**CLOSED** Maggie's Super Duper Giant Spring Cleaning Giveaway!

**This giveaway is now closed.**

As I've written once or twice before these past couple of weeks, the outpouring of support for my family after the fire nearly three weeks ago has been more wonderful and amazing than words can express. And that's why, as I was cleaning out my room today, I decided to pay it forward and spread the YA love around to my followers, too. The thing is, I've got more books and ARCs than I know what to do with, and not enough space to store them all--so I'm cleaning house. There's twelve books and twelve winners on the table here, so listen up.

Here's the books:

• The Mephisto Covenant by Trinity Faegen (Goodreads/my review)
• Everneath by Brodi Ashton (Goodreads/my review)
• Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook (Goodreads/my review)

• Dead to You by Lisa McMann (Goodreads/my review)
• Winter Town by Stephen Emond (Goodreads/my review)
• Facing Demons by Ashley Sanders (Goodreads/my review)

• Enclave by Ann Aguirre (Goodreads/my review)
• Happy Birthday to Me by Brian Rowe (Goodreads/my review)
• Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs (Goodreads/my review)

• The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen (Goodreads/my review)
• The Princess of Las Pulgas by C. Lee McKenzie (Goodreads/my review)
• Girl Meets Boy anthology edited by Kelly Milner Halls (Goodreads/my review)

Here's the details:

On May 14th, 2012, I'll pick twelve names using Random.org, and each of those names will win a book of my choosing from this list. That's it. After you win, I'll email you, and you have 48 hours to respond before I pick another winner. I'll also email you the title you won, and if you want to opt out, I'll draw another winner.

 If I get 50 entries or more, I'll add extra prizes and winners, so tell your friends and spread the word!

Here's how you win:

Fill out the form below. Seriously, that's it. I won't require that you follow (though of course it would be awesome if you did), or that you do things to gain a whole bunch of extra entries. Fill out your name, your email, and whether or not you follow, and you're done.

Again, thank you all so much for your incredible kindness and generosity over these past few weeks. It's meant the world to me, and I wish I could send books on to all of you! Good luck!

Review: Winter Town by Stephen Emond

Winter Town by Stephen Emond
Goodreads | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
YA, Contemporary/Graphic Novel, 331 pages, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

• Series: stand-alone
• Pub date: December 5th 2011
• Disclosure: Received an ARC from the Red Balloon Bookstore. Thanks!

Judged by its cover: Darn near perfect. Everything about it screams "I AM QUIRKY AND CUTE AND SMART AND YOU WANT TO READ ME, OKAY?"

Goodreads blurb:

Every winter, straight-laced, Ivy League bound Evan looks forward to a visit from Lucy, a childhood pal who moved away after her parent's divorce. But when Lucy arrives this year, she's changed. The former "girl next door" now has chopped dyed black hair, a nose stud, and a scowl. But Evan knows that somewhere beneath the Goth, "Old Lucy" still exists, and he's determined to find her... even if it means pissing her off.
Garden State meets Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist in this funny and poignant illustrated novel about opposites who fall in love.

 The Long...

On paper, Winter Town is everything I've been looking for in a YA read. It's quirky. It's got a melancholy sense of humor that puts me in mind of John Green. It's illustrated. Sweet holy heaven, it's ILLUSTRATED, guys. What more could I ask for? Unfortunately, a lot more, since unfortunately Winter Town was one of my most disappointing reads of 2011. The problem? I'm not even sure why.

Actually, no. I know why. This is why. While I know I've gone on the record as saying I don't mind Manic Pixie Dream Girls (and Boys) when deployed correctly, this book just goes to show how much I can hate them when they're done incorrectly. Evan is an interesting, if somewhat bland, narrator. His art (actually drawn by Stephen Emond) is great, and easily my favorite part of the book, and he's got just enough personality quirks to make him an acceptable addition to the YA canon. Lucy, on the other hand? I'm going to have to start a new paragraph.

Authors, I have said this three times in the past week and I really, sincerely do not want to say it again, so listen up: dyed hair and piercings no longer make a character a "bad girl." Issues with her parents do not make her a "bad girl." Kissing more than a couple of boys do not make her a "bad girl." Being skinny does not make her a bad girl. Eating frozen yogurt instead of ice cream does not make her a bad girl. Eating McDonald's instead of salads does not make her a bad girl. Drugs do not make her a bad girl. In fact, you know what? There's no such thing as a bad girl, so please stop acting like there is. Lucy fits every trope of the edgy Manic Pixie Dream Girl on the books, and I couldn't even stand it.

The reason authors like John Green can get away with Manic Pixie Dream Girls is because, on a fundamental level, they understand how girls work and what makes them tick. Authors who can successfully write an engaging and fleshed out Manic Pixie, I salute you. Unfortunately, though Emond's writing shines in other areas, the fact that he couldn't make his girl protagonist even one iota as interesting as the guy infuriated me, and colored my impressions of the rest of the book.

It's not really a bad book. In fact, the illustrations make it a pretty good book. But once I realized that Lucy was going to be just as two-dimensional as I had feared, I just couldn't enjoy the rest of the book as much as I should have.

...and the Short:

A pretty good book with fantastic illustrations that's ruined by a completely flat and gratuitous Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Maybe I'll try this author's other work and hope it doesn't set me off, but again, maybe not.

The Final Word: Meh.


Psssst! This is the final review in today's review-a-thon. Stay tuned for tonight's giveaway, which will include a chance to win a copy of Winter Town! Check back soon!

Review: The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen
Goodreads | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
YA, Fantasy, 342 pages, Scholastic

• Series: first in the Ascendance Trilogy
• Pub date: April 1st 2012
• Disclosure: Received an ARC in my giant ALAN box of books. Yay!

Judged by its cover: Not bad at all. I really like the illustration of the crown, even if the font's not my thing. It reminds me a lot of the fantasy books I read as a little kid, and for nostalgia factor, that can't be beat.

Goodreads blurb:

THE FALSE PRINCE is the thrilling first book in a brand-new trilogy filled with danger and deceit and hidden identities that will have readers rushing breathlessly to the end.
In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point -- he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.
As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.
An extraordinary adventure filled with danger and action, lies and deadly truths that will have readers clinging to the edge of their seats.

The Long...

Science fiction and fantasy, as anyone who has spent any time around the Bookshelf knows, are my very favorite genres, and sometimes that leads to frustration. My hopes are often so high that the reality can't help but let me down, and, with the exception of the work of Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Kristin Cashore, and Melina Marchetta, in recent years, I haven't found much joy in YA high fantasy. That's why it's nice to find a book that, just occasionally, hearkens back to my early, less cynical days of fantasy reading. Nielsen isn't quite in the same category as the rest of the YA greats I listed, but in being so basic, trope-ish, and easy to follow, she hits the nostalgia sweet spot.

First, I have to warn you--I correctly guessed the ending of this book within the first two chapters, and at first, that let me down. If you hate predictable books, then The False Prince is definitely not for you. But once I got over the disappointment of knowing exactly what was going to happen chapters before it did, I actually started to enjoy that predictability a little bit. In a post M. Night Shyamalan world, where everyone seems to feel they need that extra twist at the end, it's kind of nice to have a book that doesn't seem to have any illusions about where it fits in the genre: in the sturdy, dependable, middle-grade to lower-YA spectrum.

Like Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs (which I reviewed earlier today), The False Prince makes few attempts to woo older readers. Even as I enjoyed the ride, I wasn't enthralled enough to keep from putting it down every once in awhile so I could re-read a couple of YAs geared more toward my age group. But where The False Prince succeeds is in being a prequel of sorts to the rest of the world of fantasy, especially books like Melina Marchetta's Finnikin of the Rock, which this book reads like something of a middle grade knock-off of. As I said in my Sweet Venom review, it's nice to find a few books I can always count on as recommendations to get younger kids coming back for more.

In the end, I'm still disappointed--with a less generic touch, this book could have really been great--but in the end, my book blogger vitriol is all tapped out for the day and I just can't find the energy to dislike it. It's a fun, rip-roaring adventure that's sure to be gobbled up by future fantasy bookworms everywhere. And you know what? That's a beautiful thing.

...and the Short:

 A generic, predictable adventure story that nevertheless is sure to be gobbled up by young fantasy fans. A great present for young bookworms.

The Final Word: Liked it.

Pssssst! This is the third review in today's review-a-thon--only one more to go! Stay tuned for the giveaway to be posted tonight, and you just might win my copy of The False Prince for your very own!

Review: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs
Goodreads | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
YA, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction, 345 pages, Katherine Tegen Books

• Series: first in the Medusa Girls series
• Pub date: September 6th 2011
• Disclosure: Received an ARC from the Red Balloon Bookstore. Thanks!

Judged by its cover: Girl, your braid is rocking, but I just can't get behind another dramatic font superimposed over a picture of you facing away from the camera for a cover. It's not terrible, just not great.
 
Goodreads blurb:

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.
Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.
Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.
These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

The Long...

Sometimes it's not that a book was bad. Sometimes it's not that a book wasn't original, or that I didn't click with the characters, or that the writing wasn't quite stellar enough. Sometimes it's not any of those things: sometimes it's just that I'm the wrong reader for a particular story, and I think that's exactly what happened with Sweet Venom.

Grace, Gretchen, and Greer are exactly the characters I'd like to see more of in middle grade and younger YA--butt-kicking, fierce, vulnerable, scared sometimes, but mostly brave. They're exactly the kind of girls I would have loved when I was a middle-schooler, and watching them discover their Gorgon heritage was still a delight even now. But unfortunately they just don't have enough grit and gumption to keep an older YA reader like me happy for a whole book, and that was the real problem here.

Childs's mythology isn't particularly original in the current plague of Greek mythology-inspired YA, but it's certainly not bad. I've read Medusa re-imagined more times than I can count this year--she seems to have become a feminist icon, unfairly smeared by history, which surprises and delights me--and Sweet Venom actually holds its own against the competition. I particularly liked the girls' struggle to disguise their fangs, which struck me as a funny metaphor for growing up and discovering so many brand-new girl parts. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading into things.

And that, again, is the problem: I read into things. I kept looking for depth, a deeper meaning, clever Easter eggs, nuggets for older readers instead of just the younger ones--and I came away a little disappointed. And you know what? That's okay. This isn't a book for seventeen-year-old Maggie, it's a book for all the twelve- and thirteen-year-old future YA lovers out there. This book is the gateway drug. Buy copies for your kids, your nieces and nephews, your grandkids, your cousins--this is YAvangelism, and we don't screw around.

I won't be continuing on with the series, but I look forward to seeing what devoted fans Grace, Gretchen, and Greer find.

...and the Short:

A great pick for younger readers, but there just wasn't enough here to keep me engaged. Still, it makes the perfect gateway drug to YA, and it would make a great gift for the middle-schoolers in your life.


The Final Word: Meh.

Psssst! This review is the second in today's four-book review-a-thon. It's also one of the titles I'll be giving away later tonight in my giant, eleven-book giveaway. Stay tuned, and don't forget to check back soon!

Review: Girl Meets Boy anthology

Girl Meets Boy edited by Kelly Milner Halls
Goodreads | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
YA, Contemporary, 204 pages, Chronicle Books

• Series: stand-alone
• Pub date: December 29th 2011
• Disclosure: Received a copy in my giant ALAN box of books. Thanks!

Judged by its cover: "Are they having really awkward sex or something?" -my sister. But the font's nice, I guess?

Goodreads blurb:

What do guys and girls really think? Twelve of the most dynamic and engaging YA authors writing today team up for this one-of-a-kind collection of "he said/she said" stories-he tells it from the guy's point of view, she tells it from the girl's. These are stories of love and heartbreak. There's the good-looking jock who falls for a dangerous girl, and the flipside, the toxic girl who never learned to be loved; the basketball star and the artistic (and shorter) boy she never knew she wanted; the gay boy looking for love online and the girl who could help make it happen. Each story in this unforgettable collection teaches us that relationships are complicated-because there are two sides to every story.

The Long...

I was pretty sure I knew what to expect going into this anthology. An awkward cover, an awkward tagline, and eleven romantic YA short stories, which don't tend to be my favorite thing. Thankfully, though, this book shattered every one of those expectations with fantastic writing, fantastic (and fantastically diverse) characters, and love stories way off the beaten path (that often were hardly love stories at all, but growing-up stories instead.)

If you don't know the gimmick of the collection, it's that each story is told twice, each time from a different perspective. Usually this works beautifully, but occasionally the difference in writing styles was jarring and odd. If you liked Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, you'll probably love it; if not, Girl Meets Boy probably isn't for you.

To break it down story-by-story? 

"Love or Something Like it" by Chris Crutcher: Easily one of my favorite stories of the collection. Everyman John Smith is everything I love in a guy protagonist, and his bittersweet attempts to be a better boyfriend (and a better guy) were a delight to read. Loved it. 

"Some Things Never Change" by Kelly Milner Halls: Unfortunately, this flip side of John's story, told from the perspective of bad girl Wanda, wasn't quite what I was hoping for. As I wrote in my review of Everneath by Brodi Ashton, the bad girl is one of the most abused cliches in YA, and Halls didn't bring anything new to the table. Meh. 

"Falling Down to See the Moon" by Joseph Bruchac: Another favorite. Beyond The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I can't think of any other decent YA that features Native American characters, and Bruchac does a wonderful job of creating an awkward, dorky teen boy who's sort of in love with a girl who I couldn't help but fall in love with myself. Loved it.

"Mooning Over Broken Stars" by Cynthia Leitich Smith: I know Smith is a big name in YA, but I actually haven't read any of her other work. After this story, I'll have to--Nancy's story was the perfect flipside to Bobby's. Side note? Even though I'm not at all a sports fan in real life, I'm starting to realize that I love sports stories in YA. Go figure. Loved it. 

"Want to Meet" by James Howe: In this story of a gay teen who thinks he's in love with one person...and finds someone else entirely, I cheered again for what a great job Kelly Milner Halls did at assembling a teen anthology that reflects the diversity of real live teens everywhere. So many YA stories gloss over "the gay issue" entirely, or create characters that are merely tokens instead of real-live-breathing-loving protagonists. The story itself wasn't anything special, but the characters were sweet and lovely and everything I was hoping for. Liked it. 

"Meeting for Real" by Ellen Wittlinger: Again, not a particularly standout story on its own, but one of the more original and interesting flip-side concepts in the collection. Liked it. 

"No Clue, AKA Sean" by Rita Williams-Garcia: So mother-freaking-fantastic, guys. Williams-Garcia is a goddess of YA, and this smart, sassy story of interracial love is one of the standouts of the collection. Raffina's voice is so pitch-perfect and hilarious, you can't help but love her. I would have loved to see this be a novel instead of just a short story. Loved it. 

"Sean + Raffina" by Terry Trueman: It had to be tough to be on the other side of William-Garcia's kickassery, but Trueman actually does a decent job of giving us the other side of the story. I was cheering all the way, even if Sean's voice wasn't quite as awesome as Raffina's. Liked it.
  
"Mouths of the Ganges" by Terry Davis: Another one of the more memorable voices of the collection, about a Muslim teen Rafi (and his hormones, and his quest to get in his girlfriend's pants). I laughed out loud, I held my breath, I sympathized 100%. Right up there with Rita Williams-Garcia in spot-on awesomeness. Loved it. 

"Mars at Night" by Rebecca Fjelland Davis: The WTF story of the collection. Kerry's voice wasn't relatable or likable at all, and her quest to stop the giant pig farm from being built in her small town was pure cheese. I lament the serious lack of Rafi-lovin'. Not for me. 

"Launchpad to Neptune" by Sara Ryan and Randy Powell: Never, ever, ever did I see the twist coming, but when it came, I was so impressed by the sheer writing balls these writers had and how well they pulled it off that I couldn't imagine a better way to end the collection. Loved it.

...and the Short:

 A fantastic anthology that belongs in every contemporary YA lover's collection. I can't wait to see what Kelly Milner Halls edits next, since she did such a wonderful job here!

The Final Word: Loved it.  

PSSSST. This review is the first in today's review-a-thon, which will culminate tonight in a ten-book, ten-winner giveaway post that includes a chance to win a copy of Girl Meets Boy. Stay tuned, and don't forget to check back soon!

Aftermath, or people do beautiful things sometimes.

So it turns out cleaning up after a fire that destroys your garage, your workshop, your tack room, and the stables where your baby goats were sleeping really sucks.

But it also turns out that there are so many people around that make it better. Miriam Forster, for example, from whom a mystery package showed up on my doorstep this morning. A mystery package full of AWESOME.

This past week and a half has been so incredibly painful, but also so incredibly wonderful. Miriam, you are a badass human being. To everyone else who donated time, money, and books, or sent me a kind text, tweet, email, or Facebook message: you are amazing and made this so much easier.

I'll hopefully be back to a more regular blogging schedule this week. Counting down the weeks and days till BEA and the BEA Bloggers convention in NYC, and hopefully I'll get the chance to meet and give giant hugs to many of you there.

In other words? Thank you, thank you, thank you, and an extra thank you with a cherry on top. This community rocks my world.

Review: Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Goodreads | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
YA, Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Romance, 370 pages, Harper Collins / Balzer + Bray

• Series: first in Everneath series
• Pub date: January 24th 2012
• Disclosure: Received an ARC from the Red Balloon Bookstore. Thanks!

Judged by its cover: The pretty skinny white girl in a pretty dress that has nothing to do with the story sets me to twitching, but of that school of cover design, this one actually isn't bad. I like the smoke effect, and the pomegranate color scheme very much puts me in mind of a Persephone story, which is, of course, what this is.
 
Goodreads blurb:

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.
She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.
Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen.
As Nikki's time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she's forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole's...

The Long...

I can forgive a book a lot of things if it has a strong protagonist. A setting can be bland, a plot formulaic, a romance so-so if, at the very least, I like the character involved. Unfortunately, Everneath's Nikki Beckett doesn't quite make the cut, and because of that, I actively hated this book while I was reading it. I tried hard, guys. I really did. But even for two weeks after I couldn't stop thinking about how much I'd hated it. And then I promptly forgot about it.

There are some redeeming qualities, of course. Nikki's friend Jules is funny and likeable enough, Ashton's mythology is intriguing (if not quite mind-blowing), and Cole is easily the best part of the novel, even if he fits every bad boy trope on the books. But in the end, I just couldn't get past how bland Nikki was, and how she seemed to be brutally tossed around by the events of the story instead of taking charge at any point. I'm not saying every character has to be smart, strong, and ferocious a la Katniss, but I'd like to see them show some backbone at some point.

There's a running subplot in this book about people thinking Nikki was on drugs, due to her sudden disappearance, weight loss, and social withdrawal, and I couldn't help but laugh. Not at the subplot itself--it could have been interesting if done well--but at the fact that a growing trope in YA seems to be very quiet, meek good girls who seem to think they're bad girls. It started with Bella Swan on a motorcycle, and it's trickled through pretty much everywhere, especially in paranormal romance and contemporary "issue" books. I think it's an attempt to give characters depth, but the whole thing rings so false when all the characters do is kiss tenderly and speak of everlasting love that it's one of my least favorite tropes, even in otherwise decent books. Since I was well beyond the point of thinking this was a decent book anyway, it just made it that much harder to slog through till the end.

Another trope that drives me up the wall? Love triangle insta-romance, which this book has in spades. I'm actually not opposed to love triangles on principle--I think they can be a great way to illustrate internal conflict, and unfortunately it's an uncomfortable experience a lot of people have had--but when you throw in insta-love, two boys who are unspeakably perfect in every way, and also happen to think that the world revolves around a character I despise, it becomes unbearable. The romantic climax of the story was literally the most cheesy scene I have ever read in a YA novel--ever--and that's saying something.

In the end, I can't say exactly what set me off about Everneath so much. I don't think it's necessarily an awful book; the writing's certainly no worse than Stephenie Meyer's and Nikki Beckett no more two-dimensional than Bella Swan, and I certainly didn't have this kind of visceral reaction to Twilight. It's just that Twilight came first and set up the YA paranormal romance tropes of the past seven years, and Everneath just feels like it followed the guidebook. I'm sure it will find readers less picky and cynical than me, but in the end, I'd like to go back to forgetting about it.

...and the Short:

A bland main character and an insta-romance love triangle made this a pretty much awful read for me all around. I'm sure it will find devoted fans, but I'm not one of them.

The Final Word: Not for me.