Review: Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko

First, thanks to Wendy Lamb Books and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an egalley of this book. Although I got a bit behind on my e-galleys, and ended up having it expire 50 pages before I was done. And that was a really exciting bit of the book!  So I had to check it out once it was available to finish, so that I could go ahead and see just how it all wrapped up and write a review.  Now I have read one other book by this author, Al Capone Does My Shirts, and I really enjoyed it as well.  I think I enjoyed this one even more because of the science aspect with the Plague in it. 

The main character in this story is a 13 year old girl named Lizzie.  She lives with her father, who is a doctor, and her brother.  Her mother had passed away when she was younger, and her father is a doctor who will take trades or goods, rather than money for his services some times, so she also lives right next door to her aunt and uncle, her uncle who is the head of a large newspaper.  That way her aunt can oversee her education.  She goes to an all girls finishing school, which she hates.  She enjoys the times when she can go with her father on his house calls and she can learn about being a doctor.  She lives in San Francisco in 1900.  Girls don't do things like she wants to do.  And so her aunt is often unhappy with her. 

There comes to be a rumor of the plague in Chinatown, and it gets quarantined, which means their trusty servant Jing can't get back.  But his son shows up having come to stay in Jing's room to be safe.  With his dad gone, Lizzie is the only one who knows he is there, but she must get food to him so that no one else will find out and kick him out.  Along with all of this, she wants to help get Jing back.  She also makes a friend at school, who has a brother that ends up being a friend, and maybe more.  She decides maybe dancing isn't quite so bad when Jing's son Noah teaches her how to dance.  She does all kinds of things that aren't safe for a girl in that day to do, as well as proper.  And the plague does seem to actually be there as they find more and more dead rats, and even have the sickness come into their own home and family.

I love the history, the characters, all of it.  I love how at the end of the story the author gives so many facts and tells you just what was real, what wasn't, and what might have been.  Another great book by this author, and I am now going to be pushing her books to all librarians and teachers.

Review H2O by Virginia Bergin

I have to first say thanks to Sourcebooks Fire for allowing me to read an e-galley of this. I even was approved on both Netgalley and Edelweiss.  I guess I didn't realize that I'd asked at both sites, but I did.  And I'm glad I did, because I really enjoyed it.

The main character, our narrator, is Ruby.  I guess you could call Ruby one of the "popular" kids.  And Ruby is at a party, kissing her crush, Caspar, in a hot tub.  They're at her friend Zak's house, kind of a farmhouse out in the country, in England. Zak's parents are pretty cool, kind of hippies, as they've left the kids out there for their party, allowed them to have alcohol, and then don't bug them about it.  But on this night, while Ruby is in the hot tub in her underwear kissing Caspar, Zak's parents come running out and usher them all inside, no time to grab their belongings out of the barn or get dressed.  There's a rainstorm coming.  But it's in England, so big whoop, right?  Well it turns out that one of Zak's father's friends has given him a heads up about this rain.  You see, a long time ago, when Ruby was a very young girl, there was a giant asteroid heading towards Earth.  The scientists were able to completely destroy it before it hit the Earth.  But because Ruby and her friends don't really remember that, it's never been that big of a deal to them.  Until this night.  When it turns out that inside that asteroid, there had been a type of bacteria that was able to live in extreme conditions, like the ones that live at the bottom of the ocean near thermal vents.  So it survived in space, and it survived in the dust and rocks that did come through the Earth's atmosphere, and now it was in the rain that was coming. 

Everyone is kind of thinking the parents are being a little overprotective with making them all stay inside.  Even with the stuff that is getting broadcast on the radio.  So Caspar sneaks outside to grab his ipod and cell phone when no one but Ruby is looking.  But when he comes in, he doesn't seem to be feeling well.  He starts coughing, and soon is scratching his skin and bleeding.  Zak's dad says it isn't safe to leave, even though Zak's mom says they have to get Caspar to the hospital for help.  Everyone else is having tea and coffee to try to sober up from all the alcohol they've had.  Zak's mom wraps Caspar up to try not to touch him, and runs him to the car.  Ruby runs out with them to go to the hospital she thinks.  But Caspar dies on the way, and it seems that now Zak's mom might be sick from having touched him.  So she drops Ruby off at her own house, and she runs up, but under an umbrella to stay out of the rain.  But when Ruby gets to the front door, her stepdad Simon won't let her in at first.  He knows what is going on, and is trying to protect himself, as well as Ruby's mother and baby brother. Eventually he lets her in, but sticks her in the den, locks her in.  The rain keeps coming, and a neighbor even comes and knocks on the door asking for help, but Simon refuses to let her in, again to keep his family safe.  Ruby's mom throws some pain reliever stuff out the window to the neighbor.  Which may in itself be a fatal mistake.  When Ruby wakes up in the morning, the whole world will have changed.  She will have to survive with her family, and maybe eventually on her own when she tries to go find her read dad in London.  And more is learned as she tries to live without water, Simon is smart enough to know that the tap water is going to be contaminated, and that probably saves their lives.  But besides the water with the killer bacteria, there will also be people that are dangerous out there.

This was a very good story, told from the beginning of the "apocalypse" or "plague," whatever you want to call this.  Ruby's narration is a fun one, definitely like I would think a teen would talk/write.  I love that the science in this is mostly realistic. Although I really doubt that something that affected humans the way this does, wouldn't also affect the animals around as well.  But that's just my thought.  I really was kept involved in the story the whole way through.  It was hard to put it down because it was so minute by minute, and I didn't know exactly what would happen.  Would they get to where the army was and everything would be okay?  Or would it be like the camps I'd read about in other apocalyptic books like Ashfall by Mike Mullin?  I had to know how it would end.  And I'm not sure how I feel about the ending though.  I almost want more, but I can see why it ended that way.  So a good, edge of your seat read, for anyone who enjoys apocalyptic YA novels.

2013 Truman Possibility 16: Legend by Marie Lu

This is a book that I've seen bouncing around the Book  Blogosphere for awhile now.  I was very excited to get a copy of it at BEA this summer.  It's not signed, and I didn't get to meet the author unfortunately.   And I put it off reading until I got the list of the Truman possibilities and saw it was one of them.  And even then, I waited till about halfway through the books, because I had a good feeling I'd really like it, and I didn't know how many of the others I would like.  So I saved it for later.  And it was very good!  Now I'm eager to read on in the series.  I gave it a pretty high rating on Goodreads because I felt it was pretty original.  Yes, it was a dystopian, which there are many of.  But it had an interesting take on it.
We have two main characters that tell us the story.  First is Day, the most wanted criminal in the Republic.  From what I can tell, the Republic is basically California, or maybe all of the Western US coast, as its own nation that seceded from the United States, now called the Colonies.  So I'm guessing that Day is the Legend that the title refers to.  One reason I guess that is because the sequel is called Prodigy, which I'm assuming will refer to our other main character, June.  June is a prodigy, the only 10 year old to ever get a perfect score on the Trial.  So therefore June is now, 5 years later I believe, in the military school, of course as a prodigy, expected to move high up.
Day has become a criminal because when he took the Trial, even though he thought he did really well, he was told he failed, and so was supposed to be sent to a training camp.  But he wasn't.  He was taken away to a lab, where they experimented on him.  But he escaped.  Something considered really unusual for someone to escape from the "training camps".  And since that time, he has begun doing what he can to sabotage the Republic.  Really trying not to hurt anyone.  But when he finds out his family has the plague, he must find a way to get a cure.  So his next mission is to a hospital.  But he doesn't quite get out of it this time. Metias, June's older brother is there to stop him.  In order to get away, Day throws his knives at him, thinks he hits him in the shoulder, and gets away.  With injuries from dropping from the building.
June is woken up that same night, to come and identify her dead brother.  And she vows revenge on Day, doing whatever she can to help the Republic catch him.  Part of this ends up being going on an undercover mission to find him.  Which she does, and he ends up helping her when she gets injured.  At first she doesn't know Day is the Day, she doesn't know his name.  He and Tess are very careful not to say it.  But soon she figures it out.  And when she does, she knows she has to turn him in.  But she makes the soldiers, including her brother's friend Thomas, who she grew up with, promise not to hurt anyone in his family.  Again, this doesn't happen.  They kill his mother right in front of him.  June is so upset, and finally begins to see Thomas as not such a good friend.  She starts going through her brother's journals, and even finds things that lead her to believe Metias had also found something going on.
It is these mysteries, some of which June solves, that lead her to make her next decisions.  And lead to what happens to Day and his brother.  Great, great story.  One I didn't want to put down, and of course I was reading it with little time!  I will not be surprised if this is on the Truman final nominee list.