Review: Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

This was a surprise gift in the mail from the publisher, Wendy Lamb books, and Random House, Inc., and I am very happy that I got it.  I wasn't sure at first, but once I started reading, I really fell in love with the story and the characters.  It is a middle grade story, but definitely not too childish for a teen to read.

The story is told from the viewpoint of three characters.  One is really the main person, Bridget, who goes by Bridge.  She was in an accident when she was younger that caused her to have to be out of school for a long time, and she still has trouble crossing the street sometimes because of what happened.  She is a little on the weird side, but still has two really good friends.  On the weird side, one day she picked up a cat ear headband and wore it to school.  She's worn it every day since then.  She's told her friends that she's only going to wear it until Halloween though.  She and her friends, Tab and Em are in 7th grade.  That's an age that is near and dear to my heart, as I used to teach them, and it was my favorite grade to teach.  But the things they deal with, well, it's that age, and the book is very realistic about them, as well as very current.  Em has a boy that she is texting pictures back and forth with.  It starts as simple as a knee or a finger, then a belly button, and soon she isn't sure what she should text a picture of next.  Tab doesn't seem to have the patience to deal with some of the issues, or at least she seems to know what people are really wanting, and this includes this guy that Em is texting with.  The three girls have one rule as friends, no fighting.  That doesn't mean they don't get mad with each other, it just means they don't fight about it.

Another character that we get short chapters from is Sherman, or  Sherm.  He and Bridge are getting to be friends, who knows if it'll be anything more.  Sherm's life is kind of up in the air since his grandfather left his grandmother.  His grandfather that he always looked up to.  We now get his letters to his grandfather, not ones that he sends, but ones that he writes to tell him how he feels.

The third character is unnamed to us until the end.  She is a high school girl, and it is Valentine's Day, and something bad is going to happen. She has friends that seem to no longer be the good friends they always were.  And a new friend that she is afraid she's betrayed by trying to keep her old friends around.  Her part of the story is told as she's skipped school for the day, needing to be away from what she is afraid will happen.  We get flashbacks during her chapters about all the events that take place up until the time her part of the story is taking place.

For a while I was really just wondering who was the unnamed girl.  Was she someone we were reading about?  Or someone that would come into the story at a later time?  When I finally figured it out, and the story proved me right, I totally saw how perfectly the whole story wove the characters all together.  It was a wonderful story, so true and real that I really enjoyed it.  I highly recommend it!

Review: The City by Dean Koontz

First, thanks to Random House/Bantam Dell and Netgalley for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  Dean Koontz will always be one of my all time favorite authors.  And while a couple books ago I was a bit disappointed, that changed with the last one, Innocence, and now this one, The City, has totally won me back over.

I loved this story.  It was such a good story, and it moved along at the perfect pace.  There was plenty of suspense, and it was good to see things didn't happen quite the way expected, but in a way that was just as, if not more, satisfying.  There were still some of the major losses that you would expect with a Koontz story, people you loved, and hated to have to see disappear.  But then there were others that stuck around, even when you just knew, based on all the foreshadowing, that something horrible must be able to befall them. 

The main character is Jonah Kirk, or you might like his given name from his dead beat father, Jonah Ellington Basie Hines Eldridge Wilson Hampton Armstrong Kirk.  All names of famous musical artists, ones that Jonah's grandpa on his mom's side would be a big fan of.  His father did this to try to get in good with his wife's parents.  Didn't quite work, as Grandpa Teddy kind of saw it for what it was.  Fortunately for Jonah, he had the possibility of living up to that name with his own musical talent.  But at first his father didn't seem to want him to, or at least his father was afraid that his grandfather would turn Jonah against him.  Jonah's dad soon left, but then would come back.  Until one time that his mom caught him visiting the woman who lived in the apartment above them.  Then his mother knew it was time to be done with the man.  Now Jonah had some magical types of things that happened to him, as in all good Dean Koontz stories you would expect.  He was given a little charm by a cab driver that seemed to have good luck.  He had this woman he named Miss Pearl that would come up to him on very rare occasions and talk to him.  She might help him out, as she did the first time, helping him to find a piano at the community center that he could finally begin to learn to play on.  But other times she came when he was dreaming, and the dreams she gave names to the people in them, and told him whether they were dreams of things to come, or things that had already happened.  The people in these dreams would become a part of his life soon, but not in good ways.  One, the bad man that he saw the things from the past from, he wouldn't really come into contact directly much until the end of all this.  The other, the woman, he would come into close contact, and she was pretty scary. This story took place during all the Civil Rights unrest in the US.  And Jonah is a young, black boy.  He makes friends with a Japanese man that lives in the same apartment complex. Although he does go about it in a kind of self serving way.  He wants to enlist the man in his keeping track of this evil woman.  In the end they become really good friends, Mr. Yoshioka almost a bit of a father figure, definitely someone Jonah knew and loved as much as a family member. 

The group of characters in this book were all colorful and so easily loved or hated.  While there was no animal really in this story, somewhat unusual for a Koontz story, overall it still was a great cast of people to build a story around.  I think that the amount of background spent on most of the characters and storylines was perfect.  Maybe a bit more time spent on one side character, but what was learned through that branch definitely added to the story.  I can once again go out and announce to the world that Dean Koontz is one of my favorite, as well as one of the best authors out there.

The Morning Star (Katerina #3) by Robin Bridges

First I have to say thanks to Random House and Delacorte Press for allowing me to get an e-galley of this to review from Edelweiss.  I loved the first book in this series, The Gathering Storm,  that I got as an e-galley from Netgalley.  And then I never saw a chance to get the 2nd book, The Unfailing Light, so I just got behind on the series.  Then back in the spring I saw book 3, The Morning Star, available on Edelweiss, and so I had to request it.  And then in order to be ready to read it, I checked the 2nd book out from the library to read.  You'll see in my review of the 2nd one, that it wasn't hard to catch back up to remember what had happened.  It definitely reminded you without having to have a little summary at the beginning.  But I was very excited to be able to read on to the 3rd book right away.
In the 3rd and final book, Katerina, or Katiya as she is called by her family and friends, is working with Dr. Bamaev, as she is still not really being allowed to go to medical school because she is female.  Prince Danilo is in prison after what happened at the end of book 2.  Her mother had become the striga at the end of book 2, and Katiya found out that she did know of the fact that her daughter was a necromancer, and all about the Dark and Light Court supernatural things that she had seemed so oblivious to before.  There is a new ballerina who seems to bewitch all who come to watch, including the tsarevitch, who Katiya's friend Alix is in love with.  Fortunately she does not seem to be able to catch Katiya's love George's fancy.  And George has finally told his father that he wishes to marry Katiya.  When she goes to talk to his father, he tells her he would approve, IF she will give up her dream of going to medical school.  It is not proper for a woman, especially a royal wife to do that.  Katiya doesn't want to give up her dream, especially when she sees that George is still sick from the battle with Danilo in the last book.  And so, she decides to turn down her chance to marry George, in order to save his life.  George won't have that though, and when it gets so dangerous that they require her to leave and go to a safe place with the tsar, he takes her on a side trip so that they can get married, and then George promises he will let her study whatever she wants.  But while they are at the church, and George is saying his confession to the reverend, Katiya is kidnapped.  Turns out Danilo is no longer in prison, but he is also no longer Danilo, he has been possessed by Konstantin.  And they are after the Morning Star, which is the sword that Lucifer used when he tried to defeat God.  As it is a sword made in heaven, it will be impossible to destroy, and also comes with an army of Grigori, the fallen angels who now serve the sword. Konstantin knows he can defeat the tsar becoming the bogatyr as he did in the first book if he has the sword.  And they must go to Egypt to find it.  Along the way they discover other groups are also looking for it.  Danilo/Konstatin says that he will be marrying Katiya on the trip, but he needs her to be "innocent" for the ritual.  He tells her that she will be ruined now, everyone will know that she has been alone with him, even if they do have the bewitching ballerina as her chaperone.  There will be a war, no matter what happens.  Katiya knows she must get the Morning Star away from Konstantin in order to help the true tsar keep his throne.  And in the end, you know it must turn out the way you would think, but I won't give away just how.
Again, I loved this story.  And there was Egyptian mythology used in this story as well, which is really cool.  I like how not all the "bad" stuff was tied up with the final battle.  And how the story went on for a bit to solve this afterwards.  But not in a boring way, in a way that I always seem to want to know what happens next.  The final part of the book tells of the actual "true" history of these people, and shows just how well this author told and added to the story with her plot.  A great series, one I will continue to recommend!