How To Breathe Underwater

Kate is a competitive swimmer, best in the state actually, and her father is the coach pushing her to perfection. Until one day at swim practice he is caught in the arms of a swim mom, in front of everyone! Suddenly Kate and her mother are moving an hour away to restart their lives, and Kate is no longer sure who she wants to be or what she wants to do. Enter Micheal, the cute boy across the hall, and Patrice the pretty and sweet girl who welcomes her in Chem class, who also happens to be dating Micheal, something Kate finds out after developing a major crush on the boy. Then out walks Harris, Kate's best friend for nearly her whole life! Kate's entire world is turned upside down by everything, most importantly, her decision to stop swimming. And suddenly Kate, at nearly seventeen years old, has to figure out where she is going from here.

I would like to start by saying the only thing I allowed to be colored by my favor of the author (who is my baby sister) was the fact that I picked the book up in the first place. I do not traditionally read YA Romance, or really very much romance at all these days. I am also completely against first person narrative, it bothers me, I find it hard to get into, and so I avoid it, a fact I am sure I have mentioned before. It takes a lot to get me to read a book combining these too elements, but I have read some of my sister's previous, unpublished works, and I knew she was a great writer, so there was never I doubt I would pick this book up. And I in no way doubt that decision because this book was amazing!

Vicky' writing style is on point! With a unique perspective thanks to the events of her life, she was able to write characters and events that were real, heartfelt, and altogether incredible! Every moment of this book was so perfectly descriptive and emotional! The characters were believable and lovable (even for a moment the father, whom you can't help but feel a flash of pity for). Kate's moments of panic were so accurate they stung, and created an appreciation for the author's ability to craft such scenes that I want to thrust this book on so many of my fellow readers. From the start I was pulled into the narrative and dragged from page to page needing to know how it would all turn out, how Kate would handle everything being thrown at her, how things could possibly work out in the end. And I was not disappointed as I finally laid the book down only a day after picking it up.

Vicky Skinner is a truly gifted story teller! And I can't wait to see what the future holds for this talented young writer! Knowing what is coming next year, what she is working on after that, I am so incredibly excited to add her stories to my shelves and delve into more of her unique tales! Go pick up this book now and get ready to discover a new beloved author!

The Jane Austen Project

Take two people from our current timeline, give them a crash course in 1815, and toss them back into the past to have them get close to one of the most prolific writers in history. What could possibly go wrong? Well for Rachel Katzman and Liam Finucane it starts with a climbing boy. Can they hope to alter the past as little as possible while trying to become friends with the Austens and get close enough to get their hands on some very personal letters and a manuscript always though unfinished? Or will they change things too much and alter the world they came from?

This was a very interesting read, guys! Flynn tells the story of two people getting to do what a lot of us avid readers wished we could do, go back and meet the writer of some of our favorite stories, get the chance to know her, try to understand her more. But we all know that playing with time travel is a dangerous game. Something Katzman and Finucane learn as soon as they arrive in 1815 and nearly have the whole thing blown over a surly inn keeper and their lack of luggage. Yet they persist.

What follows was a bit of a roller coaster for our characters as they try to balance themselves carefully into a world they really can't fully fit into while trying not to alter the course of history too much. After all they were only sent back to observe, get copies of a few letters and a manuscript, and make it home to tell their superiors what they learned. But Rachel in particular has a very hard time keeping to the mission plan.

I enjoyed the novel, despite how easily it all ended when things did go south for our travelers. It was fun to read of Rachel trying to hold back the fangirl when interacting with Jane. Watching events unfold at the end of Jane's life in a different way. And seeing that world from the eyes of someone from our own time. It all made for a great story told with a wonderful voice. Because while Rachel sometimes annoyed me enough to have me groaning and rolling my eyes, I did like the way Flynn wrote her. The book was fun! I would recommend it to anyone unable to get enough of Jane Austen of Regency era novels!

Confessions of a Middle School Nerd

Ok, so I found this one on the local authors shelf as well, and I picked it up for my 10 yr old son who is now part of the middle school in our small town school system. But he has a long to read list of his own, so I decided to go ahead and read it by myself. A very interesting choice.

Confessions of a Middle School Nerd is a very short read, only 81 pages with the text taking up only a small block of each page. But it was a fun and quick read for that reason. Written in the first person by a narrator who is quirky and funny, this book is almost like a journal for the writer. The narrator starts off by saying that she wrote most of this down to work through a few things, mostly days in her life that she feels should be highlighted to help her come to a conclusion she can only catch glimpses of. So we get little tidbits of this middle schooler's days. The stories are all focused around one main point, the narrator is awkward. But in the end she comes to the realization that not only is she ok with this fact about herself, she can revel in it, because she likes who she is.

Like I said, the book was short and sweet. I enjoyed taking a little time to read it, especially since I could so relate to some of these moments in the narrator's time in middle school. So I encourage anyone to pick it up. Have a laugh or a knowing nod of the head, and pass it on to a middle schooler that might need a little reinforcement that they are not the only ones out there being awkward, and it's perfectly fine to be so. Let me know if you have read this one!

Geek Lust

How could I not pick up a book that not only gets so close to my own blog's title, but is literally about the driving force behind everything I am interested in? I saw this on the Local Author shelf and that was just an even better reason to pick it up, because you guys know I love reading things written by people close by. So I picked it up and while I didn't absolutely love this book, it was fun to read.

Alex Langley binds together in these pages everything that makes a geek a geek. Covering everything from the original geeks, scientist that started things, to all the mediums that geeks revel in, including but not limited to books, shows, movies, podcasts, and games. While the book is divided in a pretty clear manor, moving from one subject to the next in a cohesive manor that ties it all together, Langley's lists and frequent content jumping does make this book a bit more chaotic to read than I would have liked.

But it was fun! I mean, a whole book listing the many reasons people mark me as weird, yeah I enjoyed seeing in print that there are whole groups that love the things I love. It was also a lot of fun to pick out which of the many names in each medium I have enjoyed over the years. Who doesn't love it when someone acknowledges their love of that one book series you thought you were alone in reading!

I had fun with this book and recommend it to anyone with the willingness to basically read a book of lists. After all, it helped me discover a lot more shows, books, and games I should be partaking in!

Every Last Word

January - Books with a white cover

This is the story of Sam. Sam has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, focusing on the obsessive part. She is sixteen and she was diagnosed years ago, and she is in therapy and trying to cope with it. But no one outside of Sam's family knows. And she likes it like that because she wants the world to think she is completely normal. Only, she is lonely because of this thinking. Until she meets Caroline and her world starts to change. Sam discovers poetry and makes friends and focuses on herself. She starts to be happy. It's a wonderful story!

And it is so darn familiar to me that sometimes I had to take a step back. Sure, the details are a little different because while I do have OCD (or Pure-O as I have discovered is more accurate), I was dealing more with depression and anxiety in high school. And whereas Sam had a group of plastic friends she felt she could never explain things to, I had my family who I was desperate not to disappoint. Sam meets the Poets, friends that understood, had their own faults, but had poetry. I had a few friends that had their own illness and were willing to just let me be. Sam finds AJ. I am now married to my own AJ. It sounds so awesome, finding your way through, figuring out who you are and how to be happy in it. But it's not that easy. At one point, Sam's friend tells her she is changing, and maybe not for the better. I received those same lines from my father. It was hard to explain that I wasn't who everyone had though I was up to that point, especially since my family really liked that girl and I was becoming my own person. It took my a long time to find my own Poets, but I got there and have slowly to become happier in my own life.

So imagine how amazing it was to pick up this book and discover my story within its pages! So maybe I was far more drawn to the story than you would be. But I honestly believe that Stone does such an amazing job of giving us Sam in all her crazy glory and making us fall in love with her. She does an incredible job of capturing the good, the bad, the crazy of Sam's day to day life, from the obsession with her odometer in her car to the panic attacks that nearly cripple her. Stone did a lot of research for this story, and it really shows in how accurately she portrays so much of it. It was wonderful getting to read this one. Even through the sad parts and the bits that gave me second hand embarrassment and the pages that made my heart smile. It was a fantastic book from beginning to end. Please, pick it up, read it, love it with me!

The Sisters

In the beginning was Mabel and Bertie. In the summer of 1927 Mabel knew something would soon happen to Bertie and that the only way to escape would be to take her sister away. She thought she planned out the only way things could be done to give them a restart at life. Only, something went wrong. Bertie never got on the train. Suddenly both Mabel and Bertie are thrown out into the world, alone and uncertain, and full of emotions they keep tucked away from prying eyes.

What follows is a story like most others, Mabel finds herself in photography and unusual friendships, Bertie marries and devotes herself to making sure her little family holds together. But the original tragedy colors everything.

Jensen weaves a tale that may seem simple enough, only that there is a thread running through all of it that most of the characters are never aware of even as it changes things for them permanently. This family that hides truths about what they are doing, what they feel, and they change the course of each other's lives with these hidden facets. Amazingly, something that happened in 1927 effects the great-granddaughters in 2007, even as the child has no idea of the events that occurred.

Not only is this an amazing story to show how tragedy colors each and every one of us without us having gone through the event itself, Jensen is an incredible writer. Her imagination is vast as she develops this family and chronicles their lives. At the worst moments in the book she gives us just enough of the scene to make it stick with you, make you cringe, without having to take it too far. And her characters are so diverse and real that you can't help but feel for each and every one of them.

I am so glad that picked up this novel and I will be looking for more of Jensen's works in the future! I recommend everyone pick this book up!

You're Never Weird On The Internet (almost)

June: Books written by celebrities.

When did I first become aware of Felicia Day? I don't even know. I remember seeing her on Eureka and recognizing her immediately, so I had to have seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog by then. I don't know if I saw the episodes of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer before or after I knew her name. But I know for a fact when I saw her on Supernatural I fangirl squealed and did a jumping dance in the middle of the living room because Felicia Day was so cool and on my new favorite show! I didn't get to watch her show The Guild when it first aired but I have since made up for that by watching it multiple times and mentioning it to all my friends. So basically it's like I've always been aware of Felicia Day, even though she has only been an actress since 2001. Maybe it's like Joss Whedon said in his intro: "She's something more than a self-made woman - I sometimes think she's not a human woman, that she willed herself into existence, before willing the world to make a place for this new, unfathomable creation." Felicia Day willed herself into my life, and it has been glorious ever since.

In her memoir Felicia tells the incredible tale of how she grew up home-schooled, managed to start college at age 16, and obtained two Real Degrees while never getting her GED. Than she moved to LA with the feeling that she was just meant to be an actress. And it seemed that anything she wanted to do, she put her mind to, and rocked it.
Only, it didn't keep happening that way.
While most of the world sees Felicia Day as this incredibly bubbly, happy, bright person who is not only beautiful but is also a gamer, which is just awesome, people don't suspect the underlying anxious, over-worked, neurotic that hides behind the games she played until she had pushed most of the world out.

And this is why I love Felicia Day. On top of the fact that I always love her bigger characters, I started to catch glimpses of the real Day sometime after she stared in Eureka and what I saw fascinated me. I'm not a major gamer, but I love to sit and loose myself in some Zelda when I can. I spent most of my teen years behind a computer screen in RPG chatrooms because I could be better than who I was IRL. I am addicted to stories because they are the easiest way for me to loose myself (and reading is something that people will encourage). And with all the convention panels I was getting to watch on YouTube, I started to see someone that I could relate to. And she was awesome!

Reading this book I got a closer look at Felicia Day than I ever had before. She opens her soul for the readers and welcomes them in to follow her journey through not only her childhood and move to LA, but the tough years including the two she spent literally addicted to WoW and then later when depression and anxiety got a hold of her so bad that her health took a turn for the worse. Day does not sugarcoat how hard things got for her, and I love that, because people that go through the same need to see that other have it just as bad. And her making her way out of it and doing something incredible, gives the rest of us real hope.

When I saw that Felicia Day wrote a memoir I got so excited, because she is awesome and I love to read about peoples' lives, how they got to where they are, and what they take from that experience. I got so much more in this book. I got to see hope that even though I am incredibly anxious and what people think of my work terrifies me, I can still put it out there, because I made a think #LookIt.

I really encourage everyone to read this one. It's full of laughter and sweet stories and awkward moments. And then it's full of truth and honesty. For the gamers, the women, the socially awkward creative people. Everyone feeling like maybe their passion is just too weird. Everyone that overthinks things to the point of insomnia. Here is a book written by a woman that gets it. And says that it is ok to be like that, you can make something of it, you just got to try. So give the book a read, and tell me what you think about it!

The Dark Rose

Within The Dark Rose are two main characters, Louisa and Paul, both with dark pasts that have brought them to work at the sight of Kelstice Lodge to help restore the grounds to their former glory. Along with revealing what happens at the Lodge between these two people, Erin Kelly also weaves in the stories of their pasts where both have come far closer to death than either would have liked.

Kelly does an excellent job of winding three different stories together in a way that does not distract from any of the plots, avoiding the problem of the reader wanting to get back to a certain thread when the others are being given. With each chapter I was just as thrilled to read whatever new bit Kelly was going to give me, no matter which part of the story it was about. Slowly, Kelly unravels two stories that come together in  multiple ways before the end and had me sitting on the edge of my seat as every event unfolded. And wow, I was not prepared for the ending at all! The epilogue was just icing on the surprise cake!

If you've seen any of my other reviews you may know I am not one for mystery, and yet here I am again stepping out of my comfort zone and loving it! This is one of the darker novels I have read, with the exception of Sleeping in Eden earlier this year. And just like that novel, I was a bit shaken by this book, given a few ideas for a darker story of my own, and intrigued enough to look for more by this author!

I definitely recommend everyone pick this books up ad get pulled into these character's lives as well as the excellent writing style of Erin Kelly. And if you have read her work before and have recommendations for me on her other books or perhaps more in the genre, please leave a comment! I will be giving more books like this one a chance in the future.

Three Good Things

May - Books with numbers in the title.

I loved the premise behind this book, the story of two sisters, one a recent divorcee with a bake shop that's just trying to figure out life after her husband, and the other a successful lawyer and new mom trying to figure out how to balance her life. Loosing their mother at just sixteen and six, they have only her imparted words of wisdom to help them these years later: "At the end of every day, find three good things about it."

I think the fact that I rarely pick up mainstream books has effected me. While I greatly enjoyed this book, loved the story and the writing style, even found myself talking aloud at the characters near the end, I felt the book was a little watered down. I believe this to be a side affect of far too many life and death harrowing storylines in my recent read list. Something so simple almost fell flat for me. That is not to say that I didn't love the book, that I don't recommend it, on the contrary, I suggest everyone, especially women, pick this book up. Join the McClarety sisters on their path to trying to discover themselves in their own little ways at a time when most people expect to have all their shit together. This book is wonderful, so much like life with moments of joy, confusion, pain, misunderstandings, awkward moments, The characters are so adorable in their little Wisconsin town where the worst that can happen is a little too much snow to make someone late for work. Well, at least on the surface, because under that is two women who are a little too scared of making the wrong move and having everything they want in life slip through their fingers. And what's a little pastry without a side of drama?

This was a really enjoyable read and I look forward to holding on to it to recommend for all my friends that ask me for a good book and they don't want anything too heavy. And if you read the book and try the recipe for kringle, something I am really considering, let me know how it turns out!