"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Beginning of After

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle
HarperTeen, September 6, 2011

Synopsis:

Laurel’s world changes instantly when her parents and brother are killed in a terrible car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. Now, Laurel must navigate a new world in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all, there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual loss, a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.

What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?

Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

The only child of a devout Catholic father who nonetheless failed the priesthood and a mother so terribly wounded by a community that still judges her for her family's past sins that the family hardly mixes with their neighbors, young Ellie Flaherty's childhood is a drab and loveless affair. It's no wonder, then, that when Ellie's mother lets her out, as an act of charity, to play with John Hogan whose parents have both passed away from TB, that she quickly falls in love with his easy smile and his awe at the nature that surrounds their village in Ireland. The pair are best friends through their school days, but when John leaves for Dublin to apprentice with a carpenter, Ellie wonders if she's lost him for good, but she need not worry, for when they meet again their love is stronger than ever, and soon the pair are married.

Married life isn't easy in their rural Irish home during the Irish rebellion, and John, a soldier for the Irish Republican Army, is severely wounded. The only way John will walk again is with an expensive operation, and Ellie knows the only way to afford it will be for her to join a friend working as a lady's maid in America. Soon enough, Ellie is being seduced by the promise, independence, and society of life as a young woman in New York City during the Roaring 20s. Will Ellie be able to return to a life of poverty in Ireland with her one true love, or will the siren call of the city of dreams lure her into a new life altogether?

Ellis Island is Ellie's story, and hers alone. Though the pages of Ellis Island are full of characters, her Irish family, her husband John, her rich employer Isobel Adams, and her friends from her typing job, not to mention the charming Charles Irvington who would woo her given the chance, Ellie's character is the only one that truly jumps off the page. The rest, while fleshed out enough, merely give structure to Ellie's journey, not just from Ireland to America, but from thoughtless, selfish childhood to accepting, understanding adulthood. Kerrigan's Ireland and 1920s New York City are almost like characters themselves, and Kerrigan draws out the wonder and the fast pace of a city on the rise just as well as she pictures for us the quaint, if sometimes desperately poor, Irish countryside. The contrasts between Ellie's two lives are sharp, but Kerrigan ultimately manages to show the great value in both of them.

Ellis Island is littered with the sort of coincidences that might make the story seem contrived but for the impression that Ellie's story is so human and turns out the way so many human stories do. Ellie's story reveals a life peppered with joys and haunted by regrets and thoughts of what might have been. Ellie's coming of age mirrors so many in that we come to understand the lives around us, and we don't just "settle" but learn to love even the small joys that our lives have to offer us. Ellis Island was a little lighter fare than perhaps I was expecting but is ultimately an enjoyable historical love story that brings the 1920s to life and gives us a memorable character finding herself during a captivating time in history.

Ellis Island releases on June 28th.

Thanks to Mary at Harper Paperbacks for sending me a copy for review!

Check out other reviews at...

Lovely Treez Reads
Sam Still Reading

Top Ten Tuesday: Reasons I Love Being a Book Blogger!

The bloggers over at The Broke and the Bookish are celebrating their one year blogoversary this week (Congrats, by the way!). In honor of the occasion, the topic of this week's top ten list is the "Top Ten Reasons I Love Being a Book Blogger." Should be a piece of cake, right? =)

1. Other Book Bloggers - They're book nuts, just like me! When you meet them it's like meeting old friends that you've never technically met before.

2. The Community - I especially love when practically the whole book blogosphere gets together for stuff like the 24 Hour Readathon and Book Blogger Appreciation Week.

3. Being in the Know about the New - Okay, maybe swimming in review copy commitments isn't always ideal, but I love keeping up with the new and exciting books coming out before or as they arrive on the scene with the help of my favorite book bloggers.

4. First Rate Book Recommendations - Where else can you find people that seem to have the exact same taste in books as you where every book they love, you can bet you'll love it, too? Even more, where else can you find people who can talk so passionately and coherently about the books that they love that you find yourself picking up books to read that you wouldn't have given a second thought before?

5. Having Your Bookish Horizons Broadened - Book bloggers have gotten me to try short stories. And audiobooks now, too. Can't wait to see what's next!

6. BEA/Book Blogger Con - I've been there 2 years now, and would happily go again! All the books and book bloggers and bookish people and bookish events and everything all in one place. It's a book person's paradise and something I never would have even dreamed about before book blogging made it a possibility!

7. The Books - Okay, a shallow reason for loving being a book blogger, but I can't deny that getting the occasional advance copy of a book that I'm super excited about is worth loving!

8. Getting to Talk About Great Books - Is its own reward. And sometimes people even read my ramblings and comment on them. Double win!

9. Twitter - I never would have joined without the help (or is it peer pressure??) of book bloggers who always seem to having great fun or hatching brilliant plans on Twitter. Now whenever I feel like "talking" or getting an answer to a random question or whining or whatever, there's a friendly tweeting book blogger to chatter at.

10. Feeling Normal - When you spend all day with people who couldn't care less if they read a book this year, you start to feel like maybe, just maybe, you're the freak. So, it's nice to be in the company, however virtual, of people who don't think you're crazy if you think it's a first rate crisis if you forgot to put a book in your bag to keep you company on your lunch break or who don't look askance at you if you have a few shelves double stacked with books. It's good to have friends that enable my "book problem."

What do you love about being a book blogger? Or a book lover in general?

The Audio Experiment

I have a confession to make. Up until this month, I'd never listened to an audiobook. I appreciate many bloggers' love for them and understand how they would be a welcome diversion on a long commute or while going through the motions of housework, but to me, it seems like cheating, like not really reading. Besides, I told myself, I don't retain things as well when I'm hearing them instead of reading them, especially if I'm tired or distracted, which would probably be the times I'd be trying to listen anyway.

When I arrived back from BEA and discovered Audiobook Week was upon us, I was none too excited. "Great," my selfish inner monologue mumbled, "a whole week of posts that have no bearing on me and the things I like." But then, there's always that thought lurking, that one that says, "Well, if everybody else likes this stuff so much, then I must really be missing out on something." You may remember I fell down that slippery slope at least once before, and have since come to a grudging truce with short stories. It was probably that lurking thought that drove me to pick up the free Martin Misunderstood audiobook from the Book Blogger Convention swag tables, and it was probably Audiobook Week that drove me to pluck it from its box and stick it in my car stereo for my drive to work. "It was free," I thought, "What do I have to lose?"



Martin Misunderstood is a short novel about epic loser Martin Reed. Martin is a pudgy accountant at Southern Toilet Supply where he commands respect from no one and draws ridicule from everyone from Unique, the employee that he hired that refers to him exclusively as "Fool!" to the insurance man who is dragging his feet helping Martin get rid of the "Twat" scratched into his car door. Even in middle age, Martin still lives with his mother, Evelyn, an old battle-axe whose one purpose in life seems to be demeaning Martin. When he leaves for work one morning, and discovers his car has been seemingly vandalized yet again, it seems his troubles have just begun because, when a co-worker turns up dead, the hapless Martin finds himself the prime suspect. And that's okay with him, as long as he gets to spend more time in the company of the lovely An Albada, the detective on the case.

Martin Misunderstood was a wise choice for getting my audiobook feet wet, all around. It was free, it was short (only 2 and half hours), and it's not the sort of book I normally read so I if I disliked listening to it, hey, I wouldn't have ruined a book for myself that I otherwise would have read. I'd heard of Karin Slaughter and associate her with the mystery/thriller sort of books that I used to read way more often than I do now. By all accounts, the book is nothing to shout about, but I have to admit, that while listening, I was fully absorbed and Wayne Knight's (of Seinfeld fame) narration combined with Slaughter's black humor had me laughing out loud at times. My commute flew by, and I even found myself lingering in the car, since, of coure, the mystery was being revealed just as I was pulling into my driveway.

That said, there were other times that I'm glad that my windows were not down when I was listening to it. There were at least two wicked raunchy sex scenes (particularly distasteful when read aloud, yikes!), which you would hardly expect in a book about a loser as epic as Martin, and the language was a little rough to boot. Even with those drawbacks, I have a feeling I still enjoyed listening to Martin a good deal more than I would have enjoyed reading it.

All in all, I think I can see myself listening to more audiobooks, but I doubt I'll become a prolific reviewer of them. It's true that I don't process something I'm listening to while battling traffic as well as something I read, and it kind of bothered me that I didn't always know the definite spelling of the characters' names for reviewing purposes. I admit now, though, that maybe listening to some lighter fare (on the order of Martin Misunderstood) or maybe "re-reading" some old favorites via audio might just be a great way to redeem all the time I feel like I'm wasting driving to and from work.

Oh, book blogging, there you go again making me try new things. I think like it.

What do you read or what bookish things do you do now that you never would have considered had it not been for book blogs?

And, if you're an audiobook lover, what do you recommend for the audiobook newbie should I decide to take up my library card and get in deeper with this whole audiobook thing?

Matched by Ally Condie

Cassia Maria Reyes lives in a world where everything is fiercely regulated by the powerful Society. The Society decides where Cassia is best suited to work, who is her best genetic match for marriage, and that she won't pass her eightieth birthday, the ideal age at which the Society has decided people should die to spare them indignity. Despite its many restrictions and its ever-watchful nature, Cassia never feels trapped or limited by the Society, rather she feels safe and looks forward to the day of her Match Banquet with eagerness. When she finds that she is to be matched with her best friend, Xander, things have never looked better. That is, until she glimpses the wrong face when she views the microcard that contains the details of her match. A brief glimpse of Ky Markham's face in place of Xander's is all it takes to bring Cassia's carefully sheltered life tumbling down around her and leave her swirling in a vortex of questions she was never meant to ask.

The dystopia in Ally Condie's Matched is downright frightening in its possibility. In Cassia's world, no decisions are left to chance. In her world there are only the Hundred Poems, Hundred Songs, Hundred Stories that designated committees have deemed worthy to pass down through the generations, as the rest would only serve to clutter and overwhelm citizens' minds. Children are no longer taught to write their own words, only to regurgitate those of others. Love and passion are no more in a world dominated by the Society. Girls and boys are matched based solely on their genetic qualities, practically placed together to ensure the health and endurance of the human race.

Matched is a fascinating look at a world gone so right that it's wrong. The thought of a world where one makes no decisions, and there is no unpredictability is as interesting as it is frightening. Watching what turns out to be the most fragile of strands that bind this world together come unraveled through Cassia's eyes as she begins to consider that a different life, a life more like the lives we know now, might be possible, make Matched an exhilarating page-turner of a book. Cassia herself, is a strong narrator, a girl testing the limits of her independence in a world where her every move is controlled by a higher authority, whether she realizes it or not. The relationship that develops between Cassia and the mysterious Ky is powerful in its chemistry, a force that people in the Society have little experience with, and in its questioning of the values that the Society holds dear.

But let's step out of this nice, carefully written, ungushy review for a moment so that I can level with you and tell you IjustreallywantKytobemyboyfriend, mmkay? Strong and sensitive and vulnerable all at once, smart, artistic, "bad" in a way that's oh so good. Plus he's got pretty eyes. Yes, please. Okay, just had to get that out. Back to thoughtful, analytic reviewing.

Matched is an utterly compelling look at a world that might be far away from our reality but at the same time could be oh-so-close. Cassia's will to break free from the constraints of the Society she always believed kept her safe is at the heart of what, I'm confident, is going to be an incredible series.