Books & Bloggers Swap Reveal

Okay, so today I got my awesome package in the mail from my awesome partner, Emily at Follow the Yellow Book Road.  The first glance when I opened the first flap of the box was this:

I saw the cover of Landry Park, and if I hadn't been at work in the high school library where I work, I would have screamed and danced!  I have wanted this book for a long time, and even last night when I was working at the bookstore I was thinking about how much I wanted it.  So this was very exciting.

Now, here is the picture of everything my awesome partner sent me:

The rules were to give:

1. A book from your partner's wishlist:  Landry Park by Bethany Hagen
2. A book you loved:  Graceling by Kristin Cashore
3.  A book you've wanted to read: Born of Illusion by Teri Brown

My partner had sent an email the first day letting me know she might not get my package mailed by the set date, and she decided since she was late to throw in an extra book, The Lost Prince by Julie Kagawa.  Honestly, she didn't need to do that, I totally understood, but with that being the extra book, I'm definitely not complaining either!  Of course I still have to finish the The Iron Fey series before I can start that one, but it will happen!  Another thing that was part of the deal was some kind of book swag, etc.  I got a cool The Fault in Our Stars bookmark too.  I'd actually been talking to my bookstore manager about Graceling last night, so I'm now excited to have my own copy to read.  And  Born of Illusion is a book I remember seeing around a lot, and wondering about, so now I'm very excited to get to read it as well!

Thanks so much Emily!  This was a lot of fun.  I think everyone who can participate should try to do that in the future!

Broken by C.J. Lyons

First of all, thanks to Netgalley, as well as SourceBooks Fire, for allowing me to read an e-galley of this story.  Now, before I get into my review, I'd like to talk about how shortly after I got approved for this, I got an email from a publicity intern at Sourcebooks asking if I'd like to be a part of a tour to promote the book, Broken, which I agreed to before I'd even read it.  Now that I've read the book, I'm very glad I chose to participate!  I really enjoyed it.  Again, before I get to my review, I'm going to share a few interview questions I got to ask the author.  In honor of participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I asked a lot of questions having to do with writing.  Here is my interview:

1.  When did you first begin writing?

CJ: I’ve always used stories to makes sense of the world around me—it’s my coping mechanism for dealing with chaos. But I never really thought of writing as a career until after I sold my second novel--that’s second novel sold. I’d written my first novel in high school followed by two SF/F novels in medical school. I think I had five or six full novels and several half-started ones finished by the time I sold my first book.

2.  When you start a story, do you plan it all out with an outline or notecards?  Or do you just know what is going to happen kind of, and write it as you go?

CJ: I’m deathly allergic to outlines, notecards, highlighters, and any form of organization! I’m a seats of the pants writer—usually I start with a character and an idea about how to make their life miserable and I go from there.

3.  Where do you get your ideas for your stories?

CJ: Anywhere and everywhere. News stories are a great source. I love watching people and observing how they react in situations. I also tend to ask a lot of questions about what could go wrong—like when I was in my bank the other day and started asking about ways people might get into the safety deposit boxes. Thankfully, they know me (I keep them well supplied with free books!) so they didn’t call the cops.

4.  How do you feel your career in the medical field helps or contributes to your writing?

CJ: Being a storyteller helped me to be a better doctor—always looking for the “rest” of a patient’s story. And being a doctor allowed me to witness firsthand acts of extraordinary courage by “ordinary” people as well as knowledge of a field that is natural fodder for thrillers.

5.  Have you ever gotten stuck (writer's block) and how did you overcome it?

CJ: I’ve never had writer’s block—don’t really believe in it. Every time I get stuck, it means I’ve messed up—usually twenty to thirty pages back. So I’ll live with the story, listen to the characters, make sure I truly understand what they want and why they want it and get back on track. I don’t worry about it, it’s all part of the process of digging deeper into a story than what it might first reveal on the surface.

About CJ:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-one novels, former pediatric ER doctor CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge Thrillers with Heart.

Winner of the International Thriller Writers’ coveted Thriller Award, CJ has been called a "master within the genre" (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as "breathtakingly fast-paced" and "riveting" (Publishers Weekly) with "characters with beating hearts and three dimensions" (Newsday).

Learn more about CJ's Thrillers with Heart at www.CJLyons.net

Thank you C.J. for answering my questions!  I must say your answer to number 2 makes me feel better about how I always seem to go about trying to write, I don't really ever write an outline, but I've always wondered if that's why I get stuck, so maybe no!  

Here is my review of Broken.  Now, when I began reading, I actually kind of wondered why did I pick this book again?  It seemed like it was going to end up being a pretty contemporary fiction, reminding me in a way of the John Green story, The Fault in Our Stars.  But I remembered that there was supposed to be something weird about the school that the main character, Scarlett was now attending.  Actually this was the first time Scarlett had ever really attended school, since she was very young, she always been sick, a genetic heart defect.  It was only recently that she'd decided she wanted to live what life she had, since she knew it wouldn't be that much longer that she had.  She wanted to experience what healthy kids her age did, school.  Up until this point she'd been homeschooled, as she'd mostly been living in hospitals or at home.  Her dad traveled a lot for work.  But her step mom, as her biological mother died in childbirth I believe, has been the one taking care of her. She has been around as long as Scarlett can remember, and to Scarlett she is her mother.  She's been the one taking care of her, holding her hand, cleaning up after her being sick, fighting at the hospitals and with the doctors to make sure her daughter got the best care.  Although she wasn't happy about Scarlett going to school, she's given her one week to try it.  If it doesn't work during that week, then this experiment will be over, and life will go back to how it's always been.   But from the first day, Scarlett is on edge, right away a bully begins to pick on her.  Scarlett must take a defibrillator with her to school every day, and that gets her noticed right away.  The first bright moment in her day is the peer mentoring group.  The cute guy who is her locker partner, Jordan, is in the group.  When she first met Jordan at their locker, and he touched her, just a quick friendly pat, she was unsure if her heart racing was her defect, or her heart finally feeling the hormones that other teens felt.  The peer group was great, she had new friends now, Nessa and Celina. Nessa's sister had committed suicide, and had been friends with Jordan.  Celina also had issues, an autistic sister, as well as a mother dying of cancer.  Their teacher advisor, didn't seem like that great of a guy to any of them, but that was that.  Oh, and did I mention that Scarlett's stepmother is the nurse at this school?  So really, Scarlett doesn't even get a chance to get away from her and live on her own.  This book takes place over this one week.  One week.  In this one week Scarlett also makes another friend, a boy, who might be a boyfriend.  And she learns things, things that change her whole life, as well as what life she may have next.  But where the book went?  While I had a few inklings of this being the actual plot early on, I dismissed them due to how the whole dynamic of the characters played out.  Until one of the things Scarlett found out on her science research project.

This was a book I could barely put down.  I had to know what was going to happen, and even when I found out that my earlier hunch was true, I still had to continue to read on to find out how it would all play out, and who all had been actually involved.  This book comes out on Tuesday, November 5th, and one really awesome opportunity is that you can get the e-book for $4.99, but only if you pre-order before the 5th, that's half price of what the e-book will be after that date.  It is available for this sale price for Nook, Kindle, all e-book formats as far as I can tell.

Make sure you check this one out!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I was doing so well this month with basically one post a day, then, Sunday, and I got sick.  So sick that I didn't even want to read, and anyone who knows me knows that means I am REALLY sick.  But normally I'm only sick for a day, then am doing better the next day.  And that's what I thought yesterday, so I got up, went to a check up doctor appointment having nothing to do with my being sick the day before, had donut holes at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, nothing for lunch, then went ahead and went to work at the bookstore.  I thought I was doing good in my dinner choice, egg drop soup, similar to chicken noodle, right?  But I did also get crab rangoon, probably not the best choice in retrospect.  About 2 hours before closing, my stomach started acting up again, and once I got home, I spent all last night sick again.  And so, I'm behind on both reading and blogging.  But, feeling better yesterday, I did finish The Fault in Our Stars and so now I am blogging about it.  I did get this book last summer at BEA as well, so it is yet another one I waited a while to read, not sure why.
I have a feeling a lot of people may not agree with my review of this.  Once again I feel that a book was built up by other people so much, that when I got around to reading it, I basically knew what was going to happen, and while it was good, it didn't blow me away as I had really high expectations.  So let me start out by saying that this was a really good book.  John Green is an awesome author.  To be able to make the reader laugh out loud in such a depressing story/world, is good writing, good storytelling, in my book.  But while I wouldn't say it was predictable, I wouldn't say I was really surprised by anything that happened in the book.  Again, possibly because of all the build up, and being told how sad it would be.  Is it sad, yeah, it can cause you to use a box of tissues.  But as things happened, I was kind of prepared, kind of figured those things would happen. Although I must admit, some of that is probably from the actual foreshadowing I feel the author did within the story.  Here's my quick summary:

The main character is Hazel, she has terminal cancer.  There is no cure for her, only ways to extend her life.  In fact she must have oxygen with her at all time because her lungs don't work that well.  She goes to a support group where she meets Augustus.  Augustus is really cute.  He is supposedly in remission, but lost a leg to his type of cancer.  He is there with his friend Isaac, also a teen with cancer.  Isaac has lost one eye, and when we meet him in the story, it is possible he may have to lose the other eye.  Hazel and Augustus seem to click right away.  And Augustus is really a funny guy, and he likes that Hazel is the way she is, she's not all, "poor me, how am I ever going to leave a mark in this world."  She turns Augustus onto this book she loves, An Imperial Affliction, which is about a girl named Anna who also is sick, and the books just ends in the middle of a sentence.  What Hazel likes so much about it is that it totally gets how she feels about it and what it is like having cancer.  She wants so much to know what happens next, to the other characters in the book, as she knows what happens to Anna.  But, the author is reclusive, and even though she's written many letters, he's never answered.  Augustus has her read a novel that has to do with the video game he likes to play, and she does get swept up into those.  And he gets really into her book, as they shorten it to, AIA.  And he does the crazy thing and emails the author, and gets an answer from his publicist.  Which leads to them attempting to go visit him, from a supposed invitation from him and his publicist.  But of course there are things that get in the way. Relapses or lung problems for Hazel just to start with.  Hazel tries to keep space between herself and Augustus, not wanting to hurt him when she dies, as he is the "healthy" one in the relationship.  I won't go on with any spoilers.  Just know that their love is a true one, and their saying, "Okay? Okay", is a sweet one, and you will really hope for a relationship like this in your life.  Well, without all the tragedy of cancer and all that.  A great story, ending kind of how I thought it would, but not in a bad way.
I will say that one of my all time favorite books is A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry.  The copy I have from when I was younger is tattered and dog-eared from me reading it over and over. So I know a sad story from a sad story.  And I wasn't surprised by what happened probably because of that.  But this book is one that could rate up in the same place in my bookshelf as the Lowry book because of enjoying the back and forth between Hazel and Augustus.  You do need to read it.  I'm sorry my review isn't as glowing as others, it is a really good book.  Again, I believe my less than stellar review has to do with my being so over built up for a superbly unique story.  Which for many people I believe it will be!  So don't let me steer you away, just go into it with no expectations, and you'll do nothing but enjoy (if crying is enjoyment to you :-).