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.

Title: Roomies
Author: Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
Published: December, 2013 by Little, Brown Books
Thanks: Little, Brown Books via NetGalley
Pages: 279
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

It’s time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl’s summer — and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they’ve never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

Final Thoughts:
Roomies was fun—something I’d devoured within a day, but it didn’t hit me in the way a certain other new contemporary did. I wasn’t bored, but it’s not going to go down as one of my favourites. Switching back and forth each chapter between the two girls, we quickly get to know their family situations and their blossoming love lives. The romances didn’t do a lot for me, I was more interested in the drama going on between the girls and their back and forth passive-to-actually-aggressive emails throughout the book.

Title: Fangirl
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Published: April, 2014 by Pan Macmillan, AU
Pages: 461
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they’re off to university and Wren’s decided she doesn’t want to be one half of a pair any more – she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It’s not so easy for Cath. She’s horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she’s experienced in real life.

Without Wren Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She’s got a surly room-mate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

Now Cath has to decide whether she’s ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she’s realizing that there’s more to learn about love than she ever thought possible…

Final Thoughts:
Honestly, I hadn’t even heard of this book before last week. I missed all of the hype, randomly picking up my copy of Fangirl while browsing my local bookstore. Finding out later that it was apparently the new bible of YA upped my expectations, but I can safely say that it delivered on them. I was left clutching the book for hours, never wanting it to end. With an abundance of disdain towards socialising and her passionate fanfic enthusiasm, Cath is one protagonist that you just can’t help but love. If I could live inside this book, I would.

Title: A Corner Of White (The Colours Of Madeleine #1)
Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Published: April, 2013 by Pan Macmillan
Pages: 412
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

This is a tale of missing persons. Madeleine and her mother have run away from their former life, under mysterious circumstances, and settled in a rainy corner of Cambridge (in our world).

Elliot, on the other hand, is in search of his father, who disappeared on the night his uncle was found dead. The talk in the town of Bonfire (in the Kingdom of Cello) is that Elliot’s dad may have killed his brother and run away with the Physics teacher. But Elliot refuses to believe it. And he is determined to find both his dad and the truth.

As Madeleine and Elliot move closer to unraveling their mysteries, they begin to exchange messages across worlds — through an accidental gap that hasn’t appeared in centuries. But even greater mysteries are unfolding on both sides of the gap: dangerous weather phenomena called “color storms;” a strange fascination with Isaac Newton; the myth of the “Butterfly Child,” whose appearance could end the droughts of Cello; and some unexpected kisses…

Final Thoughts:
The cover got me with this one. It was so colourful and quirky, plus I found the title a little strange, so I just had to pick it up and see what it was about. Reading the humorous introduction in store, I snatched it up and put it next in line on my to-read list. Unfortunately, once I got into it, I didn’t find it as gripping. I think I’d expected some kind of note-leaving romance like in The Lake House, but instead found chapters upon chapters of friendship drama. It was really a struggle to get through the first half of the book, so it surprised me when things suddenly turned around midway and I became addicted this story. It’s left me polarised on how I view the book. Finishing it, I felt like it was excellent, but then I have to remember the weeks I spent chugging along through the first half, wishing it would end.

Title: The First Third
Author: Will Kostakis
Published: July, 2013 by Penguin, AU
Pages: 248
Rating:  
Purchase: Dymocks // Amazon Kindle // Kobo

Life is made up of three parts: in the first third, you’re embarrassed by your family; in the second, you make a family of your own; and in the end, you just embarrass the family you’ve made.

That’s how Billy’s grandmother explains it, anyway. She’s given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it’s his job to glue their family back together.

No pressure or anything.

Fixing his family’s not going to be easy and Billy’s not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what?

It’s a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.

Final Thoughts:
It’s hard to believe how good this was. After Felicity hyping it at the Brisbane PTA event earlier in the year, I decided I’d probably keep an eye out for it. But with three or four months to wait for the release, and adding in my goldfish memory, it slipped by me until a random trip into a Dymocks store on Election Day. I’m so glad I spotted it, finally finding something that was able to reignite my love of reading. Honestly, this past year, I haven’t been able to say I was truly hooked on anything I’ve picked up, well, until now. I’ve enjoyed some of them, but The First Third was just plain freaking awesome. And yes, I’m sure my roommates have heard me use those exact words these past few days. If I could have skipped my cousin’s wedding yesterday to finish this book, I would have.

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Published: October, 2008 by HarperCollins
Pages: 353
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Quentin Jacobsen – Q to his friends – is eighteen and has always loved the beautiful and edgy Margot Roth Spiegelman. Nine years ago they discovered a dead body together but now, at their Central Florida high school, Q’s a nerd while Margot is uber-cool.

One night, before graduating, Q is basking in the predictable boringness of his life when Margo persuades him to join her in some midnight mayhem and vengeance… and then vanishes. While her family shrugs off this latest disappearance, Q follows Margo’s string of elaborate clues – including an unnerving poem about death.

Q’s friends Radar, Ben and Lacey help with the search, and a post for a website turns up: Margo will be in a certain location for the next 24 hours only. They drive through the night, racing the clock. Is Q ready for what he might find?

Final Thoughts:
Brimming with realism, Paper Towns was addictive. These characters may take things to the extreme, but I could see it happening. Their wacky adventures, their antics, they felt real to me. If you’ve read Looking For Alaska, expect more of the same here. Popular girl draws a not-so-popular guy into her orbit. It comes across as more of a one sided romance than anything else. So don’t expect to find the swoon-worthiness of some of his other characters in Quentin. For me, this wasn’t about the romance, it was about the adventure.