Mini-reviews: Spoiled, Wither, Huntress, Divergent, and The Midnight Palace

August 9, 2011

Argh, I read all of these books ages ago and kept meaning to review them and then didn’t. I’m going to keep these pretty short so I can make myself write them and then have this be done and stop feeling guilty.

Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Poppy, June 2011. 368pp. 9780316098250.
After sixteen-year-old Molly’s mother dies, she discovers that her father is none other than movie star Brick Berlin and goes to live with him in LA, leaving behind her friends and a maybe-boyfriend in Indiana. But Brick already has a daughter, Brooke, an aspiring actress herself, who doesn’t want to share her father’s already limited attention and affection with a Midwestern interloper. Spoiled rises above other rich-and-catty books with its spot-on humor, especially in its observations of the extreme consumerism and self-obsession of Hollywood and its inhabitants. But it’s not all hot yoga and cold shoulders in this story: characters have emotional depth, reasons for their behavior. They change over the course of the story and develop real connections with one another. Most of the major conflicts are wound down by the end, but the last few pages set up a sequel. 3/5.
Book source: sent by publisher

Destefano, Lauren. Wither.
Simon & Schuster, March 2011. 368pp. 9781442409057.
Rhine lives in a future where genetic experimentation gone wrong has limited the lifespan of men to 25 years and women to 20. Women are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to ensure the propagation of the human race. Dystopian stories were my favorite before they became the next big thing in YA and while I’m still finding titles I like, this wasn’t really one of them. It’s not a dystopian tale so much as a kidnapping story set in a dystopian-lite setting. I’m not even really sure that it makes sense that young adults would be so concerned about making babies in such a situation: I think we’d all be more likely to be living hard until we died young. I was also disappointed that so much menace and threat in Wither came from the disturbing ideas of what might be going on in the basement of the mansion where Rhine is imprisoned, but none of that was really resolved and seemed completely left behind at the end. Similarly, the Housemaster was really frightening and it felt like a lot of time was invested in making him scary–but then he’s completely abandoned at the end of the book. Maybe I went into this book with expectations too high, but I felt left down when I finished it. 2/5.
Book source: my library

Lo, Malinda. Huntress.
Little, Brown, April 2011. 384pp. 9780316040075.
The world is out of balance, and only Taisin and Kaede, seventeen-year-old girls who have been training to be sages (one with great success, the other entirely without), can mend things by traveling to the far reaches of the land and crossing over into the Fairy Kingdom in this tale inspired by Chinese influences. Huntress is very atmosphere-driven: the eerily oppressive feeling of the absent sun, the endless dripping of the rain, and the isolation and numbing quiet of the cold are all companions in their own right in the girls’ quest. The relationship between the girls grows in fits and starts, entirely entwined in the progress of their quest, and the alternating mix of discovery, reluctance, and passion is better developed than many. Unfortunately, the final task the girls must complete felt rushed and tacked-on, emerging and being resolved far after the major climax has passed. In spite of that, Lo still spins a lovely tale set in a rich world. 4/5.
Book source: requested from publisher

Roth, Veronica. Divergent.
Katherine Tegen Books, May 2011. 496pp. 9780062024022.
In a future Chicago, everyone is in one of five factions that live their entire lives based around a single virtue (candor, selflessness, learning, bravery, friendliness). For the first sixteen years, you live and work in the faction to which you were born, but when you become sixteen, you choose the faction where you want to spend the rest of your life. Beatrice has been raised in Abnegation, but when her time to choose arrives, she surprises everyone by turning Dauntless. She must face a brutal initiation and keep buried a potentially terrible secret about herself she has recently discovered. I think this was another one where I went in with too-high expectations, and while I wasn’t disappointed, Divergent didn’t blow my mind the way I was hoping it might. Am I getting jaded with all of the dystopian titles out now? I hope not because I do love a well-constructed dystopia. Anyway, this one has the brutality of the Hunger Games, if that’s what your readers are looking for, and while Beatrice/Tris was way too slow to catch on to the feelings the initiation leader has for her, their romance at least seemed grounded in respect for one another rather than just falling in love at first sight or for no particular reason or because of fate. Tris isn’t the Chosen One the way you see in a lot of high-action YA fantasy and sci-fi, but is, rather, one of many, and I’ll probably read future books to see how that develops. This is certainly a solid story, but it didn’t wow me the way I wanted it to. 3/5.
Book source: my library

Ruiz Zafon, Carlos. The Midnight Palace.
Little, Brown, May 2011. 304pp. 9780316044738.
Twins Ben and Sheere have been separated since they were infants, but they’re thrown together when an unknown evil enters their lives, bent on exacting its revenge. Together with Ben’s close group of friends from the orphanage in which he was raised, they must find out what is chasing them and why–and how to defeat it. This is another book that absolutely rocks atmosphere. Check this out:

The shadow of the storm heralded the arrival of midnight as a vast leaden blanket spread over Calcutta, lighting up with every burst of electric fury it unleashed. The fury of the north wind swept the mist from the Hooghly River, revealing the ravaged skeleton of the metal bridge. (227)

The book is just full of sentences and passages that make you feel the sweltering heat; make you see the packed, dirty streets; that make the place a very real thing. And there were some genuinely scary parts to this story. But while The Midnight Palace didn’t have the glaring plot holes of Ruiz Zafon’s Prince of Mist, the motivations of the villain, once they were revealed, still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Fantastic setting, weak story. 3/5.
Book source: requested from publisher

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Tags: 2 star, 3 star, 4 star, carlos ruiz zafon, heather cocks, jessica morgan, lauren destefano, malinda lo, reviews, veronica roth, ya lit