Charlotte's Library

Shiver Written by Maggie Stiefvater I've had this book on my to-read list since it first came out with rave reviews. I never really picked up on the fact that it was about (were)wolves. That right there should have been my first hint of distaste. Everything in the YA literary world now seems to be compared to Twilight , which did seem to relaunch the "paranormal romance" genre, and I hate to go back to that old trope, but let me just say that while the writing was arguably better than Stephenie Meyer's, Maggie Stiefvater's Grace and Sam made Bella and Edward's relationship seem safe. Other reviewers have pointed out that the writing was overly descriptive, and I do agree with them on that point. The story took a very long time to get to a point (this seems to be a Thing nowadays. Why are so many authors gravitating towards writing trilogies and unnecessarily stretching stories thin?) and once it did, the explanations were lacking. Like I'd mentioned...

The Ghosts of Ashbury High written by Jaclyn Moriarty I had read and enjoyed Jaclyn Moriarty's The Year of Secret Assignments many years ago, and, since then, had also read all of her other books. In preparation for The Ghosts of Ashbury High , I decided to reread her previous books, all set in Ashbury High. The thing you have to love about Moriarty's books is her ability to interweave plots but still have each story definitely hold its own. Characters from one story will unexpectedly cameo (or even play a large role) in the next. Bindy Mackenzie, annoying transcriber from The Year of Secret Assignments suddenly has her own books, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie. This book goes back to featuring some of our favorite characters from The Year of Secret Assignments , but throws two new characters in the mix, Amelia and Riley. Amelia and Riley have a strange air of mystery around them, throwing the school into mass speculation and rumors of ghosts in their midst. This is the...

Sweet Valley Confidential written by Francine Pascal So. Hah. Yeah, I read it. I grew up reading all the Sweet Valley books, so I've actually been waiting to see the girls again for a while. I expected a hilariously bad return, and, well, the badness exceeded expectations. I'm probably in the minority about this, but I enjoyed the SVU books more than the others, and found the SVH books to be horribly dry. So I was disappointed that this mostly followed SVH canon (which makes very little sense. I guess I should be relieved that moments from SVU were mentioned to begin with, but seriously, she must be extremely ashamed of that series or something since plotwise it held almost no relevance). The pairings in this book were absurd, as were the characters Pascal chose to focus on. While I'm glad the main story was between Jess and Liz, I did not like the huge role Todd played (never was a fan of his. What a bore). I enjoyed seeing a lot of Bruce, but awesome characters ...