“Fourteen year old nerd-boy Dan Cereill is not quite coping with a reversal of family fortune, moving house, new school hell, a mother with a failing wedding cake business, a just-out gay dad, and an impossible crush on the girl next door. His life is a mess, but for now he’s narrowed it down to just six impossible things…”

It always seems to be that when one thing goes wrong in your life, other things like to join in and make it even worse. When it rains it pours right? It’s under these circumstances that we meet fourteen year old Dan Cereill.

After his father’s business goes broke, he announces that he’s bankrupt, gay and moving out. Dan and his mother are left to face the liquidators as Dan’s whole life is literally taken away from him. At the same time, his mother’s great Aunt Adelaide has passed away and left the house to Dan’s mother. The family collects their few belonging and tries to start again.

Not long after they move in, Dan meets his next door neighbor (and soon to be new classmate), Estelle. Needless to say he is head over heels in 5 seconds flat.  He also meets his new roommate, Howard, Aunt Adelaide’s dog, and the very cool Oliver, who lives in the stable house.  With a new house, school, friends and a new lifestyle, can Dan and his mother cope to make this new life work?

Six Impossible Things is quite a remarkable book. Loosely based on Cinderella (Dan Cereill is an anagram for Cinderella), the story also has a touch of Lewis Caroll’s Through The Looking Glass as well as a bit of the Ugly Duckling. Though it references these stories the book itself is still quite unique and makes these connections without being obvious.

Dan himself is a total sweetheart, so many times I felt like reaching into the book and giving this kid a hug. I thought he was really an amazing character who steps up to the plate despite the unfortunate situation around him. Even though he’s young, he displays maturity, yet still stays true to his age. It was great to see him grow and see how he was dealing with things (while not dealing with others).

His crush on Estelle is also quite cute. Unlike other books where there’s a love interest just because the girl is super super gorgeous, Dan likes her for more than that. He stumbles around a bit but really works at making her see him for what he really is. It was very sweet, and always maintained the feeling of it being real.

Dan’s mother was a very human character. As a kid in this situation you’d probably look to your mother to stay strong and pick up the pieces but in this story, I was pretty disappointed by her behavior. She’d be moody, sad, and sometimes even neglectful of Dan, often she sabotaged her own business and chance at income and failed to recognize just how much Dan was trying to make her happy. You’re not always going to like a character and though I didn’t like her, she was still very real. It’s realistically how many people would cope (or not cope) in the situation.

This book is skillfully written, with not only great characters (both main and minor) who each had their own defining personality, great dialogue, but also by adding just the right amount of humor so that this book doesn’t come off as depressing. It seems with so much heartache this book would be much sadder, but it was instead a very sweet and heartwarming novel that I really enjoyed.

Pages: 263

Publication Date: August 2010

Rating: :

Teaser Quote: He gives me an assessing once over. “Out of your league, man, unless you do something about the look,” he says.
“You said outward stuff doesn’t make you cool.”
“It’s definitely not the thing, but it’s a thing. It’s one of those paradoxes life throws up – it can’t make you cool, but it can make you uncool.”
Now he tells me.

As you all know, to celebrate the release of her new novel, Return to Paradise, we’re celebrating all things Simone Elkeles this month. Everyone here at yaReads has Elkeles Fever and were stoked when she sat down for an interview with us. If you’ve been following any of Simone’s stories, chances are you’re going to love this interview! Strap yourselves in, folks. This one is too awesome for words.

Return to Paradise gives readers a bit of closure. Is this it for Maggie and Caleb, or will we be treated to another novel?

The story is finished after Return to Paradise.  However, I want to tell my fans that they will feel much better about the ending I have in store for Maggie and Caleb this time!

I know what my favorite moment is, but I’m dying to know what your fave Caleb and Maggie moment in Return to Paradise is…

I would have to say when Maggie and Caleb are kissing in the lake.  Things really heat up and I think my fans are going to be surprised by what Maggie does next.  I’m just so proud of her!  She’s so much stronger than she was in Leaving Paradise.

Will we ever learn what Maggie and Caleb got up to during the year they spent apart?

I think the most important thing that happened while they were apart is that they learned what’s most important in life:  being with the ones you love.  I know many of my fans were upset with the ending of Leaving Paradise, but I didn’t think Maggie and Caleb were ready to be with each other yet.  However, after a year apart. . .

I’m curious to learn what happens to Leah next – will we ever find out?

Everyone has a lot of healing to do, but Leah more than anyone.  I think Leah has a rough road ahead of her, but I have no doubt that she will prevail.

Of all the characters you’ve created, Caleb is definitely my fave. Who is your fave?

I get asked that question a lot, but there’s no way to pick!  (It would be like having to choose my favorite out of my children.)  I love Caleb because he is so strong in most areas of his life, but he needs Maggie to be complete.  I love Maggie for the way she forgives Caleb and Leah even though she’ll have scars forever.  Of course, I love Alex and Carlos for pushing the envelope, but still being very caring.  I respect Brittany and Kiara for not giving up on the guys they love, even when the boys make things very challenging!  See what I mean?  I could never pick!

Of all the characters you’ve created, which did you find the most challenging to write, and why?

All of my characters were challenging in different ways.  I had to do quite a bit of research to write about Alex and Carlos and their gang affiliations as well as Hispanic culture.  I talked to kids in Juvenile Detention facilities, met with police officers who work in tough neighborhoods, and even went on a “ride-along” and got to wear a bullet-proof vest!

You seem to have quite an affiliation with bad boys being reformed by good, wholesome girls. Why is that?

I love bad boys.  They’re my weakness.  Find me a hot and sexy bad boy and I melt.  I think it’s my “female gene” that makes me want to fix those bad boys.  If I can fix a bad boy, I can fix anything! (females are natural people-fixers, in my opinion)  Alex and Carlos and Caleb are a mixture of a bunch of boys I know or did know throughout my life… I’m totally sarcastic and “get” guys like that.  And just like behind a good man you’ll find a good woman, behind most bad boys you’ll find a good heart.  (Not all bad boys are redeemable in real life, but I write fiction and my bad boys are ‘curable!’)

How do you go about choosing your character’s names?

I get asked that question all the time.  Listen, if you were obnoxious in high school your name is somehow connected to the rude girls in my books, ha ha.  My friends laugh when I say to beware of pissing me off because you just might find yourself in one of my books (although Darlene was a great friend of mine in school and she’s the mean girl in Perfect Chemistry and Madison is the daughter of my best friend and the mean girl in Rules of Attraction). I’m a girl scout leader, so I use a lot of my girls’ names in my books.  I use last names of people I know most of the time or I make them up.  I will also go to baby name websites and find names that I like.  Sometimes I even use names from my fan mail.  My fans have some very cool names!

What’s in your TBR pile at the moment?

My “to read” pile is enormous because I can’t remember the last time I felt like I had enough time to read!  But, I definitely want to make time to read Mockingjay when it comes out.  I loved The Hunger Games!

For you, what are the best and worse things about being a writer?

There are so many things I love about being a writer!  I love the satisfying feeling of writing “The End” when I finish a book.  I love my RITA award I just won at the Romance Writers of America conference!  (seriously, she’s so pretty. . . I can’t stop looking at her!)  But, most of all, I LOVE MY FANS!  The wonderful comments I get on my Facebook, myspace, and twitter really keep me going when I’m feeling down or frustrated.

Can you tell us what you’re working on next?

I’m currently working on Chain Reaction, the third book in the Perfect Chemistry series.  This one is about Luis, the youngest Fuentes brother.  He’s such a good guy who doesn’t live with the angst that his big brothers have always lived with.  Luis is smart, funny, and has big dreams.  When he falls for the wrong girl, Luis enters a dark world he’s never known to try and save her from herself.  Just when he thinks he’s got life all figured out, Luis learns some disturbing news about his family that destroys his positive outlook on life.  Will that Fuentes bad boy streak come out with a vengeance and lure Luis to live on the edge like his new girlfriend and his own father?

“Dana Hathaway doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, Dana decides she’s had it with being her mother’s keeper, so she packs her bags and heads to stay with her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the magical world of Faerie intersect. But from the moment Dana sets foot in Avalon, everything goes wrong, for it turns out she isn’t just an ordinary teenage girl—she’s a Faeriewalker, a rare individual who can travel between both worlds, and who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie.

Soon, she finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone’s trying to kill her, and everyone wants something from her, even her newfound friends and family. Suddenly, life with her alcoholic mom doesn’t sound half bad, and Dana would do anything to escape Avalon and get back home. Too bad both her friends and her enemies alike are determined not to let her go . . .”

I’ll be honest; I picked this book by its cover. I think in the summary all I saw was “faerie”, “runaway” and “Avalon” before the cover caught my attention and I went “Ooooooooo, I’ll take it!” Often, that’s not a good plan but luckily this time it worked pretty well.

Dana Hathaway has had enough. Enough of having to deal with her alcoholic mother, enough of being the parent, enough of being embarrassed, of constantly moving and enough with her current life. She’s particularly had enough of not knowing the truth about her father. When Dana’s mother fell pregnant years before, she ran away from the city of Avalon and from big shot Fae Seamus Stuart – Dana’s father, to go into hiding and keep Dana away from the Faerie world and its politics.

Avalon is the only place where the mortal world and the Faerie world intersect, and that’s exactly where Dana runs away to in order to meet her dad and escape her former life. Little does she know that her rare status as a Faeriewalker as a result of being half human, half Fae is a coveted position and she’s just walked into the middle of a political war.

Glimmerglass is the first young adult novel by Jenna Black and is the first in the Faeriewalker series. I found the writing to be really engaging and even though it is a fantasy book, for someone who hasn’t read any books about Faeries, I found the concept and rules of the Faerie world easy and quick to grasp. The events in the book mean the characters are always on their toes and it’s very go, go, go.

Soon after arriving in Avalon, events bring Dana to meet sibling Ethan and Kimber. Ethan is of course, gorgeous even by Fae standards and there’s an instant attraction between the two.  His sister, Kimber is guarded and hostile when she and Dana first meet but soon enough a friendship blooms. But what are their motivations for getting involved with Dana?

Our main character Dana is a sixteen year old girl trying to find the parental support she’s been lacking all these years. She’s quite a strong character, having to deal with one crisis after the other but one that also makes mistakes that are true to her age. She’s aware of herself and when she’s being stupid or whiny, but recovers fast, especially when it comes to her potential love interests. She can get a bit blinded by her hormones, but I guess she is sixteen, so she’s forgiven.

I was glad to see that the times when I would think “Oh man, I would freak out and cry if that happened to me” Dana did do that (but without coming across as a baby), which made it more real as opposed to characters who push on tear-free through impossible situations. Perhaps the only weird thing was Dana’s love of Victoria’s Secret and that she reads “dirty” books….haha, uh…awkward.

This book is full of twists mainly with whom exactly Dana can trust and whose side should she be on. No character in this story was two dimensional, each had a definite personality and it made for great reading, with Finn being a personal favorite. By the end you still don’t know who you can trust and can’t trust which gives a great lead (as well as other unanswered questions) for the next book.

Great start to a new series! I’ll definitely be checking out the next book in the series, Shadowspell when it comes out early next year.

Pages: 294

Publication Date: August 2010

Rating: :

Teaser Quote: “How many of us are there?” I asked, because there was no point in arguing I wasn’t a Faeriewalker. I wished I could convince myself I’d been hallucinating earlier, but I knew what I’d seen.
I felt, rather than saw, the look Ethan and Kimber exchanged.
“The last one before you died about seventy-five years ago.”

Caleb Becker left Paradise eight months ago, taking with him the secret he promised to take to his grave. If the truth got out, it would ruin everything.

Maggie Armstrong tried to be strong after Caleb broke her heart and disappeared. Somehow, she managed to move on. She’s determined to make a new life for herself.

But then Caleb and Maggie are forced together on a summer trip. They try ignoring their passion for each other, but buried feelings resurface. Caleb must face the truth about the night of Maggie’s accident, or the secret that destroyed their relationship will forever stand between them.

When Caleb left Paradise eight months ago, he thought he was doing the right thing. For himself, for Maggie, for his family. Paradise was full of bad memories, and trouble seemed to find him wherever he went. Turns out, trouble seems to find him no matter where he is. Caleb is one of those accidental bad boys – he does everything he can to keep his nose in line, but somehow, he always ends up in the middle of the most horrible situations.

That’s how he wound up on this stupid summer program. Although he wasn’t dealing, he ended up in the middle of a drug bust – a huge miscommunication that he couldn’t talk his way out of – and it was either back to juvenile hall (for yet another crime he didn’t commit) or attend this program for kids affected by drunk driving. Caleb chooses the program.

What he didn’t expect, though, was to come face to face with Maggie – his ex. He never really got over Maggie, and he thought that leaving Paradise would be the best thing for her, but standing in front of her now, actually looking into her eyes, Caleb realizes he let the one good thing that’s ever happened to him go. What a blustering idiot. But Caleb, being Caleb, doesn’t try and make things right with Maggie in the conventional way. He antagonizes her, constantly offends her, and insults her again and again and again. But that’s Caleb for you – emotionally stunted.

When Caleb shows up on the program, Maggie almost can’t believe her eyes. Where has he been for the last eight months? Why didn’t he call to say that he was safe? How could he have just left her like that? In the wake of Caleb’s departure, Maggie fell into a deep depression, but she made it through the other side and forced herself to move on. Move on from Caleb, move on from everything they shared together.

But standing in front of him right now … God, how could this be happening?

While Caleb and Maggie air their dirty laundry in front of their group members, they realize that they’re still very much in love. They’re hurting, and stumbling blindly through each day, but they still love each other. That should be all that really matters, but the big question is, how can they possibly make it, when the entire world is stacked against them?

I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it many times again – Simone Elkeles rocks my yaReads socks off! I fell in love with Caleb in Leaving Paradise, but now I’m completely beyond help. I am a Caleb addict. He is, without a doubt, my favorite Elkeles character to date. He’s so messed up, so emotionally deficient, but at the same time, he knows exactly who he is, what his limitations are, and where his strengths lie.

During this novel, Maggie becomes a force to be reckoned with. She was meek, shy, and lacked any kind of confidence in Leaving Paradise. It’s clear she’s grown a whole lot since Caleb left, and she’s got her boxing gloves on, ready to go as many rounds as she needs to get the absolution and the closure that she so desperately wants. She’s strong, intelligent and utterly believable in everything she does. When it comes to the crunch, though, Maggie’s underlying essence is still there, and she follows her heart – even when she probably shouldn’t.

There’s only one thing you need to know about this book: it’s absolutely fabulous in every single way.

Simone Elkeles is fast becoming on my fave YA authors around.

Publication Date: August 2010

Pages: 285

Rating::

Teaser Quote: I remember the times we spent together working at Mrs Reynolds house, when we fooled around in the gazebo and I ran my hands over her smooth, milky soft skin. “You knew I didn’t hurt you, but you let me go along thinking that you did. How could you?”

From the author of Saving Juliet comes a romantic comedy that is good to the last drop. When Katrina spots a homeless guy sleeping in the alley behind her grandmother’s coffee shop, she decides to leave him a cup of coffee, a bag of chocolate-covered coffee beans, and some pastries to tide him over. Little does she know that this random act of kindness is about to turn her life upside down.  Because this adorable vagrant, Malcolm, is really a guardian angel on a break between missions. And he won’t leave until he can reward Katrina’s selflessness by fulfilling her deepest desire. Now if only she could decide what that might be . . .

Currently, life sucks for Katrina. Since Java Heaven opened up shop next to her Grandmother’s Scandinavian coffeehouse, business has pretty much come to a screeching halt. The bills are piling up, no customers are walking through the door, and yet Katrina and her grandmother must find a way to make ends meat. Katrina is sixteen years old. She should be worrying about boys, her homework, and what she’s going to do on the weekend. Instead, she gets up before school every morning to work in the coffeehouse, and promptly returns after classes have finished to do much of the same.

To make matters worse, her best male friend, Vincent, starts hanging around with Heidi Darling. Katrina thinks this is bad for many, many reasons, but mainly she’s ticked off because Heidi is Mr Darling’s daughter, and Mr Darling owns Java Heaven – the very reason Katrina and her Gran are struggling so much. Where is Vincent’s loyalty? How could he do that to Katrina?

But that’s not where the crazy ends. Katrina finds a strange boy passed out in the alley behind the coffeehouse one morning. Although she’s a bit freaked out by him, she mistakes him for a homeless person and in an act of pitying kindness, she leaves a coffee and a stale pastry for when he wakes up. But then he keeps showing up, saying that her act of kindness must not go unrewarded, and promises to fulfill her greatest desire. Katrina thinks he’s a nut job at first, but then things start happening that make her think there’s more to this strange boy than meets the eye.

Coffeehouse Angel is a super easy read and I totally dug being in Katrina’s head. When she ached, I ached. When she hurt, I hurt too. But mostly, I was impressed that I didn’t become irritated by her jealousy – and believe me, she spends a good chunk of this novel impersonating the green-eyed monster. Usually, I have little tolerance for such unrelenting self-pity, but I felt like I could empathize with her situation a little. I think all of us have had to deal with the kind of friendship problems Katrina goes through in this story. I was super happy that, at the end, she seemed to learn her lesson, though, and tucked her green-eyed monster impersonation away. I was exceptionally surprised by the outcome of the conflict that arose with Vincent, though. I thought the whole thing was going to turn out very differently. While I’d love to discuss my reasoning for this in this review, that’d be giving away the ending – and we can’t have that!

I drank way too much coffee while reading this novel. Must have been something about the constant mention of Java goodness.

Coffeehouse Angel is a lovely read. As good as red velvet cupcakes, if you ask me.

Pages: 276

Publication: 2009.

Rating::

Teaser Quote: “There’s a handy chart in here. It says the most common thing people ask for is fortune. But Katrina didn’t want that. She gave it to her friend. The second most common thing people ask for is fame.” Lars and Malcolm turned and looked at me. Yep, that’s right, I was still standing there. I don’t know why, I should have left those two idiots in the dust. “Could fame be what you most desire?” Malcolm asked.

Junior high really sucks for thirteen-year-old Vladimir Tod. Bullies harass him, the principal is dogging him, and the girl he likes prefers his best friend. Oh, and Vlad has a secret: his mother was human, but his father was a vampire. With no idea of the extent of his powers, Vlad struggles daily with his blood cravings and his enlarged fangs. When a substitute teacher begins to question him a little too closely, Vlad worries that his cover is about to be blown. But then he faces a much bigger problem: he’s being hunted by a vampire killer

Vlad Tod hasn’t had the easiest life. Orphaned three years previously, he lives with his later mother’s best friend Nelly, a nurse, in the quite town of Bathory. He’s the favoured target of bullies, embarrasses himself in front of his crush and now his favorite teacher has gone missing….Oh, and he’s half vampire, and his strange new substitute teacher possibly knows his secret…

Until recently Vlad thought he was the only vampire left until a recent string of disappearances makes him realize that not only is he not alone, but someone’s after him. Vlad is also only just discovering his abilities, since his vampire father died before he could share his knowledge, Vlad is on his own as he comes to understand just what he can do as well as the fact that among his kind, being a half vampire is not just unique, but unheard of.

Eighth Grade Bites is the first book in the Vladimir Tod Chronicles. Like most first books in a series we’re introduced to the characters and storyline with the promise of the big action happening later down the line. Don’t get me wrong, the last chapters of this book have action but this book mostly sets up the foundation for the next installments.

Vlad himself is a good character and besides the vampire aspect he’s a typical fourteen year old boy. He’s got his best friend Henry, he’s shy around girls and isn’t the biggest fan of school. It would have been good to see him explore his powers in a bit more depth; we touch on the fact that he can read minds, hover and has a telepathic connection to Henry after biting him when they were eight. He’s a believable character who’s still coming to terms with the loss of his parents and is slowly growing into his personality.

The storyline itself felt a bit brief and at the end the events happen quite suddenly. At points, time goes by quite fast and we skip over weeks and months without realizing it so the pace feels a bit odd with things going at an even pace in the beginning then picking up a lot of speed towards the end. The book, at 181 pages isn’t very long so a lot of the story didn’t have the kind of development it could have had particularly when we get a look into the vampire world Elysia.

This story has a lot of potential and I have a feeling it really picks up in the following books. I’d recommend it to the younger readers in the YA category, particularly for the boys, it has the right length, right amount of action, horror and humor to ease them into reading.

Pages: 181

Publication Date: August 2007, scheduled for release in Australia August 2^nd 2010

Rating: :

Teaser quote:  “Morning, sunshine”
Vlad blinked at her. “Morning, sulfuric acid”
“Pardon me?”
“Well isn’t it kinda wrong to call a vampire ‘sunshine’?”

Hey guys!

Here is my last review as an official member of yaReads team! Hope you enjoy, it has been a pleasure being here, and I have loved every moment. A big welcome to Christina, and to the forum go-ers, I’ll see you all around there.

Katie.

Jill Jekel has always obeyed her parents’ rules – especially the one about never opening the mysterious old box in her father’s office. But when her dad is murdered and her college savings disappear, this good girl is tempted to peek inside, because the contents just might be key to winning a lucrative chemistry scholarship.

To better her odds, Jill enlists the help of gorgeous, brooding Tristen Hyde, who has his own dark secrets locked away. As the team of Jekel and Hyde, they recreate experiments based on the classic novel, hoping not only to win a prize but also to save Tristen’s sanity. Maybe his life. As things heat up in the lab, though, Jill’s accidental taste of a formula unleashes her darkest nature and will compel her to risk everything – even Tristen’s love – just for the thrill of being…bad.

Jill Jekel has just lost her father to a brutal death. No one knows why. A murder in the dead of the night, no answers to be found by the police. Her mother can’t cope, spiralling downwards into a state of despair. Jill’s life has been turned upside down, with false sympathy on all sides, no one to talk to and no one to understand. Except for the mysterious Tristen Hyde who turns up at her father’s funeral for the soul purpose to comfort Jill. Or so it seems.

For Jill and Tristen are about to get to know each other better than what they ever thought they would. Paired up together to work in secret on an entry into the prestigious Foreman Foundation for the Promotion of Scientific Inquiry national scholarship contest, Jill and Tristen start to discover that their own family history might be closer linked than anyone had ever imagined. Found in the locked box in her father’s study, Jill and Tristen start to work on the secret manuscripts that were part of the hit novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. As Tristen starts to let Jill into more of his life, the pair discover that not only is it a matter of winning Jill a scholarship so she can attend college, but it might just be the answer to saving Tristen’s life. Yet as things begin to spiral more out of control, will Jill know when enough is too much?

Jekel Loves Hyde is the second novel from bestselling author Beth Fantaskey, her first novel being the popular Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. Jekel Loves Hyde is something different. Borrowing themes and linking in with the classic novel, I found you didn’t need to know anything about the original to understand the story. It was captivating and intriguing, the plot moving forward from one surprising revelation to the next. Twists that you didn’t originally see coming soon developed into influencing the ending.

Jill and Tristen were also developed characters. They interacted in ways that are real, feeling like they could actually be real people in Fantaskey’s developed world. They faced trials and hardships and overcame them in their own unique way. However, it seems that despite two well-crafted lead characters, Fantaskey lacked development in her supporting characters. Becca, for instance, was weak and difficult to like. Supposedly the best friend to Jill, she never acted like it, and felt like a character that was merely there to create a conflict between Jill and Tristen.

Despite all the merits to Fantaskey’s plot, writing and main characters, I felt that Jekel Loves Hyde another novel aimed at the Twilight loving fans. The danger Jill and Tristen went through seemed too much like a heighted state of ‘life or death’ that they characters had to overcome to be together. It was, at times, difficult to see that the situations they found themselves in would really occur. I found that I needed to convince myself to continue reading, that whenever I put it down, it was difficult to pick it up again.

Pages: 282

Publication date: 2010 – available now

Rating::

Teaser quote: Not daring to believe, I swiped one arm across my eyes and slowly turned my face to his, sucking in my breath at the sight of his open eyes. Astonished not just by the fact that Tristen was alive but by the expression on his face. I heard the wonder, the confusion, in my voice as I dared to say his name. ‘Tristen’?