Liviania’s review of Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford
Young adult released by Hyperion 7 April 09

I may be twenty, but I still enjoy young adult novels.  They’re usually quick, fun, and willing to experiment with genre.  And, like adult novels, I don’t really care whether one is aimed at guys or girls.  Carter Finally Gets It is definitely aimed at teen guys, but I think the girls could still enjoy it.

Carter’s your basic horny fourteen-year-old, starting his freshman year of high school.  (For the first bit, he’s your basic horny thirteen-year-old, which bothers me a little.  For some reason I’m much more cool with the idea of a fourteen-year-old being sexually active rather than a thirteen-year-old.  Of course, even then, I’m glad he doesn’t go past heavy petting in the book, because I think even fourteen is young for sex.)  He wants to be popular and get a hot girl, but doesn’t really know how to go about either.

I love that he kind of stumbles into both.  Carter gains glory through sports and is smart enough to date the girl who says she’s interested in him.  Unfortunately, he messes things up with Abby when he agrees to go out with the hottest girl in the grade.  Then he’s got to get the girl back.  I love that Brent Crawford isn’t afraid to allow Carter to be a jerk.  He’s just a kid; some of his decisions are going to be less-than-admirable.  But Carter always manages to redeem himself since he’s, in general, a good guy.

Now, while I say teen girls will probably enjoy this, I probably wouldn’t have liked this one much until I was an older teen.  But I’m sure there are others who would enjoy it just fine during or before their freshman year.  I think actual adults would enjoy it to, as long as they don’t mind reading about young teens.  It’s a very funny book.  Carter Finally Gets It relies on an engaging protagonist and humor to carry one of the world’s most basic plots.  And I don’t want to give away the end, but what happens after swim season ends is awesome.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it’s a lazy nickname, but he didn’t have much say in the matter.)

Here are five things you should know about him:

1. He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons.
2. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day…unless he gets distracted.
3. He’s a virgin, mostly because he’s no good at talking to girls (see number 1).
4. He’s about to start high school.
5. He’s totally not ready.

Join Carter for his freshman year, where he’ll search for sex, love, and acceptance anywhere he can find it. In the process, he’ll almost kill a trombone player, face off with his greatest nemesis, suffer a lot of blood loss, narrowly escape death, run from the cops (not once, but twice), get caught up in a messy love triangle, meet his match in the form of a curvy drill teamer, and surprise the hell out of everyone, including himself.

No excerpt found.

Liviania’s review of I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls, Book One) by Ally Carter
Contemporary Young Adult romantic suspense released by Hyperion 20 Mar 07

Cammie Morgan is on her way to become an elite spy, following in the footsteps of both her parents. She knows how dangerous those footsteps can be since her father never came home from a mission, but she’s still eager to use her abilities in the field. No one can follow a suspect like the “Chameleon.” While outside the walls of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, she falls prey to her hormones when she meets Josh Abrams.

Josh is an ordinary student at the local Roseville High School. He’s not-so-typical in the fact he notices Cammie while she’s trying to hide. Flattered by his attention, Cammie uses her and her friends’ skills to escape the Academy and go on dates. Of course, it isn’t as easy to pretend to be a regular girl rather than a spy-in-training as Cammie thought. It becomes an even bigger problem since she doesn’t have even a vague understanding of boys due to being raised at an all girls’ school.

This works until you think about it.  Why is a group of girls training to be femme fatales utterly ignorant of boys?  I’m not saying they should be experts in seduction, but they should have basic skills for interacting with the opposite sex.  After all, males comprise the majority of the politically important – the Gallagher Girls are going to be doing the majority of their work with men.  Ally Carter developed a fun concept, but this quibble makes it sometimes hard to suspend disbelief.

I am predisposed to like I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You.  I love spy novels, particularly ones involving younger spies.  It allows for an interesting exploration of psychological elements.  I also loved that it had a female protagonist.  I like the Alex Rider series and similar, but sometimes I want something girlier.  While the Gallagher Girls novels aren’t my feminine spy novels of choice, I enjoy them and look forward to the next release.

For one thing, I like reading about the other Gallagher Girls as much or more than Cammie.  You have Liz, a brilliant scientist who leaves something to be desired in fieldwork.  The glamorous Bex worries about her parents, who may disappear like Cammie’s father.  Macey, the new girl, becomes part of the group slowly – and partially because of her knowledge of boys gained through heterosocial education.  The other girls who aren’t part of Cammie’s main group also show potential in their brief appearances.  The novels, in my opinion, focus a bit too much on Cammie when there’s an intriguing ensemble cast waiting to be explored.

Josh and Cammie have decent chemistry, but their relationship seems pretty doomed from the start.  To me, this undercuts the drama and emotional intensity.  No relationship built on such complicated lies could or should survive.  However, it’s extremely fun to watch the schemes the girls develop to learn more about Josh unfold.  Every girl wants friends like these.

Carter has a cool concept, but her execution isn’t the best.  Most of all, I wish for more of the girls’ friendship to be shown and less attention paid to a lackluster love interest.

Grade: C+

Summary:
The Gallagher Academy for Exception Young Women is a fairly typical all-girls school—that is, if every school teaches advanced martial arts in PE, chemistry always consists of the latest in chemical warfare, and everyone breaks CIA codes for extra credit in computer class. So in truth, while the Gallagher Academy might say it’s a school for geniuses what they really mean is spies. But what happens when a Gallagher Girl falls for a boy who doesn’t have a code name?

Cammie Morgan may be fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways (three of which involve a piece of uncooked spaghetti), but the Gallagher Academy hasn’t prepared her for what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she’s an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, and track him through a mall without him ever being the wiser, but can she have a regular relationship with a regular boy who can never know the truth about her? Cammie may be an elite spy in training, but in her sophomore year, she’s doing something riskier than ever—she’s falling in love.

Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of Bloody Mary: Jacqueline Daniels Mysteries, Book 2 by J.A. Konrath
Mystery fiction released by Hyperion 16 Jun 05

Even though I’m still not a big mystery fan, I really enjoy J.A. Konrath’s Jack Daniels books. They are by turns funny and dark, and even though if I think about the books too long I am left feeling depressed, I still keep reading because tough-as-nails police lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is a character I’ve come to really root for.

In this second installment of the Jack Daniels mysteries, Jack finds herself trying to catch a killer who just may be a fellow cop on the Chicago police force. In the midst of all this, her ex-husband comes back into her life, she insists on her mom moving back in with her, and she still has to deal with the pest that is Harry McGlade, her former partner. In the meantime, Jack’s partner, Herb, is dealing with a midlife crisis of his own.

I really love what Konrath is able to do with Jack, and in this book, we actually see her at her most vulnerable, which is a bit of a challenge considering the fact that she does try to be stoic. In this book, I definitely got a better sense of who she was as a person, and I thought that her confusion over her love life and her worries for her mom were great.

The mystery here is as compelling as it was in the first book. We know right away who the killer is, but rather than stick with the formula he used in the last book, Konrath has this case pan out entirely differently, thus causing more psychological turmoil for poor Jack.

My quibbles with Bloody Mary were the same ones I had with Whiskey Sour. I thought the violence was a bit over the top. I hate how every book ends with Jack getting a proverbial slap in the face for her troubles, although at least this time she actually got the glory for solving the case and dealing with the killer. The killer himself crossed the line into cartoonishly over the top a few times for me, too, which made the climax just a bit less hair-raising than it otherwise might have been.

However, despite my quibbles, I think I liked this book just a shade more than I liked the last one and am looking forward to seeing what else Mr. Konrath has in store for Jack and Herb and their friends.

Grade: B+
Read my review of Whiskey Sour, the first book in the series, here.

Summary from the author’s website:
Start with a tough but vulnerable Chicago cop. Stir in a psychopath with a unique mental condition that programs him to kill. Add a hyperactive cat, an ailing mother, a jealous boyfriend, a high-maintenance ex-husband, and a partner in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Mix with equal parts humor and suspense, and enjoy Bloody Mary – the second novel in the funny, frightening world of Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels.

When Jack receives a report of an excess of body parts appearing at the Cook County Morgue, she hopes it’s only a miscount. It’s not. Even worse, these extra limbs seem to be accessorized with Jack’s handcuffs.

Someone has plans for Jack. Very bad plans. Plans that involve everything and everyone that she cares about.

Jack must put her train wreck of a personal life on hold to catch an elusive, brilliant maniac—a maniac for whom getting caught is only the beginning…

Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of Whiskey Sour: a Jacqueline Daniels Mystery by JA Konrath
Mystery fiction released by Hyperion 2 Jun 04

I’m not a big mystery reader, but I’ve been consciously trying to pick up books I normally wouldn’t. JA Konrath’s first Jack Daniels mystery isn’t one I’d have grabbed on my own, but a review I read somewhere made me intrigued enough to pick up this book. I’m glad I did.

You see, Jack Daniels is a woman, the Jack of course standing for Jacqueline. She’s been on the Chicago P.D. for 20 years, and she’s pretty much married to her job. But even she is shaken up by the gruesomeness of the killings made by a man who calls himself the Gingerbread Man killer. And this killer gradually becomes obsessed with Jack as well.

I love kick-ass heroines. Jack definitely kicks ass, and what’s more, I really like her narrative voice. I knew going into the book that JA Konrath was a man, so I was expecting Jack not to feel feminine enough, but she really worked for me. She’s funny, cynical, and self-depricating. I even didn’t mind the fact that there was no hint of a romantic subplot, although Jack does go out on a blind date. I’m hoping that there’ll be romance for Jack in future books, but I was glad she wasn’t distracted by love and could therefore do her job. There are definitely some romantic prospects, though, and one man in particular in Jack’s life that I want to hear more from. I also loved her relationship with her partner, Herb, and could definitely tell that they liked each other a lot. And the scenes where Jack talks to her mother? Awesome and hysterical.

In fact, the whole book is funny in a witty, snarky sort of way. I know I read some other review which complained particularly about the FBI agents who are totally just there for the comic relief, but those scenes had me in stitches. I even loved the parts where Jack and Herb crack jokes which aren’t very good.

Not to say that this is a lighthearted book, because it’s not. Konrath doesn’t pull any punches, and there was a lot of gore. I mean, seriously, the killer was incredibly creepy, though that being said the masterful part of the violence is that Konrath doesn’t describe everything in loving detail. He just paints a macabre picture and lets the reader fill in the rest. The killer actually seemed pretty smart, too, and the author waits until just the right moment to spring the identity of the villain on us. I was kept guessing right along with Jack, and at least in the romantic suspense I’ve read, I tend to figure out who the villains are relatively quickly, so it was nice to actually get that “Aha! So that’s the connection!” moment along with Jack.

My only real issues with the book are that I hate the technique the author uses. We get Jack’s first-person POV and then, occasionally, we’ll get third person chapters with the killer. This does heighten the suspense and Konrath juggles the POV better than most, but it’s a pet pieve of mine and I didn’t like it. However, since the book is getting a really high grade anyway, obviously I wasn’t crying about it too much. I also hated the ending. Justice is served, the killer is apprehended, but in such a way that I really felt awful for Jack. Saying more would constitute spoilers, but if I were Jack, I would have done more than punch someone in the face. I wanted better for her, which I guess goes to show that I did connect with the character.

Despite those issues, I really enjoyed this book and recommend it, especially if you enjoy snappy dialogue, gripping suspense and kick-ass heroines.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Lt. Jacqueline “JACK” Daniels is having a VERY bad week…

Jack’s live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has maxed out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself “The Gingerbread Man” is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.

Between avoiding the FBI and their moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth PI, Jack and her binge-eating partner Herb must catch the maniac before he kills again…and Jack is next on his murder list.

Whiskey Sour introduces a fun, fully drawn heroine in the grand tradition of Kinsey Millhone, Stephanie Plum, and Kay Scarpetta. It’s both laugh out loud funny and lock the doors scary.

You can download a PDF excerpt of this book from here.