Title: Prophecy Of The Sisters Author: Michelle Zink Publisher: Little, Brown Number Of Pages: 343 Publication Date: August 1st 2009
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Lia Milthorpe has just recently lost her father, leaving her parentless. But when a strange mark appears on her wrist, she realizes she is being branded with much more than her newfound title of orphan. Lia and her twin sister, Alice, are part of an ancient prophecy that has turned generations of sisters against each other. Lia hides this discovery from Alice and even from her beloved, James, but to escape from the burden this secret bestows she must end the prophecy-before her sister. Only then will she understand the mysterious circumstances of her parents’ deaths, the true meaning of the mark on her wrist, the lengths to which her sister will go to defeat her, and the downfall the prophecy would bring. With haunting, lyrical prose, this multilayered debut novel by Michelle Zink takes readers on an unforgettable journey where one sister’s decision could have an impact of Biblical proportion.
Review: Prophecy Of The Sisters is a phenomenal debut novel! I really loved the premise and the way Michelle executed it! The characters were vivid and had totally different personalities. I loved, loved, loved Prophecy Of The Sisters as you can probably tell. Lia’s character was the perfect heroine and Alice was evil (it is easy to tell from the beginning!), James is a great character, you can just tell that he loves Lia and that makes the book all the better. I had heard that some people are comparing this to theGemma Doyle Trilogy By: Libba Bray, but really there were only a few similarities and they weren’t huge similarities. I cannot wait for the sequel. Prophecy Of The Sisters kinda ends abruptly so, that makes the wait for the sequel all the more agonizing. All in all, this book is definitely a book I would recommend!!!
I recommend this book if you like prophecies, romance, regency type novels, and YA books.
Title: Generation Dead Author: Daniel Waters Publisher: Disney Hyperion Number Of Pages: 392 Publication Date: April 7th 2009 (In Paperback)
Summary from back of book: All over the country, a strange phenomenon is occurring. Some teenagers who die aren’t staying dead. But when they come back to life, they are no longer the same. Feared and misunderstood, they’re doing their best to blend into a society that doesn’t want them.
The administration at Oakvale High attempts to be more welcoming of the “differently biotic,” but the students don’t want to take classes or eat in the cafeteria next to someone who isn’t breathing. And there are no laws to protect the “living impaired” from people who want them to disappear—for good.
When Phoebe falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids, no one can believe it: not her best friend Margi, and especially not her neighbor Adam, the star of the football team—and others won’t stand for it. Adam has feelings for Phoebe that run deeper than friendship; he would do anything for her. But what if protecting Tommy is the one thing that would make her happy?
Review: Generation Dead was a lot better than I thought it would be! It was actually amazing!! I really liked Daniel’s take on zombies. It made me like zombies more. (I am more of a unicorn type of girl.) It evoked a lot of emotions—anger, joy, and sorrow. My dad thought the idea of the book was a little goofy but the way Daniel executed it made the idea great! I cannot wait to read the sequel Kiss Of Life. All in all, I highly suggest this!
I recommend this book if you like zombies, romance, and YA novels.
Fire is an outcast in her society, her vibrant and unnatural hair color an indicator of her monster status and her dangerous powers of mind control. She's the only one left of her kind, and she resides far out in the country where she is safe from those who fear her and would harm her.
Meanwhile, King Nash is struggling to hold on to his kingdom as enemies from the north and south threaten to overthrow him. Both Nash and his brother Brigan distrust Fire for the havoc her father wreaked on the kingdom before his death, and Brigan would like nothing more than for Fire to be killed. But now, unless they find a way to resolve their differences and work together, they'll never win the impending war.
Reason's Why I NEED Fire right now!!
* I loved, loved, loved Graceling!
*It has a GORGEOUS cover!!!
*Fantasy books are amazing!
Fire will be released on October 5th, 2009.
-Senfaye :)
Bio:
J.A.Yang has slummed it in the valley with the Wakefield twins; slumber partied with Huey, Dewey and Louie; joined Krakow in stalking Angela; and climbed every mountain with the Von Trapps.
Originally from San Diego, he's lived and traveled the world (okay, not all of it) in pursuit of that most elusive of targets -- inspiration.
He's authored and published a book, written for online and offline publications, and maintained a variety of popular blogs on subjects ranging from movies and technology to personal stories and amateur musings. He's just wrapped up his second book, a fiction novel for teens, and is hard at work on his third one.
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Review:
Title: Exclusively Chloe Author: J.A. Yang Publisher: Speak (Penguin) Number Of Pages: 245 Publication Date: May 14th,2009
Synopsis From Back Of Book: HOLLYWOOD HEADLINE NEWS
Tinseltown’s premier darling, Chloe-Grace, disappears after parents split!
Chloe-Grace can’t help it: she’s spectacular. How could she not be, with celebrity parents who have been the queen and king of Hollywood for years? But Chloe is a celebrity unto herself as well—she’s the first ever celebrity-adopted kid in Hollywood. Some kids grow up with silver spoons in their mouths; Chloe had an entire set of platinumware shoved in her face, along with two hundred paparazzi. But now Chloe’s sixteen, and she is tired of every undesired moment of the world’s attention. Normal kids get to keep secret diaries. Chloe can barely keep her sanity—until she thinks about what it would be like to be a “normal” kid in a regular school. To really understand it, she would need to go undercover. So she gets a “make-under” at the hands of her mother’s fabulous stylist, and enters the normal world. But she soon finds out that there is just as much drama there as there is in Hollywood…
Review: Exclusively Chloe is a great read. It was a quick, light read sure to delight. It had amusing, fun, interesting characters, which I really liked. I had a few problems with it though. I felt that Chloe was a little too whiny at times, I mean I understand that she is going through a lot at once, but right from the beginning she was whiny. Another problem, her supposedly best friend didn’t really seem like a friend at all. She probably only liked Chloe because of her fame, not for who she really was, and that really bothered me, I don’t really know why.
Although, it has a few bad points overall it is a really good read. I would love to read more from J.A. Yang!
I recommend this book if you like celebrities, drama, romance, and YA novels.
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Interview:
Q: How did you get the idea for Exclusively Chloe?
JY: A few summers ago, I was playing in a celebrity fantasy league (like fantasy football but you draft celebrities and get points whenever they appear in US Weekly magazine photos) and I had the brilliant idea of drafting Maddox Jolie-Pitt, Angelina's first adoptee. Little Maddox ended up scoring a ton of points for me because he was always in tons of pictures.
I started thinking about what it would be like for any celebrity child to grow up seeing all this coverage of themselves as kids, living an entire life in the spotlight, and realized that there's probably a great story to be told about Hollywood and adoptions. From there, I just started with the idea "celebrity adoption" and ran with it.
Q: What book had the most profound effect on you, and made you want to write a book of your own?
JY: I've had so many great books but the one that I remember being such a highlight of my childhood was "The Westing Game," by Ellen Raskin. I thought it was so clever, I loved the characters, and it just opened up my world. The main mystery and the eventual solution spun around in my head for years. I won't provide any spoilers here but to this day I see little signs and words and things that remind me of the Westing Game.
Books that made me want to write probably included anything with a huge long series. I was addicted to tons of classic series like Little House on the Prairie, The Land of Oz, The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, the entire run of Black Beauty horse books. Those made me want to create my own world and characters and to have this continual saga and "the further adventures of..."
Q: How long did it take you to write the first draft of Exclusively Chloe?
JY: The first draft of Exclusively Chloe took probably a total of six months. I wrote the first few chapters and submitted those. A few weeks later, after it was bought and accepted, I went back to re-write and expand on those chapters before writing the rest of the book. I tend to write in big huge splurts so I'll take a week and just eat, sleep, and write over and over until I can't anymore. A few of those sessions and the first draft for EC was done!
Q: When did you know you wanted to write books?
JY: To be honest, I never thought I would write a book. It was a life dream and one of my top three super secret ambitions, but it definitely wasn't something I thought would actually be possible. Like you put "be a superhero" on your list of life goals and then when you become one, you're like "Whoa, how did I get here?" And that's how I feel about writing books. I'm so lucky to be here and I love it but it was never something I specifically aspired to directly.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write?
JY: I love listening to music when I write. Depending on the mood I'm in, I need something with either a beat, great singalongability, no words, or just background music. Usually I'll start with something guitary, like some live Jason Mraz or maybe Adele, and then move on to something that gets me amped up. The problem then is that often I want to get up and dance so I have to dial it down a bit. If I really need to concentrate, I play stuff from Air or Nujabes.
Listening to music over a long writing session also helps me measure my writing time sometimes, as I'll suddenly realize I've heard the same song twice already (from my playlist) and that means I've been able to really focus for X-number of hours this session. Like "Oh, it's Lenka again, I'm doing good! Let's keep it up." I say this in my head of course, not out loud, because that would just be crazy...
Favorites:
Q: Favorite color?
JK: Well, actually that’s a rather interesting story. I was seven years old at the time, and
Q: Favorite kind of soup?
JK: Huh . . . ? Um, anyway, I was seven years old, and I had never seen a
Q: Favorite smell?
JK: Are you even listening?
Q: Favorite movie?
JK: Seriously, slow down, I can’t ev
Q: Favorite kind of sports car?
JK: Jesus. The Ford Kumquat. What do you care?
Q: Favorite author?
JK: What the hell. The moon.
Q: Favorite book?
JK: You know what, I’m actually going to try to answer this one, because this is important to me. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt. I first came across the immortal works of Marcel Proust when
Q: Favorite song?
JK: You have got to be kidding me.
Q: Favorite website?
JK: Is there a website where I can finish my answ
Q: Favorite T.V. show?
JK: Anything where you die.
Q: Favorite food?
JK: Your skull.
Questions about writing:
Q: Where did you get the idea for The Order of Odd-Fish?
JK: I first got the idea for The Order of Odd-Fish when . . .
When . . .
. . .
Really?
. . .
Hmm.
. . .
Okay, so the idea for The Order of Odd-Fish came to me in bits and pieces over the years. I didn’t
start off with a clear idea of what it would be about; it grew from a gradual accumulation of dozens of smaller ideas that all shared a certain spirit.
I had written a short story called The Cockroach and the Music-Box in 1995, when I was i
n college. That story has almost no similarities to what became The Order of Odd-Fish except it had a girl named Jo and a vain cockroach named Sefino. Over the years, I kept adding things and deleting things from the story, and it became a kind of dumping-ground for whatever ideas I happened to have over the years. Soon I had hundreds of pages of this kind of stuff.
Once I had a critical mass of little ideas—jokes, scenes, characters, mechanisms, voices, and plot twists—and they started bubble and boil on their own, I was able to organize them into a proper
story.
I didn’t want the story to cramp the improvisational, anything-can-happen feel I felt the first dozen chapters had. That said, I didn’t want to let it get too undisciplined. A bunch of wacky, arbitrary situations strung together is not really a good story.
So I made all these seemingly random elements serve the main story, which actually was one of the last ideas I had—of a girl, Jo, who comes to live in a fantastical city, and falls in love with it, only to realize she is destined to destroy it.
Jo joins the knights of the Order of Odd-Fish, whose purpose is to aimlessly dither and pursue dubious, pointless research. Since dithering about, and spending time on various random, unrelated
endeavors was what sparked the idea for Odd-Fish, I made that attitude central to the Order itself!
Q: Will there be a sequel to The Order of Odd-Fish?
JK: I have planned two sequels and a prequel. The Silent Sisters and the Belgian Prankster aren’t
done with Jo Hazelwood yet. There are aspects of the legend of the All-Devouring Mother that have not yet come to light.
Ken Kiang will also continue to have his role in the books—he still must find his place as a knight in the Odd-Fish. Fiona Fuorlini’s character will become much more important, even central
. We will learn about the other orders of knights, and explore the sprawling, fascinating, dangerous world outside of Eldritch City. And I plan to end the second Odd-Fish book with a shocker that I mustn’t reveal now.
Of course, the question of whether these other Odd-Fish books get written at all d
epends entirely on how the first one sells. So get out there, my pretties, and buy them!
Q: Do you listen to music while you write?
JK: I do! And in fact, this is a perfect opportunity to mention the soundtrack that I compiled for The Order of Odd-Fish.
The music blog Largehearted Boy has a running feature called “Book Notes” in which th
ey invite authors to compile a mix of songs that are appropriate for their book. I put together a “soundtrack” for the imaginary movie of The Order of Odd-Fish that only exists in my mind. I’ve included punk marching bands, French ye-ye, Kinshasa street bands, puzzling blippitty-bloopity electronic stuff, and a lot more. You can listen to a stream of the songs, and read my explanations for why I chose those songs, here:
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2009/01/book_notes_jame_2.html
Enjoy!
Q: Are you writing anything right now?
JK: I am working on something unrelated to The Order of Odd-Fish, a sci-fi comedy adventure called The Magnificent Moots. It’s a combination of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a little bit ofEnder’s Game, leavened with A Wrinkle in Time and sprinkled with The Royal Tenn
enbaums. With a generous dollop of Battle of the Network Stars on top. Sounds like a mess? It’ll be a glorious mess.There might be a graphic novel aspect to it, but that’s still up in the air.
Q: If you could give a specific color to describe each of your main characters’ personalities, what would the colors be?
JK: You know what, I feel entirely at ease now! I’m glad you’re actually letting me answer your questions without interruption. And I’m particularly happy you asked this question, because I’ve worked out an elaborate color scheme, in which each character in The Order of Odd-Fish is assigned a particular wavelength of the visible spectrum.
In fact, by carefully considering each character’s corresponding color, one may deduce the names and personalities of future characters in the planned sequels for Odd-Fish—much in the same way that scientists can predict the physical properties of yet-undiscovered elements in the periodic table, merely from the numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus!
For instance! Colonel Korsakov is assigned the color yellow, which of course corre
sponds with the element cadmium on the periodic table (or, for sticklers, the compound cadmium sulfide), and so we can conclu
Questions about the author:
Q: How many states have you been to?
JK: I should’ve known.
Q: What YA book are you looking forward to that is coming out this year?
JK: This is like Lucy with the football. You just love to make me suffer, don’t you?
Q: If you could be any mythical creature, what would you be?
JK: “Happy interviewee” seems pretty close to mythical right n
Q: If you were stranded on an island and you could only bring five things with you, what would you bring?
JK: Your body, in five separate bags. Seriously, I want to tell you about th
Q: What is your weirdest work experience?
JK: You have reduced me to tears.
Q: Where would your dream vacation be?
JK: You have ruined my life.
Q: What would your dream library look like?
JK: I will never dance again.
ME: Thank you!
JK: I hate you.
Hahaha, this is certainly the funniest and one of the most interesting interviews!
Thanks James!! It was fun interviewing you!
-Senfaye :)
P.S. James' has a really cool blog that you can check out here.
P.P.S. His book Order Of Odd Fish is amazing and you can buy it here.
Favorites:
Q:Favorite fairy tale?
CB: Um, Cinderella. Because before I got married I had a name that sounded very much like Cinderella, so a lot of people called me that!
Q:Favorite color?
CB: Blue
Q:Favorite animal?
CB: Dogs
Q: Favorite YA author?
CB: Judy Blume
Favorite website?
Q: Favorite movie?
CB: The Goonies
Q: Favorite book?
CB: This changes based on the day you talk to me.
Q: Favorite vacation spot?
CB: The Jersey Shore...
Q: Favorite actor/actress?
CB: I really don't like most of them.
Q: Favorite time of day?
CB: Morning
Q: Favorite store?
CB: Target
Questions about writing:
Q:Where did you get the idea for Fairy Tale? 
CB: I got the idea for Fairy Tale because I wanted to write a paranormal story, but I felt like the girl who learns she is a fairy princess is overdone and dull. After all, she’d be the envy of all her friends! I did the “what if” game and asked myself, “What if the fairy was a guy?” I found that much more interesting—imagine a football player trying to explain to his teammates that he’s a fairy.
Q: Will there be a sequel to Fairy Tale?
CB: Not unless the public cries out for it.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write?
CB: Nope. Must have silence.
Q: Are you writing anything right now?
CB: Yes, I am working on a few projects. I'm finishing the draft of SLEEPLESS, coming out in 2010, about a Sandman who falls in love with the mortal whose sleep he controls.
Q: If you could give a specific color to describe your main character's personalities, what would the colors be?
CB: Red, because Morgan has a very fiery, Italian personality... she says what she's thinking and if she's upset about something, she'll let you know.
Questions about the author:
Q: If you could be any mythical creature what would you be?
CB: I would like to be one of those gremlins that steals people's car keys and makes them think they're going nuts because that would be fun.
Q: What YA book that is coming out this year are you most looking forward to?
CB: PRADA and PREJUDICE by Mandy Hubbard because it's awesome. And a few others, like PROPHECY of the SISTERS by Michelle Zink, CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins, EYES LIKE STARS BY Lisa Mantchev... the list goes on and on.
Q: How many states have you been to?
CB: I think, most of them. I travelled cross country twice so I think we stopped in a lot of the Southern ones. I missed a few in the north, but I used to live in New Jersey, California, and Maine. Now I live in Pennsylvania.
Q: If you were trapped on a desert island and you could only bring 5 things with you, what would you bring?
CB: Water, Twix bars, a stack of books, sunscreen, and the Professor (because he could make a CB radio out of coconut shells so I could get the hell out of there.)
Q: What is your weirdest work experience ever?
CB: I used to work at the beach, checking badges, and that's really weird because I was basically being paid to get a tan.
Q: Where would your dream vacation be?
CB: I went to Hawaii for my honeymoon and would love to go again.
Q: What would your dream library look like?
CB: My library where I live is pretty much my dream library. Any book you want, they have, no waiting!
Thanks Cyn! It was fun interviewing you!!
-Senfaye :)
