manga pitfall of love triangles and instead focuses on Nanami’s growth as a god and her feelings for Tomoe. The series does require some knowledge of how the Japanese religion of Shintoism works, but the endnotes cover a lot of the basics, so don’t let that scare you away. More importantly, the series is both hilarious and emotionally touching, which I hadn’t expected when I started it. The humor is offbeat and immediately engrossing, so much so that I read the entire first volume as soon as I started it and rushed to get the rest of the series. I appreciate how much it deals with Nanami’s past and her parents’ faults, as well as the complicated problems of the spirit world. The biggest difficulty for readers may be how very much older Tomoe is than Nanami, but the series mostly treats that as inconsequential in the face of love. I was able to get over it, and I suspect many teens might, but it’ll vary by reader. Essentially, Kamisama Kiss is a fun diversion of a series that brightens up my day every time I read it, even if it doesn’t do anything radically new. If you’re looking for a fun manga series for girls with some Japanese mysticism, it’s a good way to go.   

Book Review: Unspoken

Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy #1)
By Sarah Rees Brennan
*****

“A leather jacket,” Kami said as he shrugged into it. “Aren’t you trying a little too hard to play into certain bad boy clichés?”
“Nah”, said Jared. “You’re thinking of black leather. Black leather’s for bad boys. It’s all in the color. You wouldn’t think I was a bad boy if I was wearing a pink leather jacket.”
“That’s true,” Kami said. “What I would think of you, I do not know. So what does brown leather mean, then?”
“I’m going for manly,” Jared said. “Maybe a little rugged.”
“It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.” 

Kami is a teenager living in a small English village called Sorry-in-the-Vale (the English really know how to name their villages...just sayin'). The village is a little quirky, as most small towns are, but Kami is sure it has any number of secrets, and as an enterprising young journalist she's determined to sniff them all out. Kami knows about secrets: she's had a special friend since she was a baby, one who is only a voice in Kami's head. When she was little, everyone thought he was just her imaginary friend. As she got older, she learned to keep his continued existence to herself. But she was closer to the voice than anyone else in the world, and she wouldn't give him up for all the psychologists in the world.

When the Lynburns come back to the village, the secrets begin to come to light. Kami finds herself in the middle of the greatest secret of all - one from which she may not live to tell.

Unspoken is an AMAZING novel! It starts out full of witty banter and quick dialogue. The characters are fun and lovable. Kami's BFF is one of the most gorgeous girls in school who pretty much hates everyone, but loves naps. Along the way, Kami befriends Holly, a girl who's popular with the boys, but not so much with the girls. Jared and Ash are the Lynburn cousins coming home to Sorry-in-the-Vale for the first time. Though they are strikingly similar in looks, Jared is clearly the bad boy to Ash's angel. As the book goes on, it fully embraces the gothic mystery and the tone turns from light and upbeat to dark and mysterious. And in the midst of all this, Kami's mysterious voice turns out to belong to a real boy, and this awakens all kinds of pain and confusion for the two of them.
This book has it all and I loved every moment of it. I turned the last page stricken that it was going to take way too long until the next book was published - I want it in my hands NOW! I can't recommend this book highly enough. Seriously, I just want to hug it and carry it around with me everywhere!

If you'd like a little taste of the book's awesomeness, check out Sarah Rees Brennan's book trailer:

Meg-A-Rae Episode 13: A Very VERY Special Halloween Episode

In this episode of Meg-A-Rae, Meg and I discuss Halloween! This is the fifth and final episode in our Spooktastic October Series - all month long we talk about ghosts, the paranormal, magic, and anything we consider scary!

Here we talk about Scary Stuff, wear fantastic hats, and find out that Rae's idea of "scary" is a little different! Meg reviews The Stand by Stephen King (I wonder if she had to put the book in the freezer...). Rae reviews a particularly scary story: The Twilight Saga, namely Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer. Hey, romance is scary, too! Be sure to stick around till after the credits where something...funny...happens!

Be sure to join us again next week when we don't review something scary! Yay November!

Audio Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1)
By Laini Taylor
Narrated by Khristine Hvam
****
(I downloaded this title for free from the www.audiobooksync.com summer reading program.)

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.” 

Karou is a teenager who attends a school for the arts in Prague. She has blue hair and tattoos, most obvious of which are the eyes on each palm and "true" and "story" on each wrist. She's also a brilliant artist and her friends love to look at her sketch book for the fantastic creatures she draws there. In addition to the beautiful drawings, Karou tells stories of the different "characters." What her friends don't know is that these creatures are real, and they're Karou's family.

Karou's family are Chimera - creatures made up of different animal parts (kinda like the Sphinx). Unbeknownst to Karou, her family has been fighting a war for a century; a war against the angels.

Enter Akiva, a beautiful angel who comes to earth to close the portals Karou's family uses to access our world. Akiva meets Karou and the sparks (and flames) fly. They fall in love, but there's far more to their story than either could possibly guess.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a mesmerizing mix of love and hate, peace and war, romance and tragedy. Taylor has fused together two worlds in a fascinating and believable way and Hvam narrates it beautifully. And just when you have hope that everything will work out for our star-crossed lovers, Taylor comes along and sucker punches you. Thank heaven's there's a sequel! (It'll be available in 2 months.)

This is a great story for anyone who enjoys paranormal romance, mythology, or stories that take place in foreign locales. Highly recommended.

P.S. Check out this book trailer I did for Daughter of Smoke and Bone!

Book Review: Hourglass

Hourglass (Hourglass #1)
By Myra McEntire
****

"How do you tell the difference between real people and time ripples?"
"You mean besides punching them in the stomach?"
I blushed, not because I'd hit him, but because I was thinking about his abs.
 

Before I begin with my review, please take a moment to admire the awesomeness of that cover. She's walking on the wall, very close to landing on the floor. Both beautiful and a bit creepy.

Now to the story. Emerson is a girl getting ready to go back to her old high school for her senior year. She spent the last few years at a boarding school in another state. She also spent some of that time committed to a mental institution. Around the time she was 13, Em started to see dead people. Shortly after that, her parents died. Shortly after that, she yelled at a guy who took her seat in the cafeteria, only to realize that she was the only one who could see him.

Jump forward a few years later and Emerson gets a visit from the Hourglass Institute; her brother hired them to try to help her through these "visions." But instead of getting some quack doctor or crazy shaman, a young man shows up and tells her the visions are real...and they mean she's a time traveler. And he needs her help to right a wrong from the past.

I loved this book. It's a really cool take on the time-traveler genre. Emerson has a snarky sense of humor, which I love, and the writing is fast paced. There's action, mystery, and a romance - a great read for anyone who enjoys the paranormal genre. Also a great choice for anyone who likes a book where the characters have a sort of super power. We also have the sequel, Timepiece, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Teen Reviewer: A Walk to Remember

A Walk to Remember
By: Nicholas Sparks
Reviewer: Lily Pollard

“Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it.” 

Description from Goodreads:
Every April, when the wind blows from the sea and mingles with the scent of lilacs, Landon Carter remembers his last year at Beaufort High. It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even swore that he had once been in love. Certainly the last person in town he thought he'd fall for was Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's Baptist minister. A quiet girl who always carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and helped out at the local orphanage. No boy had ever asked her out. Landon would never have dreamed of it. Then a twist of fate made Jamie his partner for the homecoming dance, and Landon Carter's life would never be the same. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood...

Lily's Review:
I will start off by saying this; this is definitely one of my favorite books I have EVER read. It is a great story!  A Walk to Remember is about Jamie Sullivan and Landon Carter. They are both seniors in high school, and a twist of fate makes them partners for the homecoming dance. Their relationship slowly progresses, but it does. Now take my advice, you will start out smiling and happy, but towards the end it gets sad and you may cry.

This book was great. I recommend it to anyone who wants a very simple, but good love story. It held my attention the whole time, and before I knew it, I had finished the book. Like I said, this is probably one of my favorite books ever! It is a very touching story, and anyone who likes love stories should definitely read this book sometime!

Teen Book Review: Boy Proof

Boy Proof
By: Cecil Castellucci
Reviewer: Emily Marie Reeves

“Is there any other way to be? I mean, this is it. This is my body, my soul; I gotta live with it. I'd better get comfortable. I plan on taking it for a long ride.” 

Description from Goodreads:

What happens when an antisocial cinephile meets up with the worldly new guy at school — a quick-witted artist who's savvy enough to see through her sci-fi disguise?

Meet Egg. Her real name is Victoria Jurgen, but she's renamed herself after the kick-ass heroine of her favorite sci-fi movie, Terminal Earth. Like her namesake, Egg dresses all in white, colors her eyebrows, and shaves her head. She always knows the right answers, she's always in control, and she's far too busy — taking photos for the school paper, meeting with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, and hanging out at the creature shop with her dad, the special-effects makeup wizard — to be bothered with friends, much less members of the opposite sex. As far as Egg is concerned, she's boy proof, and she likes it that way. But then Egg meets a boy named Max, a boy who's smart and funny and creative and cool...and happens to like Egg. Could this be the end of the world — at least as Egg knows it?


Emily's Review:

If you think that you are boy proof you should read Boy Proof. It proves that you’re not boy proof, but just that you haven’t found the right person yet. I say this because I feel like I am boy proof. If you’re not that into love stories don’t worry, it’s there but it is not the most important part of the book. The story takes place in Hollywood and follows a high school senior through a journey of making friends. There is some foul language in the book. I can’t think of my favorite part of the book. My least favorite part of Boy Proof is the ending. The way that the book ends, it makes you think that there should be a second one. Boy Proof is a very good and quick read. I read it in about a day. I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you are feeling lonely.

Book Comparison: New Moon and Persuasion

Persuasion   *****
by Jane Austen

New Moon (Twilight Saga #2)   *****
by Stephenie Meyer

I am about to attempt the impossible – I’m going to review two very different books by two VERY different authors in two very different time periods. That’s not the hard part. The hard part will be showing a correlation between the two. Mission: Accepted.

Most people are probably familiar with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Even if they’ve never read the books, they are aware of the scene where Mr. Darcy (actor Colin Firth) takes a dip in the pond (I haven’t read P&P in a while, but I’m pretty darn sure that Jane didn’t write that).

Slightly less-well-known is Jane’s last completed work, Persuasion. This is the story of Anne Elliot, a sensible young woman who was “persuaded” to let the love of her youth go, only to meet him again eight years later. Then she gets to watch as all the young girls flirt with him and all their married acquaintances guess which of the young girls he’s going to end up marrying.

This book, as many that were written in times past, may be a bit difficult to get started; the language and style are very different than what we’re used to today. And it doesn’t help that the first few pages seem dry. But the opening is actually an introduction to Jane’s snarkiness. Poor Anne isn’t just past her prime without the love of her life, she also has to deal with her ridiculous and vain father, a conceited older sister (both of whom think Anne isn’t worth their time or concern), and a hypochondriac younger sister. Jane brilliantly and scathingly writes these characters; they’re deliciously awful.

Snarkiness aside, this story (for me) can be summed up by a few lines toward the end of the story:

I believe you [men] equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.

In other words, Anne never stopped loving her Captain.

You do have to work more for this book than most fluffy romance novels, but it’s worth the effort. The only problem I had with it, and it’s a minor one, is Jane’s habit of naming multiple characters by the same first name. This may be true to the times, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out which Charles she’s referring to in a given scene.

Next up, a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy fears he will eat girl, so boy dumps girl. Girl mourns loss of boy. Girl befriends werewolf. Girl has to rescue boy (who happens to be a vampire). And they lived happily ever after (at least for a few weeks).

Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon, the second book in the Twilight Saga (if it's a "saga," you know it's gonna be angsty) and recent blockbuster hit. The first book in this series has our two main characters, Edward and Bella, meeting and falling in love. In New Moon, Edward is afraid that he or his family will be overcome by Bella’s tasty scent and, alas, kill her. So, for her sake, he leaves (thus making this the least favorite book in the series for thousands of teens). Bella, deep in depression, finds that extreme activities and her good buddy Jacob are the only things that make her feel a little better. And then she finds out that Jacob turns into a giant wolf and is the archenemy of all vampires. Mayhem ensues.

So how in the world can I possibly compare Jane Austen’s sensible heroine and her sea captain with a high school girl and her vampire and werewolf??? The answer: angst.

What draws me to Meyer’s books is the all-encompassing angst. Sometimes, maybe when the weather is gloomy or you’ve had a bad day or week, you just want to read something where you can have a good mope. And there is no better book from this series than New Moon for excellent mope-age: the whole world revolves around you and getting dumped means the end of everything. Poor Bella is practically comatose for the first half of the book, all because the love of her (short) life is gone.

Anne, however, doesn't get to be comatose. Anne has to take care of her family and their estate. She has to watch as her love comes back to town and courts younger, prettier women. Anne can't show her pain to anyone, but the reader experiences it and hopes, longs, and yearns for her love to be requited.

Bella, like Anne, lost her love. They both have their happily ever afters, and in between, they have their angst. In Jane Austen’s world, so much can be said by a single look or gesture. In Stephenie Meyer’s world, the pain and joy are more visceral. But in both you can find a good love story. (Good being entirely subjective, of course.)

So if you’re looking for a good angsty book, I’d recommend both Persuasion and New Moon. Which one just depends on the kind of angst you’re in the mood for.