Fall For Anything Review

TITLE Fall For Anything
AUTHOR Courtney Summers
PUBLICATION December 21st 2010 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ June 08 to 09, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

From the author of Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are comes a gripping story about one girl’s search for clues into the mysterious death of her father.

When Eddie Reeves’s father commits suicide her life is consumed by the nagging question of why? Why when he was a legendary photographer and a brilliant teacher? Why when he seemed to find inspiration in everything he saw? And, most important, why when he had a daughter who loved him more than anyone else in the world? When she meets Culler Evans, a former student of her father’s and a photographer himself, an instant and dangerous attraction begins. Culler seems to know more about her father than she does and could possibly hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death. But Eddie’s vulnerability has weakened her and Culler Evans is getting too close. Her need for the truth keeps her hanging on...but are some questions better left unanswered?

I’m not entirely sure why I keep doing this to myself. I read a Courtney Summers novel and am then faced with the task of finding new ways to praise her awesomeness and yet still have the review feel like its fresh. Well no, I know why I do it. Because her books are fucking amazing, that’s why. Fall For Anything is no exception. Once again she has brought to light characters that are so incredibly flawed that you are stunned at how they manage to work their way into your cold little heart by the final page.

Eddie is dealing with the sudden, tragic loss of her father. He committed suicide and now she is left alive wondering why he did it. I could’t fathom living with that constant wonder niggling at the back of your mind. Living once your parents light was snuffed out in such an unfortunate way, wondering if you were a part of the reason, wondering what you could have done differently. Right off the bat a very bleak atmosphere is set up and it remains that way through the entirety of the novel. This is something that I have come to expect from Summers and I always brace myself to go into that place before picking up one of her novels.

Eddie isn’t the only one coming to terms with this loss. Her mother has become a zombie and marches around the house in her fathers old housecoat. I was so saddened at how these two could not communicate and help each other out in the ways that they really needed to. To bridge this communication gap Eddie’s mothers best friend, Beth, steps in. It took me a while to get a read on this woman. Seeing her through Eddie’s eyes alone made it hard to see her for who she really was and not who Eddie saw her as. I came to really respect her love for this family and the way she was willing to go so out of her way to help bring them back to life.

Our MC also has light in her life in the form of her best friend Milo. This guy was so incredibly sweet. The way that he cared for Eddie in all situations and was not afraid to call her on her bullshit was amazing. That’s another thing I have come to expect and admire in Courtney’s novels, brutally honest characters. It’s always so refreshing to see people laying their emotions out there and not bottling everything up inside for an entire book. Culler (such a strange name, right?) also steps into Eddie’s life in these pages. He was a student of her fathers and he takes her on an adventure to try to put the pieces together in the why of her fathers suicide. I was so torn when he came into the picture because I had high hopes for Eddie and Milo’s relationship to go to the next level, but I liked how Culler was showing her a new side to her father that she barely knew existed.

A beautiful novel about coming to grips with loss, friendship and family, Courtney Summers has once again hit it out of the park. This girl can seriously do no wrong and I have to say that I am extremely sad this one is over. See, I was holding off on reading Fall For Anything because it was the last of her released novels that I had yet to read. Now the wait for her next release gets unbearable. So umm.. Courtney.. How is the writing of All The Rage Going?

Cracked Up To Be Review

TITLE Cracked Up To Be
AUTHOR Courtney Summers
PUBLICATION December 23rd 2008 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ February 06, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

When "Perfect" Parker Fadley starts drinking at school and failing her classes, all of St. Peter's High goes on alert. How has the cheerleading captain, girlfriend of the most popular guy in school, consummate teacher's pet, and future valedictorian fallen so far from grace?

Parker doesn't want to talk about it. She'd just like to be left alone, to disappear, to be ignored. But her parents have placed her on suicide watch and her conselors are demanding the truth. Worse, there's a nice guy falling in love with her and he's making her feel things again when she'd really rather not be feeling anything at all.

Nobody would have guessed she'd turn out like this. But nobody knows the truth.

Something horrible has happened, and it just might be her fault.

After reading Cracked Up To Be I am ready to start a Courtney Summers fan club. Every book I have read by her is my perfect book. They are straight to the point and they feature characters who are so blunt and real that you feel like you knew them in high school. She is the only author I have come across who can write characters that are so deeply flawed and completely mean & cold but make me actually give a damn about them.

Parker used to be perfect. She was on the honor roll (with distinction) 3 years running but since her best friend Jessie went missing at a party one night she has pretty much given up. She’s having weekly meetings with the school counselor and if she comes to school drunk one more time she won’t graduate. Parker had done a complete 180, she went from being Miss. Popular to being Miss. Stay-The-Hell-Away-From-Me. She did everything she could to keep people at arm’s length and she was just in general cold. In the beginning I couldn’t believe some of the horrible things she was saying and thinking & needing to find out what made her make this drastic change got me really sucked into the story. As things unfold and we find out what prompted her to close herself off she became someone that I sympathized with. Somewhere along this road of thinking she was being a total bitch, I started to care about her and feel bad that she was forced to become the way that she was.

What really got me connecting to Parker was her rocky relationship with the new guy, Jake. You can really feel her need to distance herself from him but at the same time she is fascinated with his persistence in the face of her coldness toward him. I liked Jake, he was a bit pushy but he knew how to handle Parker and really gave her what she needed. Her ex-boyfriend, Chris, is also in the picture and they clearly still like to toy with one another. Chris was great too, I couldn’t believe how willing he was to forgive Parker and still want to help her after all that she had put him through. It was clear all along that Parker loved this little triangle that was going on. She needed to be wanted to feel like her actions were actually getting her somewhere, but that went against everything she was working so hard to achieve which is what makes you really realize how mentally ill she was becoming.

What’s feeding her decent into this scary mental territory is the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Jessie, her best friend, from a party they were all at. We don’t know what happened for most of the story and we get little glimpses back to the night of the party as Parker remembers the night. I loved how this added a bit of mystery to the story. As she glances back, I was never sure exactly what had happened surrounding Jessie’s disappearance and I think the slow burn of finding out bits and pieces of the night kept the pace moving at the perfect momentum.

Summers has once again weaved a story that is unflinchingly honest and feels incredibly real. I turned the last page feeling pretty empty and emotionally drained (which is not a bad thing for me, it’s a feeling I love.) I actually sat there and just hugged my ereader for a while and went through the book again in my head. It’s safe to say that I will read anything that Summers puts out and she can’t bang ‘em out fast enough for me!

Waiting on Wednesday (48)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature that highlights books that I am anxiously awaiting. WoW is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

All The Rage
by Courtney Summers
to be published 2014

A 17-year-old girl’s attempt to blackmail her rich classmates results in her waking up on a dirt road with no money, no memory of how she got there and a semi-erased message she left for herself the only clue as to why. When she tries to piece together the evening before and all the events leading up to it, a dark and sinister game is revealed. Likened to Brick and Veronica Mars.

OK, so this book doesn't even have a cover but I don't care, it's my WoW and I can pick what I want.  I have become a huge fan of Summers over my (almost) year of blogging and her next novel sounds so good. I have a thing for movies/books where people wake up and have to piece together how they got to where they are.  Also, Courtney tweeted the following tweet last week that really got me hyped for it:

The girls in Some Girls Are were all kinds of mean so I can't even begin to imagine what these boys get up to!

So what are YOU waiting on this week?

Some Girls Are Review

TITLE Some Girls Are
AUTHOR Courtney Summers
PUBLICATION January 5th 2010 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ August 19 - 21, 2012

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard--falling from it is even harder. Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High... until vicious rumors about her and her best friend's boyfriend start going around. Now Regina's been "frozen out" and her ex-best friends are out for revenge. If Regina was guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumors are far from the terrifying truth and the bullying is getting more intense by the day. She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past who she herself used to bully. Friendship doesn't come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realizes Michael could be more than just a friend... if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don't break them both first.

Tensions grow and the abuse worsens as the final days of senior year march toward an explosive conclusion in this dark new tale from the author of Cracked Up To Be.

"You're Anna Morrison's right hand. That's the lowest form of life on the highest part of the social ladder. There's not much to you."

I sent out a tweet one afternoon looking for recommendations for a book that was gritty & raw, one that would make me uncomfortable while reading it because it was just so real. One of the first answers was Some Girls Are, so I got it for my Kindle and dug right in. I got what I wanted. This novel felt like a punch in the gut, upon finishing it I felt like I needed a stiff drink and a nap. Some Girls Are isn't pretty, it isn't sweet, what it is, is so real that it almost hurts to read it. It's the story of Regina, who is a part of the Fearsome Fivesome, she is among the queen bees of her school, the mean girls if you will. Now, these are not nice girls and Regina relishes being in with the "in-crowd", they make people's lives hell and feel damn good about it. One night Regina finds herself almost raped by Anna Morrison's boyfriend, and with no one to turn to in a house full of drunk & high teenagers, she runs and finds solace in the wrong place. In Kara, a girl who Regina has ruined. Kara seizes the opportunity to ruin Regina and tells Anna that Regina slept with her boyfriend. Low and behold, Regina finds herself turned into the in-crowds latest victim, and they won't stop until they've ruined her.

Regina, our MC, was not a nice person. Through her memories we see that her past is full of black marks and they are slowly revealed as the story goes on. At the beginning I was certain that there was no way I would have any empathy for her, I was disgusted by what she had done. But something changes throughout the novel, we get to see her fall apart, hit rock bottom, and attempt to pick up the pieces. I truly felt that, in the end, she was remorseful and I actually ended up rooting for her. She finally finds something good in her life in Micheal, whom she had previously ruined. Micheal was a GREAT character, he was sweet and funny in a very dry way. He didn't make things easy on Regina, and rightfully so. But Micheal is not the only person Regina has wronged in her past, there's Liz & Kara, they are all characters with immense layers that I found myself feeling terrible for.

"In high school, you don't get to change. You only get to walk variations of the same lines everyone has already drawn for you."

There is a lot to make you feel uncomfortable in this novel. These people are mean, they are jaw droppingly vicious to one another but it was so real. It didn't gloss over the fighting with fakeness and teachers getting involved. And that's precisely how it was in high school, I sometimes look back and wonder if the teachers thought that if they just ignored it, it would go away. The physical, online and emotional abuse in this novel is treacherous. If you are looking for a book that is going to make you sit there with a disgusted look on your face as you think to yourself "man I really want to punch this person in the face" then this is for you. It is an emotionally charged, incredibly well written tale that showcases the darkest parts of high school.

This Is Not a Test Review

TITLE This Is Not a Test
AUTHOR Courtney Summers
PUBLICATION June 19, 2012 by St. Martin's Griffin
READ June 2, 2012
BUY IT Amazon / The Book Depository

It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

A copy was provided by Raincoast Books in exchange for an honest review. 

This book blew me away.  I have had zero luck with the zombie genre which has been a huge let down for my because I love zombies in my movies and on my TV.  This Is Not a Test completely broke through my zombie rut and gave me hope for other books in it's genre.  What I think I loved the most about it, was that it was really about the characters, and how they grow and change throughout. Yes there is a fair amount of biting off faces and crowbars through faces, but it's more a character study and an exploration into how people deal with dire situations.  

Our MC Sloane Price completely tore my heart out throughout. I can't even count the number of times I found tears streaming down my face as her thoughts about her past and her future sunk in.  She was so empty, her life was so depressing and she had completely let go.  It was hard to read at times, I will admit, but I love brutal honestly in my books. The pain that Sloane felt because of her sister abandoning her and being the sole victim of her father's evil tirades was so real.  I can't even tell you how well the melancholy setting of this novel was conveyed, you have to read it, you really do.

The 5 others that Sloane takes cover with within the walls of Cortege High School are all 3 dimensional characters that I found myself totally invested in. Trace & Grace are twins and their bond is something that I would long for in a situation such as this. Trace was a very hard character to like, and I really didn't like him, but the protectiveness he showed for his sister and the love he showed for his parents made me at least connect with him. Harrison, though frustrating, was a perfect contrast to the strengths of those around him. I wanted to reach into the book, shake him, and tell him to grow a pair, but he really does evolve as the story goes on. And Rhys and Cary were the kind of jilted leaders that are necessary to have around.

There is a touch of romance within these pages, as much as there can be during a zombocalypse, but it did not overshadow the desperate emotion of the story and played a small part. The ending is quite abrupt and it did not go the way I was expecting but that served to make me love this novel even more. This is definitely a must read this year, but be prepared that you are in for some emotionally charged reading.  I absolutely loved everything about this book and can't wait to read more from Courtney Summers.

Waiting On Wednesday (3)

 

**Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by BreakingTheSpine**

This Is Not A Test

by Courtney Summers

published by St. Martin's Griffith

June 19th, 2012

It's the end of the world.  Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won't stop pounding on the doors.  On bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self.  To Sloane Price, that doesn't sound so bad.  Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she's failed to find a reason to keep going.  Now seems like the perfect time to give up.  As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she's forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live.  But as the dacys crawl by, the motications for survival change in startling ways and soon the group's fate is determined less and less by what's happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life -and death-inside.  When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

                                                                                                

I'm super excited for this book! I'm sensing a pattern in my WoW's (last week it was students locked in a superstore!) I love everything zombie and my daughters name is Sloane!  What are YOU waiting on this Wednesday??

*Book cover and synopsis are taken from www.goodreads.com