Review: Right Side Talking

Right Side Talking by Bonnie Rozanski
Available as a Kindle e-book for $2.99

• Why I read it: epilepsy, thrills and chills
• Disclosure: Received an e-galley from the author. Thanks!

Imagine that you are a young girl with intractable epilepsy. As a last resort you submit to an operation to sever the connection between the two sides of your brain. Though the operation successfully reduces your seizures, you are left forever with two separate minds: left and right, each unaware of the other.
Imagine further that while recovering in the hospital, you witness a murder. Your dominant left brain cannot recognize unfamiliar faces, and is, therefore, unable to identify the killer. Your right brain can, but is unable to speak. Gradually, painstakingly, the right learns to spell out its thoughts in scrabble letters. At long last, on a table in a hospital lab, you describe the person who committed the crime. Too bad the killer is reading that very same message.….
Right Side Talking is a thriller that will grip the reader from its opening surgery scene to its dramatic courtroom climax. Its cast of characters: a 15-year-old epileptic; a brilliant surgeon; an unlicensed, resentful doctor from abroad who must work as an orderly; a grumpy, relentless detective, and a feisty psychologist Finally, most fascinating of all, there is the human mind itself.

Hey, look at that! I actually have time to catch up on all my reviews now, because I SLAYED finals and will never have to be a freshman ever again AND now have slightly over three months to do whatever the hell I want! Which is to read astonishingly oversold and crappy books like Starcrossed and flay them alive with no regrets, because in the end, authors like Josephine Angelini still get to laugh all the way to the bank. Everyone wins! YAY!

First, though, I'll have to get around to Right Side Talking, which will not be escaping flay-free, but was also way better than I thought it would be. Another win-win! It's like Stephenie Meyer suddenly took over writing my life story and nobody has to have any real problems ever again! Or maybe, I don't know, it's because I SLAYED finals and will never have to be a freshman ever again AND now have just over three months to do whatever the hell I want. Either way, YAY!

And now I shall take off my rose-colored glasses and get down to business, I promise.

On my In My Mailbox post a few months back, when I first blogged about having received this book, it got a lot more attention than I was expecting. Sure, the premise was awesome and was why I'd said yes to the review request in the first place. But, and heaven help me for a snob, I couldn't quite get past the fact that it was a $2.99 Kindle book - a category that, in my mind, had been inextricably linked with the Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure fiasco - and as lovely as the author was in all of her correspondence with me, I was still dreading what I had convinced myself would be a cliched, poorly copyedited, and generally awful first page.

And of course - thankfully - I shouldn't have worried. Right Side Talking is a smart and fast-paced thriller that, while not earth-shattering, is certainly equal to a great deal of traditionally published thrillers out there. Sure, it was still full of cliches - an ice queen, man-hating female boss for one, a crazy and disgruntled foreign villain for another - and is an occasional victim of a rambling, hard-to-follow narrative voice. Sections, too, also read like psychology textbooks. But last time I checked, the point of 95% of the thriller genre was to get the reader to feel, well, thrilled, and not to write a literary masterpiece.

While knowing the identity of the killer from the start diminished some of those thrills, Rozanski's obviously extensive and fascinating research on epilepsy kept me turning the pages. Ditto the very creepy hospital setting. I don't know about anyone else, but I am unreasonably terrified of hospitals considering how little time I've actually spent in them, and the idea of some orderly running around killing patients was enough to make me leave the light on late.

In the end, I still do have a lot of issues with it. It was choppy, and while the copyediting and format were flawless, it still could have used a good editor to sort out narrative issues. And the characters were simply too flat for me to care an awful lot about what happened to them. But I also have a more active inner critic than most, and am not exactly enamored with the genre, and you probably should be taking my opinions with a grain of salt, anyway. A $2.99 Kindle e-book is way cheaper than that psychology textbook, and is definitely way more fun. Three out of five stars.

Giant Forever Trailer Contest!

Nope, not a giveaway I'm hosting, because ZOMFG FINALS, THEY KILL, but my entry in the fantastically awesome Maggie Stiefvater's Giant Forever Giveaway! Yay!



And even if there weren't such fantastic prizes - you should check them out here - I'd be posting this one, because, one, I can't wait for Forever, and two, I left these trailers out in my post on book trailers a couple of months ago. These, in my opinion, are fantastic and everything a book trailer should be. Thoughts?

And that's it for now, folks! In two hours all my freshman finals will be done and I can get back to reading Starcrossed! (I hate it so far but whatever, READING FOR FUN WHAT IS THAT I CAN'T WAIT.)

Middle Grade Monday: Under Town

Turns out some people in my family have a little more initiative than others. Tired of hearing me complain yet again at the dinner table about how I hadn't posted a review in DAYS and how homework is SO HARD and OMG the WORLD is GOING to END, my sister Ellie has decided to fill in for me on Mondays with her take on the books all the cool kids - read, not teenagers - are reading. So together we decided to resurrect my Middle Grade Monday feature, this time with the opinions of a real live middle grader. I may now enjoy my Manic Monday panic attacks in peace.

Take it away, Ellie!

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Under Town by Charles Ogden

There's a NEW troublemaker in Nod's Limbs. A dark shadow looms over the cozy town of Nod's Limbs and it calls itself "The Mason." For once, twins Edgar and Ellen aren't the only ones wreaking havoc and they're determined to show the newcomer that treading on their turf is most unwise. But as Edgar and Ellen track the copycat prankster into a maze of sewers under town, they stumble across an unexpected and surprising secret.

When Edgar and Ellen find out that a hotel is going to be build right next door, they start thinking of plans to halt the construction right away. But when all their plans go missing, they have to go where most Nod's Limbs citizens have nightmares about: Under Town.

Under Town is not really what I like, but it was fun to read. If you are looking for a calm book, though, this book is not for you. Ogden does a good job of making this book mysterious, but that was the only thing that kept me reading. The story was weak and the writing could have been better. I was so confused I felt stupid, so if you don't like feeling like that then don’t read this book. I haven't read the first and second ones, but I don't think I will after this one.

On the other hand, the characters are good, but that and the mystery were the only upsides to this book. All and all I would give this book three out of five stars.

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Thanks for helping your lazy college sister out, Ellie! We'll see you next week!

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
Find it at a local indie!

• Why I read it: Author I love, quirky cover, wrong side of the tracks
• Disclosure: Bought a copy for my Nook.

Vera's spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she's kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.
So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?
Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable novel: smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.

You know you've got a problem when you read a book months ago, have been pressing copies of it into the hands of everyone you know, re-read your favorite scenes and cry over them at least once a week, and realize that you will love no other book quite the way you love that one - and you're only just now getting around to reviewing it. So afflicted is Please Ignore Vera Dietz. College is a bitch. I could end this review there, but of course, I won't.

I think it's appropriate that I'm only getting around to reviewing this now, at the end of my freshman year of college, because I bought (and devoured) The Dust of 100 Dogs the second day of the beginning. In my review, I had my reservations - choppy narrative and Huh? moments - but I mostly used words like "unfliching" and "really excellent" and "pretty much rocked." And then, back before she was a famous and Michael Printz award-winning, I got a comment on that review from some author named Amy, who told me she really hoped I'd read her new book, "VERA," because it was different but still her, and she had a feeling I would like it. Oh, and she also told me (and I quote): "YOU ROCK."

Note to authors: Honest flattery really does work every time. Or dishonest. Whatever.

So, while I was afraid it wouldn't live up to the promise of 100 Dogs or her fabulous Twitter presence, I eventually bought it. And read it. And cried my sorry eyes out, because honest to goodness I have never read a book that captures my experience as a wrong-side-of-the-tracks small-town teenager so well. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry, so please excuse me while I go grab some tissues.

I've tried to put my finger on what it is about this book that made it so utterly funny, fabulous, and heartwrenching. Is it the quirky POV, that switches between our title character Vera, her father, a dead boy, and even inanimate objects? Is it Vera herself, who manage to be universally relatable without slipping into a Mary Sue mold? Is it the setting, as bleak as any dystopia and as strangely hopeful, too?

Dead boys, mystery, makeouts - there's a lot of awesome things I could talk about here, but I think what made this my YAvangelist recommendation numero uno is exactly what I loved about The Dust of the 100 Dogs - King's keen ability to write the eccentric supernatural along with the day-to-day lives of her characters, and make it a more believable book because of it. Please Ignore Vera Dietz evades genre and easy description, and that's good, because it gives me the perfect excuse to say just read it. Hands down the best YA I've read all year. Five out of five stars.