Title: Forgotten
Author: Cat Patrick
Published: June, 2011 by Hardie Grant Books
Pages: 267
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

I remember forwards. I remember forwards, and forget backwards. My memories, bad, boring, or good, haven’t happened yet. So I will remember standing in the fresh-cut grass with the black-clad figures surrounded by stone until I do it for real. I will remember the funeral until it happens – until someone dies. And after that, it will be forgotten.

Here’s the thing about me: I can see my future, but my past is blank. I see the future in flashes, like memories. I remember what I’ll wear tomorrow, and a car crash that won’t happen till this afternoon. But yesterday has evaporated from my mind – just like the boy I love. I can’t see him in my future. I can’t remember him from my past. But today, I love him. And I never want to forget how much.

Final Thoughts:
Reading very much like a contemporary romance than a paranormal, Forgotten had come and gone before I knew it. While it wasn’t what I’d call amazing, I definitely enjoyed my time with it. The ideas behind this girl’s condition hold enough intrigue and make you wonder how she manages to keep it together so well. It does have its faults, places where I thought things didn’t exactly play out believably, but it’s a fun escape. Beware though, there is a fair share of high school angst. But if you’re up for that, dig in, there’s a very sweet romance to lose yourself in here.

Title: Girl Defective
Author: Simmone Howell
Published: March, 2013 by Pan Macmillan
Thanks: Pan Macmillan, AU
Pages: 294
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

We, the Martin family, were like inverse superheroes, marked by our defects. Dad was addicted to beer and bootlegs. Gully had “social difficulties” that manifested in his wearing a pig snout mask 24-7. I was surface clean but underneath a weird hormonal stew was simmering…

It’s summer in St Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder friend. Her brother – Super Agent Gully – is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the tragi-hot new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls, creepy old guys and accidents waiting to happen. If the world truly is going to hell in a hand-basket then at least the soundtrack is kicking. Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real and dark at the edges.

Final Thoughts:
I was hoping to like this one. The premise sounded fun, but I didn’t expect to love it. But love it, I did. Girl Defective is very near unputdownable. It was struggle come bed time when ‘just one more chapter’ turned into five. Filled with such engrossing, realistic and distinct characters, I felt like I’d picked up a John Green novel. Steeped deeply in family issues, the main character, Sky, holds herself out as the only semi-sane one amongst them. Very easy to connect with, her own angst seems to play second fiddle as she navigates the craziness that keeps gravitating around her.

Title: What In God’s Name
Author: Simon Rich
Published: August, 2012 by Serpent’s Tail
Pages: 240
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Welcome to Heaven, Inc., the grossly mismanaged corporation in the sky. For as long as anyone can remember, the founder and CEO (known in some circles as “God”) has been phoning it in. Lately, he’s been spending most of his time on the golf course. And when he does show up at work, it’s not to resolve wars or end famines, but to Google himself and read what humans have been blogging about him.

When God decides to retire (to pursue his lifelong dream of opening an Asian Fusion restaurant), he also decides to destroy Earth. His employees take the news in stride, except for Craig and Eliza, two underpaid angels in the lowly Department of Miracles. Unlike their boss, Craig and Eliza love their jobs – uncapping city fire hydrants on hot days, revealing lost keys in snow banks – and they refuse to accept that earth is going under.

The angels manage to strike a deal with their boss. He’ll call off his Armageddon, if they can solve their toughest miracle yet: getting the two most socially awkward humans on the planet to fall in love. With doomsday fast approaching, and the humans ignoring every chance for happiness thrown their way, Craig and Eliza must move heaven and earth to rescue them – and the rest of us, too.

Final Thoughts:
I did not expect to get through this one so quickly. Pretty much in a reading slump lately, I surprised myself the further I found myself getting through the book. Set in the offices of Heaven, it follows the lives of two over-achieving angels employed to take care of the miracles side of the business. While it does seem to play things a bit light-heartedly, it somehow manages to shift the stakes to the extreme without batting an eyelid. It’s an addictively warm romantic comedy that leaves you rooting for not only for the disastrously inept, but fated couple they’re looking after on Earth, but the awkward angels as well.

Title: Looking For Alaska
Author: John Green
Published: January, 2005 by HarperCollins
Pages: 262
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Final Thoughts:
How does one review a John Green book? Seriously, what kind of addictively illicit substance is he sprinkling the pages with? After being randomly sent a copy of The Fault In Our Stars and finding myself obsessively pawing through it in a matter of hours, I went off to my library and tracked down his debut. It didn’t disappoint. He just has a way with characterization—they don’t feel like characters—they are real. Staring through Miles/Pudge’s eyes, I found similarities in myself—lots of them, actually—and immediately connected with the book. The ploy used throughout the formatting of the chapters made the twist fairly obvious, taking away most of the impact, but in spite of that, I still enjoyed it greatly. If anything, it brought a new layer to the already established dynamic, making it feel somehow more.

Title: The Fault In Our Stars
Author: John Green
Published: January, 2012 by Penguin
Thanks: Penguin, AU
Pages: 313
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Final Thoughts:
Oh my…this was the book I needed to read. I’ve been in a slump lately, taking a while to read books that were okay, but that really didn’t do a whole lot for me. The Fault In Our Stars draws you out of whatever little crook you’ve been hiding in and shoves you head first into a world of feeling. I got this one a couple months back, but I’ve been avoiding picking it up mainly because I’d just read another amazing book that dealt with teen cancer and needed the break to prepare myself. On a whim, I snatched this one off my shelf and took it with me to pass the time in a waiting room and ended up almost finishing the book. Albeit the wait was 4+ hours, but it flew by. I was engrossed. I had to eventually stop myself and put it away—the tears were struggling against my flickering eyelids. Sure I could have continued struggling against a break down in public, pausing every now and again—but I wanted to give this book the attention—and the release—it deserved, so I waited, and dove back in as soon as I got home and utterly adored every second of it.

Title: Galley Proof
Author: Eric Arvin
Published: January, 2012 by Dreamspinner Press
Thanks: Dreamspinner Press via NetGalley
Pages: 195
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Fiction writer Logan Brandish is perfectly happy in his peaceful small-town routine with his best friend, his cat, and his boyfriend—until he meets the editor of his next book, the handsome Brock Kimble, and the lazy quiet of everyday living goes flying out the window. Faced with real passion for the first time, Logan becomes restless and agitated, and soon his life and his new manuscript—a work in progress he’d always thought would be completed—are in a shambles.

But as Logan is learning, you can’t always get what you want… at least not right away. To take his mind off the mess, he takes a trip, but even the beautiful Italian, um, scenery can’t keep his thoughts from his erstwhile editor for long. Logan just might have to admit there are some things you can’t run from.

Final Thoughts:
Short, but a lot of fun. I kept finding myself running back to my kindle whenever I had a spare bit of time after work—but even so, it only took me a day or so to get through. A book about a writer struggling to write because he’s caught up in his hot editor’s orbit—yeah, that was definitely fun. It wasn’t incredibly moving, and didn’t rock me with a slew of action, but I still enjoyed it immensely. Lately I’ve been reeled in with a few exciting blurbs that were accompanied by less than stellar insides, so I was glad that this one held my interest the way it did.

Title: A Place In This Life
Author: Julie Rieman Duck
Published: September, 2011 by Julie Rieman Duck
Pages: 254
Rating:  
Purchase: Amazon // Smashwords

For Natalie Miller, it’s just another family vacation. For someone else, it’s the opportunity he’s been waiting for.

With only a single peck from a guy named Frank, Natalie’s anything but experienced with boys. But when Todd pops out of the water, says hi, and tells Natalie he has leukemia, all of that changes.

She’s never had attention like this from a boy, let alone one who’s a real charmer with sex on the brain and the experience to match. Drawn to Todd like a magnet, Natalie gives him her friendship, her love, and her body. Even when she’s tempted by gorgeous, healthy schoolmate Alex, Natalie’s desire to love and care for Todd pushes her to see how far love can go in spite of the potential for death of the relationship — and death of the one she loves.

Final Thoughts:
This is not one for those who are after a light romance. It has to be the most moving book I have ever read. I still feel like someone’s ripped me open and torn me to shreds. I didn’t put this book down once, sitting glued to my kindle for the entire afternoon. I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park based on the synopsis, but I had no idea how much I would come to care for these characters. For the past however many hours it was, they were all that existed. Their pain is still affecting me as I sit here and try and keep the tears back long enough to pull together something that might resemble a review.