Extremely tedious, definitely very YA
926507
I've enjoyed many books classified as YA: all the Harry Potter books, Hunger Games, Divergent series, Enders Game.  I've been reading fantasy for 50 years, probably starting with Tolkien in my youth.  Unfortunately, Mythology 101 was so boring I gave up about halfway through and decided to not waste anymore time on it.
2168318
This was my least favorite book of the four so far.  Mostly because I was hoping my girls would be able to read these books and now I can't let them start the series.  This book has a whole lot of language for a YA book and I also had to skip some of the "hotter" scenes in the book.  It wasn't a Harlequin or anything, but I felt like P.T. Michelle pushed the boundaries of the YA genre a little too far.  I would have classified this book as more of an adult drama/romance.
1881143
I usually love young adult books, but this has to be one of the worst books I've read in awhile.  I honestly can't believe I was even able to finish it!  Don't let the comment on the back cover fool you.  Fans of Twilight will NOT have a new heroine to root for.  I personally thought the book was terribly written.  I was often confused as to what was going on because of her writing style and the characters definitely left something to be desired.  I didn't even care what happened to them.  I just felt like everything was forced.  Also, way too much sex and drug use for a young adult novel.  Sorry, but I didn't "swoon" over this book.
4166602
I was in no way shape or form "Mildly Satisfied" with this book. As many other reviewers have stated, the premise of this book is what intrigued me. the idea of the rescuing the cursed tiger really caught my interest. But unlike others I couldn't even get through half of the book, let alone a third of the book. As of right now i'm stuck on page 69, the very beginning of chapter 6.

Kelsey is stated as being a 18 year old young woman. She's just graduated high school and has now been accepted into college. I will be honest, when I was 18 I was not the most mature and probably not the smartest, but I have never met an 18 year old who speaks like Kelsey, ever. Honestly, Kelsey speaks like an idiot, like she's a twelve year old trying to sound smarter and older then she really is.

I could hardly progress in the story because my mind just couldn't wrap around the fact that an 18 year old was telling this story.

There was room for so much potential in this book, but the author just skims over the scenes she should have expanded on and skips ahead to completely pointless nonsense. As in, the circus arc should have had more time, we should have been shown how Kelsey and Dhiren grew closer, we shouldn't have just been told. Whereas, the Airplane scene should have been like a page, maybe two. All that talk of the bathroom and meals was unnecessary and took away from the story.

I know I haven't read even half the book, but I just couldn't do it, and I tried so hard. I hate to give up on books, and I hate to not finish them. But I would seriously recommend, to any one seriously considering this book, to first check it out from your local library.

Do not waste your money on this book until you have read it, and you're sure you like it.
1738354
I couldn't finish reading the book. It got to a point where I kept waiting to get hooked but I looked down to realize I was already at 43% so I quit. Perhaps this is a story for very young YA readers??... anyhow, it felt choppy and immature for me. Interactions between the characters didn't really seem natural but more scripted. The idea was very interesting but very poorly executed. If you're a young YA reader this book may be for you but I couldn't finish it.....sorry
3767124
I thought this book would be more interesting, along the lines of many of the YA dystopian books that I enjoy.  Unlike Ender's Game and the Hunger Games, this book had no hope.  Everything was overwhelmingly depressing, and it was hard to find any motivation for the characters to go on, or joy, excitement, or happiness when they did.  The oppressiveness of the atmosphere and the consistent depression of the characters made it throughly unenjoyable for me as a reader.
3749975
DNF @50%. I'm OCD about finishing books, & I tried miserably for two days to make it just halfway through this before realizing its just not going to get better.

The flow of the story is jarring  because dialogue and real-time scenes are paused by both MCs having long inner musings. It's also painstakingly slow in anything actually of moment happening, but moves liklightening r/t instafeelings. The dialogue is stiff, sometimes doesnt even make sense, & alternates between being clipped and monotone'esc to unrealistic overstating. The psychoanalysis stuff sounded about as professional as it wouod coming from a Kardashian.

Characters acted like they were FORCED bipolar - turning hot to cold, badass to pansy, b1tchy to helpless mush, etc

TSTL decisions .

Just isn't worth the time or effort.
4813042
I picked this book from the adventure/mystery category for my YA Lit class, since historical is my favoritest genre.  I've had some disappointing experiences with what modern-day YA has to offer in this genre, but figured I'd give it a go.  And the postwar period is an era that isn't covered enough in historical, so I'm always happy to see books about that era.  But I was very quickly disappointed yet again.

The story starts when 15-year-old Evelyn "Evie" Spooner leaves Queens for Palm Beach, FL, in 1947 with her mother and stepfather Joe.  Joe, a veteran of WWII, is the only father Evie has ever known.  The family settles into a hotel during off-season, and strikes up a friendship with a swanky couple, the Graysons.  One of Joe's army buddies, 23-year-old Peter Coleridge, has followed them down, and Evie gets a big crush on Peter.  She discovers the adults around her are all telling various lies, though none of them as earth-shattering as the blurb makes it out to be.  The inciting incident doesn't occur till the book is over halfway done, and the mystery isn't even solved.  The ending didn't even give any sense of resolution, and the title bears little relation to what actually happens in the book.  Film noir in book form this was not.

While Ms. Blundell does an excellent job of accurately depicting her chosen era's social attitudes and culture (in comparison to books like The Luxe), it was lacking in the world-building I expect of my favorite genre.  So many things were skimmed over in a page, a paragraph, a sentence, like postwar anti-Semitism and Evie's early days of hotel life.  There wasn't enough substance, after the very promising first few chapters.  I expect my historicals to have long chapters and to be at least 400 pages long, and I got none of that here.  There also wasn't enough dramatic tension or character or plot development, and the plot wasn't paced well.

Thanks to the obscene oversaturation of first-person in YA in recent years, I just couldn't connect to Evie's character.  I feel more distant from first-person narrators lately.  Evie seemed annoying and unrealistically nave, particularly considering how the average teen of the 1940s was a lot more mature than a teen of today.  She really couldn't figure out what was really going on all around her?  I couldn't stop rolling my eyes when she exaggerated her one-sided instalove as a real romance and relationship.  I was so squicked out by how Peter was a legal adult man making out with a minor, and was just as grossed-out when Evie later put the moves on geeky valet Wally, *particularly* considering how strong the sexual double standard was in those days and how girls lived in fear of a situation like that getting out of control.  (It's not like this were set in a century when it was considered normal for a teen girl to marry or be courted by a much-older guy.)  I don't necessarily mind a fictional relationship between a minor and legal adult if it's made clear that this can't end well, that it's a very bad idea, and that it's an extremely unethical and dangerous situation.  But in first-person, it's next to impossible to convey that.

I'll keep searching for worthwhile historical YA that's been published in the last decade, but I think it's going to be an uphill battle given the proliferation of books like this over lengthier books with more in-depth world-building and character development.
4640616
Having read Richard Paul Evans squeaky clean adult fiction, his first attempt into YA fiction is just that...an attempt. Michael Vey is hardly a story you can "snuggle up" with. The author is trying so hard to be cool, he forgets to tell an entertaining story. Even the title is misleading. Michael Vey spends exactly five pages in the confines of the very intimidating Cell 25.
 Set in Meridian Idaho, and later in Pasadena CA, the plot revolves around a bunch of children who were all born at that particular California hospital where forty-two babies died (forty-two babies died and nobody noticed?!) while the other seventeen children lived. All with special powers involving electricity thanks to a certain machine the hospital was testing at the time. Michael is the extra-special one because he also happens to have Tourette's and he's the stereotypical victim bullied by everyone and stuffed into lockers, not to mention the only one, apparently, who remained with his birth parents, the rest were all adopted (did their parents die too?). But the most important thing we should know about fifteen-year old Michael is that he loves his Mom.
 POV starts out with Michael's first person narrative before the sudden shift to popular cheerleader Taylor Ridley's third then back to Michael for the remainder. Taylor just happens to live in Meridian too, she is Michael's love interest and (bet nobody saw this coming) she also has special electrical powers like Michael which she also keeps hidden from the rest of her peers at school. Michael's stereotypical, obese but nerdy, best friend Ostin is the kind of character that will make you want to watch "Spider-Man: Homecoming" again.
 The bad guy is a man named Hatch. He doesn't need any super powers because he's rich. Hatch quickly becomes the most annoying character in the story as he wastes too many pages monologuing about how he's going to use his band of electrical minions to take over the world. Just as soon as he recruits Micheal Vey that is. Too bad this boy loves his mother or he might've been turned to the dark side like all the others.
 The third act, a climatic battle scene of mutiny, quickly becomes boring and tedious. Michael-the underdog becomes the stereotypical heroic leader, spouting orders to his fellow X-men, leading the escape from Hatch's prison while Hatch gets away so the author can publish volume two. Good thing there's a sequel, since Michael has yet to find his kidnapped mother. By this point, I'd stopped caring.
 There are some dark tones in this book. Taylor is kidnapped. Hatch's lackeys, Nichelle, Zeus and Tara, blindly inflict pain and torture on their fellow teenage mutants under Hatch's orders. There's just no arguing with rich people who wear sunglasses at night. Michael's five pages of suffering in Cell 25 is hardly George Orwell and doesn't really serve a specific purpose to the story except to prove Hatch is a REALLY EVIL PERSON. The violence is mild and nothing really bad happens to anyone. The moral of the story, then, is this: the ability to resist another's weak attempts to make you do something really bad-like killing someone with your superpowers because he offered you elaborate gifts of diamond jewelry and Gold Membership experiences such as front row seats to a sold out concert-makes you a good person.
Six more volumes follow this one.
Sorry, Richard, but I think I hear Harry Potter calling.
4976459
I THOUGHT I WOULD LOVE THIS BOOK BUT ENDED UP SOOOOOOO DISAPPOINTED.  IT IS DEFINITELY A YA THRILLER BUT, I AM NOT SURE I WOULD WANT ANY YA I KNOW TO READ IT.  THE BOOK STARTS OUT GREAT AND ENDED WITH A THUD!
259488
Oh man, I don't even know where to start. Since page 1 I disliked this book, but Im not one to give up once Ive started, and I kept hoping it would get better if I just kept going...I was wrong. I basically hated it until the last page of its infuriating ending. But hey, the plot was fine, albeit a bit cliche. But I was 38% through the book on my Kindle and still the author hadnt explained AT ALL what the vampires and supernatural stuff was like in this world. I basically was super confused halfway through, this made up world is way too complicated...it adds in too many layers way too fast, and I felt even at the end that this fictional world wasn't even partially explained. And on top of that, the stupid main character is such an idiot. Shes a cowardly, cringing, spineless, dumb girl, pretty much giving in to every stereotype about weak girls needing men to come to her rescue. Like I get it if a character is scared at first, and then builds her courage and then trains and becomes capable of defending herself and kicks ass and takes names...but this girl....holy wow. Shes so annoying. Literally her entire inner monologue is how can I run away from everything and whats he best way to hide from my life? Also, there are quite a few very simple grammatical errors and typos that are distracting. I had to re-read sentences with the correct words to get myself to be able to continue slogging through this nightmare of stupid high school drama and weird turn of events that don't even make sense. Parts of it were good (the one or two steamy scenes) but I was so disappointed in almost all these characters and I so hoped that it would turn into a string of events and information that made sense, but alas, no such luck.
2016850
Despite the big marketing campaign for this book that's plugging it as an "adult" read, it's not. The simplistic writing style definitely marks it as a "young adult" book. Also, while author Samantha Shannon has obviously put a lot of thought and imagination into her fictional dystopian universe, I found it very hard to make that suspension of disbelief that is absolutely necessary to accepting a fantasy novel's world. I just could not get into her plot. (Who knew there were so many clairvoyants in the world?) Her concept of "Bone Seasons" is pretty derivative of the "Reapings" in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" series. I also think it's going to be quite a stretch to get seven books out of this projected series.

"The Bone Season" is an OK read for young adults, but I think ultimately JK Rowling and Suzanne Collins have nothing to worry about.
2319477
When I say this book is in desperate need of editing, realize I mean there are not even any genuine quotation marks. And when I say it's as entertaining as an internet search, try reading several pages of JUST THAT. While I realize technology is an integral part of our lives, and that's all well and good, telling every keystroke makes for very boring reading.

This author also has no concept of paragraph breaks, thus they go on endlessly, which is especially strange in YA fiction. Sadly, I can't imagine much of Weber's audience having the patience for any of this book. Had it gone through an actual editing process, more than half of this book would have been cut.
367902
See more of my reviews sooner on The YA Kitten! My copy was an ARC given to me by a friend.

I'm hoping I don't step on too many toes with this one. A book with deep roots in religion is not that easy to review and The Blessed had so many problems that I almost didn't want to write a review for it. I'm being as even-handed as humanly possible, but this just is not a good book at all. My copy was an ARC, meaning changes will be made before final publication, and I'm hoping a lot of changes will be made.

I suppose one thing I can appreciate about the novel is its dual nature. One can read it as Sebastian, a boy who is a saint, revealing Agnes, Cecelia, and Lucy's true natures to them or they can read it as Sebastian, a mentally ill boy whose delusions make him think he's a saint, trying to lure Agnes, Cecelia, and Lucy to him so he can create a cult of his own. There's ample evidence to support either view.

Narrative consistency is the biggest issue. The POV head-jumps in the middle of scenes like head-jumping is an Olympic sport and this book is going for the gold. For instance, we still start out in the head of Agnes during a scene, but before the scene is over, we get inside the heads of Sebastian, Lucy, and Cecelia and get their (totally unnecessary to the scene/moment) thoughts. In another scene, we're witnessing a phone conversation in the POV of another character named Jesse, but we're told the person on the other line is gritting their teeth. If the other people is gritting their teeth loudly enough to be heard over the phone, they're screwing up their pearly whites pretty badly! All of this happens with little to no smooth transitioning.

The prose itself was stilted and the dialogue tended to be immature, unrealistic, lifeless, or a mixture of all the above. Agnes calling her classmates "classholes" when they make fun of her for attempting suicide made me roll my eyes. They're making fun of her over a suicide attempt, for goodness' sake! That's beyond nasty! I'd break out the big guns for far less--and have, actually. Agnes, Cecelia, and Lucy lacked the characterization they needed to make me care about them and where they were going. I don't even know what Cecelia's background is! And if these girls hadn't slut shamed, this novel would have earned one more star from me. Seriously, I'm not tolerating stuff like that anymore. One star is automatically lost if I see it happen.

Hurley's novel, clocking in at over 400 pages, suffers from a case of remarkably terrible pacing. Nothing happens for over half the novel and the explanations we're all begging for aren't given until they're less than 100 pages from the end. What will keep readers hooked until then? I'm not sure. I had to force myself to keep reading so I could move on to other books and get my copy back to my friend.

Toward the end, when the plot finally kicks in and all the action this book has been holding back on is suddenly released, I was too disgusted to enjoy it very much. Lucy putting burning coals in the mouth of a guy who attacked her was beyond cruel. I have no problem with her killing him (after all, he attacked her and was going to kill her), but torturing him like that? I don't care whether the good guys or the bad guys are doing it or what their reasons are; torture by burning coals in the mouth is a hundred kinds of wrong.

The first in a trilogy, The Blessed needs a massive overhaul before it takes the first step toward being a good book. I've recently come to understand ARCs can be drastically different from the finished product and I'm hoping this book gets a massive overhaul done on its writing, characters, and pacing. A modern reimagining of three saints' stories sounds like a great idea, but its execution is ultimately a failure as it is right now.
1183517
If you're a young teenage girl who hasn't taken any lit classes, you will probably enjoy it. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish it. Although from the description it was clear that it was about a teenage girl, it was definitely more of a young adult title than I'm comfortable with. It's told in the first person, which has become very trendy, but first person is actually the hardest to write well because ALL action, character development, etc must be observed by the narrator/main character. This author struggled and at 15% through the book, a conversation occurs that doesn't have the main character in it - she's off getting dressed for a dance - yet the other characters' actions and facial expressions are relayed. It was the last straw for me.
3879369
There are a wide range of reviews online concerning this book already including many reviews involving overwhelming accolades for this author.  I find this disturbing!
Graveminder is about a young woman that returns home following a brutal murder and is essentially forced to take on a very important job in a small town.  She "minds the dead".  She also has a love interest.  His life dramatically changes as well.
The main idea behind the book is interesting, but the plot is VERY slow and is essentially cyclic in nature.  The same questions are asked over and over again.  Information about the characters is withheld, making the book extremely boring at times.  The most concerning feature of this book is that the author seemed to more interested in developing a very tedious relationship between the two main characters instead of developing an actual plot (concerning what the book is named for...minding the dead).  Furthermore, developing a relationship between the two main characters may have worked had the characters been more dynamic.  Quite frankly, they were whiny!  This book is simply self indulgent rubbish, and I believe the only reason it was published is due to the success of her YA series.
4093924
Unfortunately I cannot even complete the book. I feel like it was a waste of money because the description gives hope for an intense and new take on YA, but instead it is the same old story, not even told well. The main character uses excessive foul language, and I feel like this is to try and cover up for her lack of a real personality. The cover art is brilliant and I ignored bad reviews of this book because of that amazing cover, but the story doesn't read well. Within the first few pages I found myself stopping and wondering why there was no flow to the words and that I had to literally make myself work to get through a page and understand the characters choice of words. I just finished the YA book Quarantine and really enjoyed it, so I do like this "type" of genre and I am generally very willing to give YA books like this a good review because they are just fun reads, but for a book that cost me around $15 at the time of purchase that I cannot even finish, I am a bit disappointed.