Stacking The Shelves (6)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly feature hosted by Tynga at Tynga’s Reviews, in which we share the books that we have bought, received, or borrowed from the previous week!

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Book Review: A Midsummer's Nightmare

Author: Kody Keplinger

Publication Date: June 5, 2012
Publisher: Poppy

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.

At first I did not know what to expect from this book. When I saw the word “nightmare” and the girl’s worried look I thought maybe this might have a horror story behind it. Ok, so I was wrong on that accusation, but the main character does face some type of nightmare and that I was sure of. The word “summer” always draws me in and I know it is so bad to get sucked into a book because of its front cover, but I just can’t help it. I mean it 90 degrees outside so of course I am going to want to read anything involved with summer. I always like to feel as related to the books that I read as I can so that I can put myself in the character’s shoes.  

Let me just say first of all that this book is filled with the consumption of alcohol by under aged adolescents and a lot of partying on the main character’s part. The story follows Whitley Johnson and the summer after her high school graduation before she heads off to the University of Kentucky. Whitley is lost and confused at this stage in her life and uses alcohol and parties to fill the void that she feels within herself. The story picks up on the morning after graduation when Whitley wakes up with a major hangover and then carries on from there. Whitley appears as a bit of a mess at first and sometimes I found myself questioning her motives. As the story progresses you begin to understand more and more about Whitley’s situation and it starts to tie together.

The thing that I loved most about Whitley’s story is that this does and will continue to happen in every day, ordinary life. Teenagers get mixed up in a lot of things that they really have no business involving themselves with. They consume alcohol underage and they have sex with multiple partners before they are even out of high school most of the time. Even though this is a very controversial topic, it is one that needs to be addressed. Kody’s writing demonstrates almost exactly the thought patterns and daily concerns of an average college student just out of high school. Whitley is caught up in a world where the only peace and solace she receives comes from being intoxicated. So many kids are the products of divorce and Whitley is one of them.

She is angry with her current situation which involves the divorce of her parents and the marriage of father to a woman that she has never met before. At times I really wanted to scream and yell at her father. Why did he handle situations with Whitley the way that he did? Whitley stays every summer with her father is his condo and she assumes this one will be just like all the others. She is wrong! He springs his brand new family on her without even a heads up! Part of me understands Whitley’s frustrations with him. He was not one of my favorite characters. Neither of her parents ever really had the right advice to give her in my opinion, but she learns to be brave and eventually tells them how she really feels.

I can see a lot of people not liking Whitley because of the decisions that she makes and a lot of her choices are not the best, but she learns from her mistakes and I have to give her credit for that! She learns to let people into her life as well, which was part of her problem in the first place. I fell in love with the secondary characters like Harrison; her new friend who guides her fashion, boys, and how to be a lady! I also loved her relationship with Bailey who is going to be her new stepsister. Bailey is younger than Whitley, only a freshman, and at first she annoys Whitley half to death. By the end of the book Bailey is the only person that Whitley cannot say “no” to. Whitley realizes that she is responsible for this girl because Bailey chooses, unbeknownst to others, to look up to Whitley as a role model for her future high school years.

Keplinger writes a solid and intense story! I was hooked from page one and I always love those type of books. There was no reading two or three chapters still trying to get hooked on the story. NO, it came right away! Whitley was a chaotic hurricane at times and she made plenty of mistakes, but I love Whitley and I wouldn’t mind hearing more of her story! I have to admire her because it’s the people that hit rock bottom and get back up again that really have the potential to better themselves and those around them. Thanks for an awesome story, Kody!

Follow Me Friday (7)

Q: Happy Father's Day! Who is your favorite dad character in a book and why?

My Answer: Even though Sirius is not Harry’s father I believe that Harry would be just as proud to claim that he was! I loved the bond that Harry and Sirius were able to share, even if it was for such a short time. It was the first experience that Harry had as a son to someone and he felt like, for the first time, that he had someone to look to for advice and help!

Book Review: Tempest Unleashed

Author: Tracy Deebs

Publication Date: June 5, 2012
Publisher: Walker Children’s
Series: Tempest #2

Tempest Maguire is happy with her decision to embrace her mermaid nature and live among her mother’s clan within the ocean’s depths. Even though training to one day ascend the throne for the aging mermaid queen is rigorous, she finds refuge in the arms of Kona, the selkie who first opened her up to her mermaid side. But when word comes that one of her brothers has been gravely injured on land, Tempest immediately rushes to his side—which also brings her back to her old flame, Mark. And in her absence, a deadly battle begins raging at the hands of Tempest’s old nemesis, the sea witch Tiamat. As the dangerous war erupts, Tempest’s two loves—Kona and Mark, sea and land—will collide for the first time, both to protect her and to force her to choose.

Who, as a young girl, has not been swimming in pool on a hot, summer’s day and not dreamt of becoming a mermaid? I know that I did, several times. This cover is just so breathtaking because I automatically began imagining life as a mermaid. What color would my tail be? Would I have matching color tattoos like Tempest? I definitely know that I would be a mermaid with an attitude! The cover has the effect of being underwater and has a glowing shimmer to it. Did I mention that it made me want to go the ocean really bad? Well, it did!

Tempest Maguire is an all out mermaid who has recently chosen her fin over her feet. Following in her mother’s footsteps she journeys into the ocean to live out her calling as a mermaid and to defeat the dreaded sea witch, Tiamat. Tempest is coming into her new born powers that include calling storms and bringing down dreaded lightning bolts, along with her newest power of being able to reign down this large array of high powered electricity voltage. She is destined for great things and everyone in the sea knows this. A mermaid comes into her powers at the age of seventeen and Tempest has recently had her seventeenth birthday and has already shown so much potential with her incoming powers.

The majority of the book was a struggle for Tempest between her human half and her mermaid half. She often made comments that let me know just how much of a trial this was becoming for her, “For a second, I longed for life before my seventeenth birthday when my body actually did what it was supposed to, what I wanted it to.” Tempest had to leave her father and two brothers behind and was now feeling remorseful, just as her mother had done many years before her. She blamed her mother for leaving them for so long, but now Tempest is beginning to understand what “the call of the sea” really means. It is powerful enough to draw her away from her family, but not powerful enough to make her forget them.

However hard Tempest’s struggle may be, I still love to read about the fantastical world that she lives in. Everyone tends to think of the ocean as such a majestic entity and we often forget just what the depths of it hold. Tracy Deebs does a great job of writing a wonderful world under the sea. The creatures and places that she describes could make anyone wish they could sprout a tail and gills and explore it for themselves. My favorite example of this would have to be the shark-men or shark-shifters. Tempest describes them as, “Half men, half shark, they shark-men had a great white’s tail with a human torso and head, while their faces were a weird amalgamation of shark and human. Small, black eyes, long rounded nose, with rows and rows of sharp teeth behind their human like lips.” The ocean springs to life through Deebs’ descriptions like the one I have mentioned above. I wanted more and more descriptions of creatures like the shark-men!

The last thing that I would like to make reference to is the love triangle that Tempest finds herself a part of. She is in a relationship with Kona who is the Selkie prince and lives under the sea with her. However, at one point in the book Tempest is forced to return to land and is reminded of her love for her ex, Mark, whom she left when she became a mermaid. Let me point out that I still have not decided whose team I am officially on! Both of the boys have excellent traits and I can see why she is attracted to both of them. I will tell you that she always speaks of Kona in such a sincere and genuine tone, “Kona had always been incredibly supportive- and tolerant- of me.” At times I feel that she takes Kona for granted, even though he can be a little hard on her but he is only trying to protect her after all.

Tempest’s world is one that I loved reading about and I love the audacity and tenaciousness of Tempest as well. She was fierce and up against a powerful source of magic, but you really were never able to tell that she was fearful or concerned. She did things her way which I really loved about her. She was not going to make the same mistakes that her mother did and she proved that to everyone. I love Tempest and I hope there will be more books in the series! This is a great summer read and will really pull you toward the sea! Get lost in Tempest’s world (:


**This book was provided to me by Netgalley! Thank you so much**