Flowers in a desert need a drop of rain.
Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien
4/5 - just wonderful
dystopia, family, mystery
After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents disappear.
As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she faces the brutal injustice of the Enclave and discovers she alone holds the key to a secret code, a code of “birthmarked” babies and genetic merit.
Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, Birthmarked explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where a criminal is defined by her genes, and one girl can make all the difference.
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I really liked this! Despite almost giving up immediately. The one problem with dystopian reads is that everything always has some weird, futuristic name. I hate that.
Where We Belong by Emily Giffin
1/5 - bad
angst, chick lit, family, coming of age, contemporary
Marian Caldwell is a thirty-six year old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door . . . only to find Kirby Rose, an eighteen-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. From the moment Kirby appears on her doorstep, Marian’s perfectly constructed world-and her very identity-will be shaken to its core, resurrecting ghosts and memories of a passionate young love affair that threaten everything that has come to define her.
For the precocious and determined Kirby, the encounter will spur a process of discovery that ushers her across the threshold of adulthood, forcing her to re-evaluate her family and future in a wise and bittersweet light. As the two women embark on a journey to find the one thing missing in their lives, each will come to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves-a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever
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I didn't think much of this. For one thing, it definitely romanticized the whole awful situation.
I didn't like any of the characters or any of the subplot. I thought a big chunk in the middle was very unnecessary and had nothing to do with the plot of the book.
Maid to Match by Deeanne Gist
3/5 - like
adult fiction,alternate views, historical fiction, period fiction, romance, love story
From the day she arrives at the Biltmore, Tillie Reese is dazzled-by the riches of the Vanderbilts and by Mack Danvers, a mountain man turned footman. When Tillie is enlisted to help tame Mack's rugged behavior by tutoring him in the ways of refined society, the resulting sparks threaten Tillie's efforts to be chosen as Edith Vanderbilt's lady's maid.
But the stakes rise even higher when Mack and Tillie become entangled in a cover-up at the town orphanage. They could both lose their jobs...and their hearts
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It was a bit Harlequin for my taste. I could do without the rippling muscles and quivering bodies, but there wasn't much of that. I think I'll check out this author some more.
The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
5/5 - AMAZING
coming of age, contemporary, family, realistic fiction, social issues, young adult, own, multiple reads
In a polygamous cult in the desert, Kyra, not yet fourteen, sees being chosen to be the seventh wife of her uncle as just punishment for having read books and kissed a boy, in violation of Prophet Childs’ teachings, and is torn between facing her fate and running away from all that she knows and loves.
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first read: July 2011
Heartbreaking and disturbing. Everyone should read this. Just wow.
Titanic: Unsinkable by Gordan Koeman
3/5 - like
alternate views, historical fiction, kids books, own
The Titanic is meant to be unsinkable, but as it begins its maiden voyage, there's plenty of danger waiting for four of its young passengers. Paddy is a stowaway, escaping a deadly past. Sophie's mother is delivered to the ship by police - after she and Sophie have been arrested. Juliana's father is an eccentric whose riches can barely hide his madness. And Alfie is hiding a secret that could get him kicked off the ship immediately.
The lives of these four passengers will be forever linked with the fate of Titanic. And the farther they get from shore, the more the danger looms.
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I found this in the children's books at Good Will. I have to get the other two books now.