Review: Lie by Caroline Bock

Title: LIE
Series: N/A
Author: Caroline Bock
Publisher: St.Martins Griffin
Publication Date: 30th August 2011
Pages: 224
Special Features: N/A
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.86

Seventeen-year-old Skylar Thompson is being questioned by the police. Her boyfriend, Jimmy, stands accused of brutally assaulting two young El Salvadoran immigrants from a neighboring town, and she’s the prime witness. Skylar is keeping quiet about what she’s seen, but how long can she keep it up?

But Jimmy was her savior. . . .
When her mother died, he was the only person who made her feel safe, protected from the world. But when she begins to appreciate the enormity of what has happened, especially when Carlos Cortez, one of the victims, steps up to demand justice, she starts to have second thoughts about protecting Jimmy. Jimmy’s accomplice, Sean, is facing his own moral quandary. He’s out on bail and has been offered a plea in exchange for testifying against Jimmy.

The truth must be told. . . .
Sean must decide whether or not to turn on his friend in order to save himself. But most important, both he and Skylar need to figure out why they would follow someone like Jimmy in the first place

I was really looking forward to reading this book, and was highly disappointed. The synopsis sounded great and I really believed I was going to enjoy the book.

The book focuses on four friends, who to protect one another from being arrested they are forced to LIE (hence the name of the book) but after an attack on two Hispanic brother's goes from bad to worse, the truth begins to eat them up.

Within the first few pages I was bored and overly confused. But I carried it on, slowly it was becoming interesting, but took a dramatic U-turn and was back to where it started. The only thing motivating me to finish the book was it was a review Galley and I really wanted to prove myself as a reviewer.

The book focuses mainly on loyatly, friendship and racism, but I expected friendship and loyalty to take the bigger role, which apparently it does not. I have only ever read one series about racism before, and found this book quite hard to read due to the racial element's in it. I'm not saying they are handled wrong, because they have not. I am just someone who has never been around such racial attacks, and I possibly believe that it could be toned down a bit more.

Within the book we witness numerous amount's of POV's from many different character's (I counted 10 in total). For me this was good and bad. Firstly it caused a large amount of confusion for me and throughout the book the amount of focus of such a large amount of character's slowly began to prove hard to keep track of when I came across them later on.
But as the book progressed I realised that for the storyline of the book, a large amount of POV's was just right, but maybe not this many. It allowed you to see such a horrible event, through not just one or two eyes, but everyone who seemed to be involved and effected. Also it allowed much more background information on the character's to be shown.

Caroline's writing style was not so good. I felt almost like I was being told instead of shown, which is slightly understandable seeing as a large proportion of the book was based on the past events which had taken place, but even the present parts it seemed to lack allot.

The book was quite hard to read, and on some occasions highly un-believable.
Jimmy, and a number of other character's are very much Racist's, they have strong views that no one from other countries should be allowed in America full stop, and Jimmy's view managed to influence, his small group of main friends: Skylar, Sean and Lisa-Marie, to the point that they begin to think what he says is true. Jimmy is also the school's sport star and it is slightly portrayed in the book that despite everyone in the school knew what really happened, they refused to grass him up because of his position. This for me seemed unbelievable and I just couldn't get to grips with it.

I will only talk about one character, which is Skylar.
I felt almost like Skylar was the only character I properly saw enough to talk about and I would say the main character of the book.
Skylar is the girlfriend of Jimmy, who has been charged of attacking two Hispanic brother's and is still in prison.
Skylar seems very reliatent on her boyfriend and is constantly saying how Jimmy would always have a plan, and Jimmy said this. Also she yearns  to much for him, and seems to care much more about the fact that he is in prison then anything else, at that moment of time (which I guess is believable).
She on the other hand is quite a third-dimensional character, depending on the way you think and see things you may say that her personality and reliance of Jimmy is due to her past, which is discovered in the book.

I give this book...



   

Review: The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade

Title: The Ghost and the Goth
Series: The Ghost and the Goth #1
Author: Stacey Kade
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Publication Date: 29th June 2010
Pages: 288
Special Features: N/A
Goodreads Average Rating:  4.02

 After a close encounter with the front end of a school bus, Alona Dare goes from Homecoming Queen to Queen of the Dead. Now she’s stuck as a spirit (DON’T call her a ghost) in the land of the living with no sign of the big, bright light to take her away. To make matters worse, the only person who might be able to help her is Will Killian, a total loser outcast who despises the social elite. He alone can see and hear (turns out he’s been “blessed” with the ability to communicate with the dead), but he wants nothing to do with the former mean girl of Groundsboro High. 

Alona has never needed anyone for anything, and now she’s supposed to expose her deepest, darkest secrets to this pseudo-goth boy? Right. She’s not telling anyone what really happened the day she died, not even to save her eternal soul. And Will’s not filling out any volunteer forms to help her cross to the other side. He only has a few more weeks until his graduation, when he can strike out on his own and find a place with less spiritual interference. But he has to survive and stay out of the psych ward until then. Can they get over their mutual distrust—and the weird attraction between them—to work together before Alona vanishes for good and Will is locked up for seeing things that don’t exist?

My expectations were pretty average on this book. I didn't expect anything amazing, nor anything completely rubbish, but I expected better than I received.

The book didn't manage to hold onto my interest, after the first few chapter's. The beginning was strong, and kept me interested, but afterwards lacked any excitement. When I was about 3/4 way through the book I really couldn't believe it, it felt almost as if the story was still in the beginning stages. The story plan didn't seem very well-developed, and with a little bit more time spent on the planning, it could of been dramatically improved.

The book was also quite short and very fasted paced in someways, I would of enjoyed to see much more time of Alona getting over her death, and also on Will's past.

The book is set in the POV's of two characters: Alona Dare and Will Killian. This was one of the good things about the book, it allowed you to see stories from both point of views and also learn more about them.
Though both character's had disappointment's about them.
Let's start off with Alona, she plays the ghost in the story and she was head-cheerleader, prom queen etc.... when she was alive. Her parts of the story, were written in a way that you could see Alona saying this, and is was completely believable, though she seemed un-phased about being dead and a ghost. Also she is not exactly the most like-able character in the book, she's cruel and hurt-full, yet I will admit she did have her nice moment's.
Then there is Will, who has a special ability to communicate with ghost's, but due to no-one believing him, he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He's my favourite of the two, but also he's kind of a 'what you see is what you get' character, almost one dimensional.

I will not be carrying on with the series.

I really do wish I could give this book more....

Book Review: Radiance by Alyson Noel

Title: Radiance
Series: Riley Bloom #1
Author: Alyson Noel
Publisher: Macmillian Children's Books
Publication Date: 24th August 2011
Pages: 183
Special Features: 1st Chapter of Shimmer
GoodReads Average Rating: 3.55

Riley has crossed the bridge into the afterlife—a place called Here, where time is always Now. She has picked up life where she left off when she was alive, living with her parents and dog in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. When she’s summoned before The Council, she learns that the afterlife isn’t just an eternity of leisure. She’s been assigned a job, Soul Catcher, and a teacher, Bodhi, a possibly cute, seemingly nerdy boy who’s definitely hiding something. They return to earth together for Riley’s first assignment, a Radiant Boy who’s been haunting a castle in England for centuries. Many Soul Catchers have tried to get him to cross the bridge and failed. But all of that was before he met Riley . . .

 I will honestly say that I was quite disappointed with this book.
I had first read Evermore, which is the first book in Alyson Noel's more popular series The Immortals, Evermore happens to be the book where Riley the main character of Radiance, appears as Ever's younger sister, who is a ghost.
She was my favorite character in Evermore, which was the main thing which attracted me to reading this book. She seemed like a pretty awesome and funny character. But this did not follow through in Radiance, she is quite annoying, mean and I kind of just wanted to hit her, but I guess you can say she does well at portraying 12 year old girls.
Riley also quickly goes to judge her guide, Bodhi, as a dork, just from how he looks, but there is no evidence in the way he acts to support this, and well also supports my reason to hating Riley.

The writing in the book is set in first person, from Riley's perspective, the words and writing style used with in the book, was almost perfect for her, informal and chatty, but I came across some complex words which would not be used by a 12yr old.

The book was short, and lacked any sort of decent story-line, I do personally believe it could of been improved by making the book longer. At the beginning there was the usual 50 page introduction to the book (which was more than a quarter of the book), then it went straight into the story, where as I believe a decent book slowly progresses in the central story-line and problem.

The whole trying to convince ghosts to cross the bridge and into the afterlife/heaven, was just not believable it was too easy and silly.
Riley also had to leave her parents to go and fulfill the job she receives, but has no problem with that at all, when a 12yr old in fact would, the writer almost tried to forced Riley's character to be much older than she is.

The story had nothing that seemed to pull me into it, and I was more of skim-reading the last 100pages, than I was reading it.
The reason this book did not receive a 1 star rating, was because it was quite bad, but not horrible, it just managed to cling onto being read-able and would be a good book for younger readers.

I give this book....