ARC Review - Exile from Eden: Or, After the Hole (Grasshopper Jungle #2) by Andrew Smith

Book info:

Title:  Exile from Eden:  Or, After the Hole
Author: Andrew Smith
Series:  Grasshopper Jungle #2
Genre:  YA science fiction
Release Date:  September 24th, 2019
Publisher:  Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers
Source:  Physical ARC received from publisher which did not influence my review
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
From New York Times bestselling author Andrew Smith comes the stunning, long-awaited sequel to the groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle.

It’s been sixteen years since an army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises forced Arek’s family underground and into the hole where he was born; it’s the only home he’s ever known. But now, post-end-of-the-world, the army of horny, hungry praying mantises might finally be dying out, and Arek’s ready to leave the hole for good.

All he has are mysterious letters from Breakfast, a naked, wild boy traveling the countryside with his silent companion, Olive. Together, Arek and his best friend Mel, who stowed away in his van, navigate their way through the ravaged remains of the outside world.

This long-awaited sequel to the irreverent, groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle is stunning, compelling, and even more hilarious and beautifully bizarre than its predecessor.


My Review:
I loved this book by Andrew Smith.  As usual, it was a total "boy" book.  But I love that about it!  While we started out and I was worried I might not remember who was who from the first book, Grasshopper Jungle, it was very nice that the main character, Arek, kept kind of reintroducing the other characters as he narrated the story.  I liked so much about the story, all the different characters and viewpoints we got.  It was towards the end when they all collided it seemed, and it was the perfect way to get them to meet up.  Not a meet-cute since this isn't a romance, but is there another name for it?  I don't know.  Just know that it was a perfectly seamless way to fit the stories together.  Now, in the first book we kind of got the background on how we got those giant praying mantises that were attacking, but in this one, I don't know that we ever find out exactly why they are changing or having issues, just that they are.  

One thing that really stood out to me personally from the story is a note from the author at the back of the book.  There is an artist that Arek is constantly referencing, Max Beckmann.  Now I'd never heard of him before, but of course from this book I found I had to go look him up.  What Smith talks about at the end is that Max Beckmann painted so many self portraits trying to maybe see who he was.   Now the author also mentioned that he feels each of his own books are in a way his own self-portraits in a similar vein to Beckmann's paintings.  That really stood out to me personally, because recently I realized a lot of the stories I write end up being kind of my own daydreams.  Sometimes even starring me, just with different names and places.  When I realized this, I also decided that this was okay.  I remembered something another of my favorite authors once said, to write the book I want to read, she wrote her story for herself.  And that's what I'm going to continue to do.  While my books and writing are nowhere near as good as Andrew Smith's stories, I like that I'm not the only one who sees their writing this way.

Highly recommended, if you liked Grasshopper Jungle, you'll enjoy this as well! 

The Friday 56 #8

This week I'm going to participate once again in Friday 56, sponsored by Freda's Voice.  Here are the rules:

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
 *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. It's that simple.

"The black thing in side the globe pulsed and twitched like a beating heart.  It seemed to become more animated the longer we stared at it.  It was almost like a gelatinous cauliflower.  Here and there on its velvet surface, a mound would rise up, like a mosquito bite, a black pimple, and then burst open at its peak." 

Review: Just Like the Movies by Kelly Fiore

First I have to say thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for allowing me to read an e-galley of this book.  And this was actually the perfect choice to read after my last read, Grasshopper Jungle.  Because as dense and intense of a read as that was, this was a nice, light, fluffy, easy to read, no brains really needed.  And that's a good thing!  Believe me!  It's definitely chick lit, for teens of course.  But in a really great way that I enjoyed because the movies they were referring to, many were from my teen days, but also more recent ones, and recent ones that I also was a big fan of. 

There are two main characters, Marijke, (whose name I just could not say right in my head, even after they gave an example at the beginning of how to pronounce it), and Lily.  Marijke is a track star, but has kind of lost her group of friends once she got involved with her current boyfriend Tommy.  Tommy is kind of new to the school, and is the "hot" guy, the one that it seems everyone is after, or is flirting with, at least as far as Marijke seems to see.  And she has a bit of a jealousy problem.  As much as Tommy is constantly assuring her that she is the only girl for him, anything she sees, texts, facebook conversations, whatever, seem to have more meaning behind them to her.  Lila is the nerdy girl.  At least the one that no one really remembers having in classes year after year.  She may look familiar, but no one can seem to remember her name.  She has a huge crush, from a distance of course, on Joe, the motocross star of the school.  One night they both end up at a theater revival showing of Titanic.  Marijke in tears because of another fight with Tommy over her jealousy.  And Lily because her mom has once again ditched her in order to go out with another loser, and left her with nothing else to do.  When Marijke leaves the theater crying uncontrollably, Lily feels as if she should go after her and see if she needs a friend.  And a friendship does develop, however tentatively, as they wonder why love isn't like in the movies.  And they decide to help each other get their man using famous bits from movies such as Say Anything, Sixteen Candles, Easy A, and others. 

Suffice it to say that hilarity as well as sadness ensues.  A cute, fun read as I said to begin with.  While I'm good with it, there is one thing that Tommy does that I'm not sure was explained away well enough to my satisfaction, and there was one part with Joe as well.  All in all, I liked the ending, and I liked the characters, and I could see it being a fun teen movie in itself, especially with all the pop culture mentions of past teen movies. 

Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

I gave in and put my name on the waiting list at the library for this one.  I'd just been hearing so much about it, and it really does sound like my type of story from the synopsis.  I was pretty excited when it finally came in for me to check out two days before I went to have my surgery.  So I went and got it, and it was one I took to read while recovering at my dad and stepmom's house.  It wasn't a "quick" read, in that there was a lot to read.  I couldn't zoom through it, skipping things to get the story.  But it was hard to put down, in that I needed to know what was going to happen, and the suspense just built and built.  I will have to say, without giving anything away, that the ending was not exactly what I was expecting.  I'm not saying that in a bad way.  I had just assumed from the way the story was going, that something different was going to happen.  Honestly, I do really like the way the story ended.  Here's my summary of the story:

The main character is Austin Szerba.  And he is a Polish boy.  We know that because he gives us the history of his family starting really in detail with those who came to America.  His best friend is Robby Brees, and his girlfriend is Shann Collins.  Austin is a confused teen.  And like most other boys his age, very horny.  He loves his girlfriend, and is always thinking about sex with her.  But his best friend Robby is gay.  And he is not sure about if he might be interested in Robby as well.  He loves his best friend, and accepts him for who he is, and knows that Robby has feelings for him like he has for Shann.  He even fantasizes about both of them, or should I say, all three of them together.  Now, Austin and Robby go to a private Lutheran school (shout out for that, as I went to a Lutheran school from 1st-8th grade).  And they do get picked on.  That is kind of where the whole story begins.  Some bullies take Austin and Robby's skateboards and shoes and throw them up on the roof of an old almost empty shopping center.  When they go back to recover their belongings later in the evening, they end up going into the store beneath, which just happens to be owned by Shann Collin's stepdad.  They decide to go into his office, because no one ever does. And there they find lots of crazy things.  Hands inside of jars.  A two headed baby boy inside a jar.  Parts of giant bugs inside of jars.  And also glowing globes.  Unfortunately at that same moment, the bullies are back, they want to steal from the liquor store connected to this same store.  They go into the office and take some of the glowing globes.  As they are leaving, they drop one of them.  And the glowing stuff spreads there on the ground.  And that is that.  The beginning of the end of the world.  Soon Austin and Robby and Shann find a silo, a silo that gives away information about what is soon to be the cause of all the world's problems.  They learn about the Unstoppable Soldier, basically a giant praying mantis.  And do you know what these bugs like to do?  Two things, as we are told over and over, eat and have sex. 

So, yes, this is a crazy science fiction story about giant bugs and secret corporations who create things for the military that go wrong, and are covered up until an accident sets them loose again.  But, it is also a coming of age story.  We get the inside scoop on how Austin is dealing with his friend and his girlfriend, and experimenting, and what he can also almost only think about one thing, sex.  I loved how this even touched on an often challenged/banned book, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.  I'm going to guess that this book is going to be challenged by many people who actually pick it up and read it as well.  I really liked how honest all of it was though.  How uncertain he felt, but also intrigued about his best friend, even though he knew he was definitely interested in his girlfriend too.  How he realized that what he was doing was going to hurt both of them.  And that what he was doing was selfish.  I loved all the history that he kept adding to the story. Although at first I was a bit worried it would be too redundant.

This made for a very interesting, funny, heartbreaking, intense, edge of your seat read.  I will recommend it, with caution of course at school, but to all book lovers, and to fellow teachers and librarians looking for new, original stories for teens.