Title: Pretties (Uglies #2)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: November, 2005 by Simon & Schuster
Pages: 368
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.

But beneath all the fun — the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom — is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally’s ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what’s wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold.

Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life — because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.

Final Thoughts:
This started out SO slow. Set in New Pretty Town, I just couldn’t get into the characters. I got that their brains had been messed with, but it didn’t make for enjoyable reading. I mean, how many times can you listen to characters say ‘bubbly’ or ‘bogus’ before you want to hurl the book across the room? The pacing was just off for me. It was one of those books where you felt the need to put it down every 20 or so pages and go find something else to do. Of course, I got around that by forcing my way through it, but you shouldn’t have to do that. Luckily the second half picks up a bit.

Title: Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin #1)
Author: Robin LaFevers
Published: April, 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Thanks: Houghton Mifflin via NetGalley
Pages: 549
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

Final Thoughts:
I haven’t had much experience with historical fiction. I look at them in the stores—mostly at their cool covers—and read the sometimes intriguing blurbs, but I always feel uneasy wondering how much fun the writers have had playing around with the true events. Enter Brett . . . who is never without some random YA novel he wants me read and review. And so he came to me and asked—who am I kidding? He doesn’t ask, he just says ‘I sent a book to your kindle,’ smiles, and then runs away before I can argue.

Title: The Future of Us
Author: Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler
Published: November, 2011 by Simon & Schuster
Thanks: Simon & Schuster, AU
Pages: 356
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

It’s 1996 and very few high school students have ever used the internet. Facebook will not be invented until several years in the future. Emma just got a computer and an America Online CD. She and her best friend Josh power it up and log on – and discover themselves on Facebook in 2011. Everybody wonders what they’ll be like fifteen years in the future. Josh and Emma are about to find out.

Final Thoughts:
I wasn’t into contemporaries back in 2011 when I got given a copy of this at a Becca Fitzpatrick event that Simon & Schuster were hosting, so I’m glad I waited before finally jumping into it. Perhaps I’ve grown tired of paranormals, but it’s as if a switch has since flicked and I can’t get enough of these kinds of books. While this one does feature Time Travel by way of a computer, it’s done in a way that I’d still class this as a contemporary read. It’s full of romance, high school angst, hanging with friends, fretting over possible futures. Basically, it was a lot of fun. I didn’t want this one to end. The fact that it was a standalone made saying goodbye to the final page even harder.

Title: Uglies (Uglies #1)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: February, 2005 by Simon & Schuster
Pages: 425
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Tally can’t wait to turn sixteen and become pretty. Sixteen is the magic number that brings a transformation from repellent Ugly into a stunningly attractive Pretty, and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks, Tally will be there.

But Tally’s new friend, Shay, isn’t sure she wants to be Pretty. She’d rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the Pretty world – and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

Final Thoughts:
While the publisher has actually labelled these reprints’ covers with ‘Before The Hunger Games, there was…’, I actually found this older dystopian series reminded me more of Divergent with a bit of The Host spliced in. It was interesting reading it eight years after publication, knowing it came before the mega-series that exploded the genre. Uglies for me, though, didn’t feel quite as high stakes. It was getting there, and I think the second book will probably hit the mark, but starting the series, it seemed to focus more on the survival/relationship side of it than the political issues driving the Pretty initiative.

Title: Heist Society (Heist Society #1)
Author: Ally Carter
Published: February, 2010, by Disney Hyperion
Pages: 287
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s history–and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

Final Thoughts:
Somehow I knew that I would enjoy this book even before I had even picked it up. This hard-cover copy of Ally Carter’s Heist Society had been sitting on Brett’s shelf for quite some time, untouched. And every time I walked by, I saw it in the corner of my eye and said to myself: I really want to read that, some time. And, oh boy, was I satisfied when I did, at last.

Title: One Man Guy
Author: Michael Barakiva
Published: May, 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Thanks: Macmillan via NetGalley
Pages: 272
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Alek Khederian should have guessed something was wrong when his parents took him to a restaurant. Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Between bouts of interrogating the waitress and criticizing the menu, Alek’s parents announce that he’ll be attending summer school in order to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshman year of high school. He never could’ve predicted that he’d meet someone like Ethan.

Ethan is everything Alek wishes he were: confident, free-spirited, and irreverent. He can’t believe a guy this cool wants to be his friend. And before long, it seems like Ethan wants to be more than friends. Alek has never thought about having a boyfriend—he’s barely ever had a girlfriend—but maybe it’s time to think again.

Final Thoughts:
This book was so much fun! It was just what I needed after a five week slog through my last book. I was finished One Man Guy in a matter of hours, not even bothering to get dressed for the day. I just couldn’t stop reading. It was refreshing to find gay YA where everyone was as accepting as they were, skipping the angst in favour of a light-hearted yet heart-warming piece of escapism. Set amidst New York and the outer suburbs, it took well advantage of the setting and created something that I felt added an extra dimension to the rom-com playing out in my head.

Title: The Break-Up Artist
Author: Philip Siegel
Published: May, 2014 by Harlequin Teen
Thanks: Harlequin Teen, AU
Pages: 308
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Some sixteen-year-olds babysit for extra cash. Some work at the Gap. Becca Williamson breaks up couples…

After watching her sister get left at the altar, Becca knows the true damage that comes when people utter the dreaded L-word. For just $100 via paypal, she can trick and manipulate any couple into smithereens. With relationship zombies overrunning her school, and treating single girls like second class citizens, business is unfortunately booming. Even her best friend Val has resorted to outright lies to snag a boyfriend.

One night, she receives a mysterious offer to break up the homecoming king and queen, the one zombie couple to rule them all: Steve and Huxley. They are a JFK and Jackie O in training, masters of sweeping faux-mantic gestures, but if Becca can split them up, then school will be safe again for singletons. To succeed, she’ll have to plan her most elaborate scheme to date and wiggle her way back into her former BFF Huxley’s life – not to mention start a few rumors, sabotage some cell phones, break into a car, and fend off the inappropriate feelings she’s having about Val’s new boyfriend. All while avoiding a past victim out to expose her true identity.

No one said being the Break-Up Artist was easy.

Final Thoughts:
This book had me from the start. Perhaps it’s my current contemporary fixation, but I found this so easy to get into. I love it when I pick up a book and it just clicks with me. You’re not counting how many pages left until it ends, you’re counting them, wishing there were more. Becca was such a loveable anti-hero, championing the destruction of relationships. The way she saw the world was refreshing, albeit, cynical—but I loved that. Her occasional outbursts had me grinning. She’s that little voice in your head whenever you read something corny that everyone else swoons over.