"The Difference Between You And Me" by Madeleine George

Three out of five stars.

I had seen this book on display at my libarary, and then saw some okay reviews for it on goodreads.com, so I went ahead and checked it out the next time I went. I read it in a couple afternoons - it's a quick read, and also a "just okay" read.

"Jesse cuts her own hair with a Swiss Army knife. She wears big green fisherman's boots. She's the founding (and only) member of NOLAW, the National Organization to Liberate All Weirdos. Emily wears sweaters with faux pearl buttons. She's vice president of the student council. She has a boyfriend.

These two girls have nothing in common, except the passionate "private time" they share every Tuesday afternoon. Jesse wishes their relationship could be out in the open, but Emily feels she has too much to lose. When they find themselves on opposite sides of a heated school conflict, they each have to decide what's more important: what you believe in, or the one you love?" [taken from goodreads.com]

To be completely honest, I've never read a "LGBT" book before, as this is labeled. But seriously, I don't think we need to label it as a "gay" book or whatever, it's really just a (sort of) romance. Because really, I woudn't label what Jesse and Emily have as "love."

The book is written from three perspectives: Jesse's, Emily's, and also from the POV of another girl named Esther. It's a little bit weird, as Jesse's chapters are written in third person, Emily's are written in first, and Esther's are written in first as well, but she only has two chapters in the entire book, and they're both very short. I don't exactly know why George decided to give her two awkwardly placed chapters to herself, especially when everything she said could have easily been told through dialogue with Jesse and sort of was later on anyway. So that kind of confused me. Also, I was shocked when I saw that Emily's chapter was written in first person when Jesse's was written in third, but I think I see why the author did it - because there was no other possible way to get the readers to understand what was going on in Emily's messed up head. More on that in a second.

As the summary says, Jesse and Emily have some "private time" every Thursday afternoon, or in other words, making out in the library bathroom. Jesse's out and proud, rebellious (or at least she thinks she is) and one of her closest friends is Wyatt, a gay boy who no longer goes to her school, who proved to be one of my favorite characters. I really liked Jesse, and I loved how big of a role her parents played in the story. DPS (disappearing parent syndrome) is one of the worst things that can happen in a YA novel. As a teen, our parents play a pretty big role in our lives, whether we like it or not. So I'm glad George didn't neglect that. 

On the other hand, Emily is "in the closet," bisexual, popular, pretty, wears J. Crew and all that, and has so much school spirit that I kind of wanted to puke. I could not stand her. Ugh. I could tolerate her at the beginning, but at the end I just hated her. When the big "controversy" develops, I hated where she stood, and I hated how she tried to get her way. She was ignorant, self-absorbed, and kept using the "Just do this for me" card, like nobody else in the freaking world mattered. And I hated the way she thought of Jesse.  She thinks that Jesse's boots are hideous and wishes she would get rid of them, and she hates talking to Jesse because she actually has opinions that haven't been forced into her head by megacorporations. Yet, she thinks that she and Jesse are "soul mates" because something just clicks when they make out. But... well... isn't that just hormones? I hate to say it, but if that is the proving factor for your relationship when you can't even speak to each other, that relationship is going down the drain.

And now, the big controversy. Emily has brought a big corporation into the school to sponsor the dance. She's even working as an intern for them. Jesse, on the other hand, has teamed up with Esther to fight the corporation because of the way they'll shut down all local stores, have children work in sweatshops, and lots of other bad things, etc etc. I totally sided with Jesse and Esther. Emily refused to believe this, and I won't give away all the details, but I was ready to kill her.

The ending was cute, I guess. I was content with it. It wasn't anything spectacular, but more of a "well, let's get it over with" kind of thing. There were some things said at the end that I think really shouldn't have been said, dealing with the whole "love" aspect, as I think Jesse and Emily weren't really in love at all. But for a coming of age story and all that, I guess it was reasonable.

If you want a quick read, I'd recommend this. I didn't not like it, but I didn't love it either.

"Songs For A Teenage Nomad" by Kim Culbertson

4.5 out of 5 stars!

This is the kind of YA fiction that I absolutely adore. It's fresh and new and modern and made me want to jump into the book, become friends with all the characters, and yell at them and hug them and... geez. It was just that good.


"After living in twelve places in eight years, Calle Smith finds herself in Andreas Bay, California, at the start of ninth grade. Another new home, another new school...Calle knows better than to put down roots. Her song journal keeps her moving to her own soundtrack, bouncing through a world best kept at a distance.
Yet before she knows it, friends creep in - as does an unlikely boy with a secret. Calle is torn over what may be her first chance at love. With all that she's hiding and all that she wants, can she find something lasting beyond music? And will she ever discover why she and her mother have been running in the first place?" [taken from goodreads.com]

This review is going to be formatted a little bit differently than the last, but here we go...

Let's start off with the main character - Calle. At first I wasn't in love with her, and sometimes I was annoyed at her, but in the end I thought she was a great protagonist. She wasn't a completely rude and sassy and sarcastic female lead (like, let's say... Maximum Ride pre-Fang romance) but she was strong and independent, and overall likeable. I really was able to admire her for being able to do what she's done. Calle's dad left her and her mother when Calle was just a baby, and now her mother is constantly moving in with new guys she's met, and on occasion married, only to have them leave her. Leading me to my next point...
The "mystery" aspect. No, this book is not a mystery novel. But as I've heard from one place or another - every story should have some mystery aspect. Some question needed to be answered. And this book definitely had that! Details about the moves and about Calle's father were trickled throughout the book, and were satisfying and intriguing enough to keep me going.
Now, the other "part" of the story- the friends and the mysterious boy. I loved it. Something I feel is lacking in YA books nowadays is a standard friend group. Think about it. In a bunch of books I've read, the character has one or two friends, who sometimes remain faceless and don't really change at all. This book was a breath of fresh air - there was a distinct friend group, with some friends playing a bigger part in the story than others, but they were all unique and loveable.
And the love interest - I loved how they didn't give away who it was on the back! I thought once she met her first friend in the school, "Well, there you go, that's the love interest." WRONG! I made that mistake again until it was revealed. And I loved the way that the romance was handled. It wasn't just some cheesy lovey-dovey stuff in which the characters admit their love for eachother and BAM! we've got ourselves a relationship. It was difficult, and although the boy annoyed the crap out of me sometimes, I really loved his different sides and I think his story was definitely unique.
Something I also thought was interesting about the book was the way the chapters were introduced. Calle carries around a song journal, which at first I thought was where she wrote her own lyrics, but it was instead where she wrote down memories that were brought up for her when she heard certain songs. They're all really good songs that she mentions, and I really liked how the memories tie in with the story. She puts the name of the song and the small journal entry at the start of every chapter, which was very interesting. I also liked how the song titles were reflected in the chapters - for example, one chapter called "Perfect Blue Buildings" (the Counting Crows song) then had a part in which they were walking through the blue buildings of their school.
I don't want to give away too much of this book, so I advise that you go out and read it! I read this book in one sitting, I loved it so much. It has a very satisfying, gripping ending, and this book is very deserving of all the awards it has won.

"You Have Seven Messages" by Stewart Lewis

1/5 stars.

I am not one to buy books. I prefer the library, and if I do buy a book, it is usually paperback, or a $9.99 Kindle eBook. So when I picked up "You Have Seven Messages" by Stewart Lewis -- hardcover -- I had high expectations. None of said expectations were met.

"It's been a year since Luna's mother, the fashion-model wife of a successful film director, was hit and killed by a taxi in New York's East Village. Luna, her father, and her little brother, Tile, are still struggling with grief.
When Luna goes to clean out her mother's old studio, she's stunned to find her mom's cell phone there—charged and holding seven unheard messages. As Luna begins to listen to them, she learns more about her mother's life than she ever wanted to know . . . and she comes to realize that the tidy tale she's been told about her mother's death may not be the whole truth." [from goodreads.com]

The Good:
Whoever wrote the blurb on the inside cover, Lewis or not, was good at drawing me in. They took what little plot Lewis had and drew it out to an enormous extent. The little blurb on my book was different than above, and there was a little bit about how Luna goes to discover the truth along with her, and I quote, "dreamy neighbor, Oliver."
Dreamy neighbor? Discovering the truth about her mom? All though cell phone messages? Yes, in fact, I will take this book for $17.99, ten dollars paid for with a gift card.
Wrong decision.
This is where the good ends.

The Bad:
Plot: Where was the plot, exactly? Where was the mysterious plot promised to me in the blurb? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Luna does get her mother's cell phone, and then waits about six and a half million years to listen to the messages. When she finally listened to the first one, I was ready for the book to pick up in pace. I was ready to forget about the terrible writing and the terrible voice (I'll get to this in a second) because, yes, oh finally, the mystery will be revealed!
The first message was from the dry cleaners. Her mom never did pick up that dress.
Mysterious.
So Luna takes a stroll down to the dry cleaners and gets the dress. There's nothing really special about the dress. The dress does not have a key to the secret chamber of the house in its pocket. No. The dress was just a way to get Luna to the dry cleaners at the same exact moment as her "dreamy neighbor, Oliver." This is where Luna starts her pathetic relationship with Mr. Nonexistent Personality, and where I started to read the rest of the book for the sole purpose of writing this review.
Luna then took it upon herself to wait chapters in between listening to messages, none of them, but the last, being very insightful or mysterious. One leads her to a bar, where they talk about some guy, and the really big "mystery" is solved pages after that. There you go. Mystery solved halfway through the book. And what a mystery it was.
I was expecting her mom to be some spy or something, and people were after her, and she had to keep the secret from her family. She did not, in fact, get hit by an innocent driver, but a saboteur.
Nope. Not that at all. The mystery was -- who was she with on the night that she died?
And in all honesty? I didn't care.
The rest of the book is devoted to Luna trying to find herself and all that and trying to get dreamy neighbor Oliver to kiss her. Wonderful.

The Characters (Especially of the protagonist sort): I could not stand about the vast majority of the characters in this book. Luna was maybe the most unconvincing, unrealistic, teenage character I've ever read. I know, I know, "EJ, cut him a break! This is a middle-aged man writing from a fifteen year old girl's perspective! Geez!" Well, I am a fifteen year old girl, and this to me sounds nothing like anybody I would ever know.
As one reviewer on goodreads said, Luna's voice varies from the voice of a kindergartner to an adult. At the beginning, she sounds like a two year-old. "I'm not a tween! I don't watch Hannah Montana! Blah blah blah." This again, is something that will bring the book down -- Lewis refers to something that is common today about every other page. People reading this in say, fifteen years, will not know what the heck is going on. Anyway, other things that made Luna unbelievable was her severe lack of friends. In some cases, it's okay for characters to be friendless, as long as there's a reason. (Such as Vera in "Please Ignore Vera Dietz." There were tons of reasons she didn't have any friends. Review coming soon!) But Luna, the daughter of a multi-millionaire  film director, should have people on their hands and knees, begging to be her friends! She has two distant friends, but you would think that there would be another group that she would still belong to. But, no, apparently there are only three other girls in this school, because she must turn to Janine, a girl that is severely more mature than she is, and is mentioned about four times in the entire book. Luna's reaction to just about everything kind of annoyed me, not just with the messages, but also to Oliver (get to that in a sec) and major plot points. At one point, she found out that her dreamy neighbor Oliver was seeing another girl. She walked away with barely even a "This made me sad" kinda dealio. She just walked away and got ice cream or something. No expression of emotions. None at all.
Then there's Oliver. Oh, oh, Oliver. Dreamy neighbor Oliver. Second place in the "No Personality Whatsoever" competition, only losing to Mr. Cullen. Anyway... I had high hopes for our dreamy neighbor. In fact, when Luna acted like the biggest dork in the Northern Hemisphere by walking up to him on her birthday and saying, "I'm fifteen!" he replied back, "Hi, Fifteen, nice to meet you." I thought it was kind of cute. That's pretty much were the cuteness ended.
Luna described his lips as "violet" which kind of scared me, and their conversations were always dull and bland and pretty much summed up an awkward first relationship... if they were seventh graders and their relationship died after four painful days. But it didn't. More like four painful months, and still going strong when the book was over (sorry to spoil it, but... well, no I'm not.) He insisted on calling her Fifteen the entire time, too, which was sorta cute, but at the same time.... weird. I was kind of scared he didn't actually know her name.
Her dad was bland and her brother was too angelic to be a ten year-old, her dad's girlfriend was pretty much faceless, and Janine was mentioned too briefly for me to even develop an opinion of her.

The Cover: I saw the same picture being used on a different book. Kind of strange.

Overall: I would not recommend this book at all. With the voice, plot, and characters all being sub-par,  I would suggest you save your money and your time.

I'll try to make my reviews less ranty from now on. But I'm a ranter. We'll see.