100 Days of Cake by Shari Goldhagen

"Of course she's right; I am pathetic. But it's not like I want to be this way- the heaviest 120-pound girl in the entire state of Florida..."

Molly hasn't been okay since her meltdown at her swim team's regionals. She had been suffering from depression before then, and is still struggling. Because of it, she doesn't want to get her driver's license or think about what she will do after high school. All she enjoys is working at the tropical fish store, FishTopia, with her friend Alex. They watch Golden Girls and eat lo mein, and Alex is the only person who treats her like she's normal.

In order to help her daughter, Molly's mother is trying a self help book called A Baker's Journey: 100 Days of Cake. She has been making a new cake every day. Most of the time, Molly pretends to like the cakes, but she really never does. 

Other than Alex, Molly's other bright spot is her therapist, Dr. Brooks. She has a huge crush on him, and he seems to like her as well. She talks with him about Alex, and he's sort of dismissive, almost jealous. What made me uncomfortable with this book is how Molly and Dr. Brooks cross the line between patient and doctor. We also never see him receive consequences for his misconduct, which is upsetting.

The big turning point comes when we learn FishTopia has been sold. Molly is devastated. She works really hard to get new customers, even throws a big benefit party to save the only good things in her life: FishTopia and her relationship with Alex.

100 Days of Cake sounded really good, and I love contemporary teen books that deal with mental illness. Molly was cool, but I was a bit frustrated with her at times. The therapist plot was pretty icky. What I liked about the book was how even though things get somewhat better at the end, Molly still has her mental illness. Just like in real life, it's not going to be miraculously cured. Yet we can still have a happily ever after. 

Patsy Walker A.K.A. Hellcat, Volume 1: Hooked on a Feline by Kate Leth and Brittney Williams

I knew Patsy Walker best in the form of Trish on Jessica Jones. Trish is actually really awesome, but I was a little skeptical about the comic. I don't know why I was, because it was absolutely delightful.

The plot involves Patsy putting her life back together after spending some time in Hell. While she was otherwise occupied, Patsy's frenemy Hedy has republished the old comics based on Patsy and her friends. Patsy's mother gave her the rights to the series, and Patsy hasn't gotten any money from the deal.

She could really use the money as She-Hulk had to let her go from her detective agency, and she also has to stop living in the supply closet. Patsy manages to bounce back, befriending a telekinetic almost-villain named Ian and moving in as his roommate. As Hellcat, she manages to fight and then befriend people with powers. This gives her the idea to open a job agency to pair people with powers with employers. It's a good solution, as lots of people with powers don't want to fight or commit crime, they just want to make a living.

It turns out that the people that Hellcat has been fighting are being recruited. A mysterious person has been seeking out people with powers on the internet. They have to prove that they are bad by committing a crime, then they can join the group. This person promises them anything that they need: a car, money for student loans, etc. It's up to Hellcat to stop this villain's evil plot!

Patsy/Hellcat is such a spunky and enthusiastic character, so I loved her. My immediate thought was that I wanted her to hang out with Squirrel Girl. Lo and behold:

I want to hang out with that squad. Hellcat was just as good as my beloved Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and made me laugh just as much. I love the lightness they bring, and I'm definitely excited to have another series to read. I'm also very excited to read the next issues because:

Jessica Jones!

Deadpool Killogy by Cullen Bunn

The Deadpool Killogy is comprised of three graphic novels. The first, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, starts when Professor Charles Xavier has Deadpool committed to Ravenscroft Asylum. What he doesn't know is that the famous Dr. Benjamin Brighton who heads the hospital is really Psycho-Man. The supervillain plans to brainwash Deadpool, hoping to form a super army, but it doesn't work out like he planned. He ends up making Deadpool's  subconscious stronger.

It's true that Deadpool has always had voices in his head, but now there is just the one very loud voice. That voice makes him see the truth: everyone in his universe doesn't really exist. They are just entertainment, not really alive. So it's up to Deadpool to put them out of their misery.

"Well, whoever they are--those little peeping toms out there in Never-Never Land--they're gonna want to keep their eyes peeled. They're gonna want to see what's next. They're gonna want to watch this world burn!"

Deadpool sees us see him

So, he kills them all. We see Deadpool fighting multiple heroes and villains. He shoots Spider-Man, blows up the Avengers, even kills Thor with his own hammer. They all end up dead or otherwise incapacitated. The book ends with Deadpool creeping up on the writers as they are brainstorming the ending:

Is it wrong that I'm scared?

"I kill and I kill and I kill...but it's never enough. There's always another Spider-Man...another Captain America...another Ms. Marvel..."

Deadpool killed the entire Marvel Universe, but it didn't help. In Deadpool Killustrated, he enters the ideaverse. You know how every story is the same story over and over? The characters in classic literature are the "inspirational building blocks" for the Marvel characters. If you kill the inspiration, they will cease to exist. 

Therefore, Deadpool has to become "metacidal." The majority of the book is Deadpool encountering, then murdering, characters from Captain Ahab and Moby Dick to the Little Women to Don Quixote. The characters start to morph into equivalent heroes as they die, indicating that the ideaverse is falling apart.

Eventually, Sherlock Holmes puts together a task force to track Deadpool down and stop him. The new subconscious is put into Frankenstein's monster at one point, which is kind of cool. I didn't really understand the voice when I was reading the book because I read the second book first, before I realized it was a trilogy.  

"At long last, he came to a conclusion. If he --if Deadpool was the only one who realized the world was fictional...then perhaps Deadpool was the source...and all the fragments of the multiverse were his dreams made real. This, of course, did not mean his search for nothingness would end. Quite the opposite, in fact. If all the worlds were to die, so too must all Deadpools..."

The third installment, Deadpool Kills Deadpool shows that Deadpool still hasn't been able to destroy the universe. We start with a Deadpool who is fighting a giant robot (Okay, we actually open with someone throwing Headpool in a microwave). He is attacked by another Deadpool, an evil one. The Deadpool Corps helps the good, at least better, Deadpool and fills him in.

There are versions of Deadpool all over the multiverse, and now Evil Deadpool is on a mission to take them all out. Since Deadpool is the origin of everything, according to Watcher (Guy with large head, omnipotent, traditionally watches but doesn't intervene), who is now a Deadpool fanboy, if Evil Deadpool succeeds in killing them all, the universe will cease to exist.

The Deadpools all choose sides. The versions of Deadpool are entertaining, such as Dogpool, Kidpool, Grootpool(!), Beardofbeespool, and my personal favorite: Pandapool!

"The species that endangers you!"

There were lots more that didn't get names. The tone of the third book is a lot different from the first two. I think it's because the Deadpool we focus on isn't the same one who was narrating before. Honestly, all three are basically the same: existential crisis, kill, kill, kill. The hundreds of Deadpools made the book entertaining enough, so overall I was satisfied with the conclusion.

I have enjoyed reading about Deadpool. I expected violence and snarkiness, but I didn't expect him to be sympathetic. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, maybe I'm like those women who write letters to serial killers or whoever makes that weird Creepypasta pin where they feel bad for Jeff the Killer even though he is fictional and gross, but I saw some real pain in Deadpool. In a weird way, killing everyone is his way of saving them, being a hero. I hope I'm not misinterpreting this horribly. It makes the character seem a lot more complex and interesting.

The reason I decided to read this series is that I was intrigued by Deadpool Killustrated while I worked at the bookstore. I requested it from the library, then realized that it was the second book in a trilogy and decided to read one and three as well. The meta stuff is right up my alley. I'm not going to pretend that I don't see some flaws in Deadpool's logic, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief.

It's a bit gimmicky, or like someone's fanfic, but in a good way. What would happen if Deadpool fought the Fantastic Four? The Three Musketeers? A million versions of Deadpool? (Answer to every question: blood, death, dismemberment.) Overall, the Killogy was entertaining and had a lot more philosophy than I expected. It was a pretty good intro to the Merc with a Mouth, though I'm sure there are lots of things I didn't understand. 

 

House of Ivy and Sorrow by Natalie Whipple

Josephine "Jo" Hemlock lives with her grandmother. People say that a witch lives in their house. Actually, two witches live there. Grandma has been taking care of Jo since her mother died from a curse. They are the last of the Hemlock witches, but still one of the major families.

Jo tries to keep her normal life separate from her magical one. Her two best friends, plus her potential new boyfriend, don't know anything about her witchy side. Things get complicated when the strange man shows up.

He is looking for Jo, but she avoids him. She can see that he has a very dark curse attached to him. The man is very persistent to get close to her. She finds out that this man is...her father.

Background info! Witches are all female, and women are the only ones who have magic. They need men to make new babies, but they end up leaving the fathers. Upholding the family line is more important than personal relationships.

Surprisingly, Grandma lets Jo's father into their lives (After getting rid of the curse). She also lets Jo tell one of her best friends about their witchiness. Unfortunately, the reason that she is being so lenient is because Grandma has the curse. She is dying, and it's super sad. Jo and her witch relatives (Including her adorable cousin) have to band together to try to destroy the curse before it destroys them.

This was a cool take on witchcraft. When the witches performed a spell, they had to offer something to get magic. The bigger the magic was, the bigger the sacrifice needed. They would need to offer hairs, fingernails, sense of taste, etc. I read a review of this book that mentioned how Teen books featuring witches are meant to counter against so many books that focus on weak female characters being saved by strong male vampires/werewolves/etc. This is definitely a good thing. I hope we see a lot more strong female characters, whether they are witches or not.

I received my copy of House of Ivy and Sorrow from Edelweiss, courtesy of HarperTeen. It's available for purchase now.

Catherine by April Lindner

Wuthering Heights was the last book I read in English class my senior year of high school. I formed an attachment to the book. I wasn't a huge fan of Catherine and Heathcliff and that big old mess they made. Cathy and Hareton, though, were sweet. I liked those two crazy kids, even if they were cousins. I have since read Jane Austen, I know that was a thing back then.

So, Chelsea/Young Cathy was told that her mother Catherine/Catherine is dead. She snoops in her father's closet and finds a letter from her at a place in New York called the Underground/Wuthering Heights. Believing that her mother is still alive, Chelsea sets off to find her. It bothers me that she would leave the father who raised her to hunt down a mother who abandoned her. I know the guy lied, but he still loves her. She doesn't even contact him again until the end of the book, which is sucky to do.

Anyways, at the Underground, Chelsea meets a dark and glowery stranger named Hence/Heathcliff. I know, Hence isn't a name, just go with it. He believes that Catherine must be dead because they are soul mates, blah, blah. Chelsea is undeterred. Hence lets her stay in Catherine's bedroom, where she finds her mother's journal. It's the story of how Catherine meets Hence and immediately decides that he is different from the other hopeful musicians looking to get in the Underground. She gets him a job, they fall in love, his band starts to come together. Life is really good for a while, but it doesn't last. Catherine's scary racist brother gets in the way. She has always dreamed of going to Harvard, but Hence is in New York. Tragedy ensues, and the two don't see each other for years.

Catherine wasn't bad, but I miss a lot of the crazy melodrama of the original book. I did get some solace in that the ending was sufficiently bananas, so I'm glad I stuck with it. It seems as though the story was more grounded here, with a negative effect. Catherine and Hence are not so much epic lovers as just a couple of kids in love. The mystery of Catherine's disappearance kept me reading, but it wasn't enough to keep me up late to finish the story. It could have been better, but it also could have been worse.

I received my copy of Catherine from Edelweiss, courtesy of Poppy. It's available for purchase now.

Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Oh my God, I hate this book. It's all about a woman with impulse control issues who keeps burying herself further and further in debt while refusing to take any sort of control or responsibility for her life. I suppose that I am supposed to find this all charming and whimsical, but I just don't see it.

Rebecca Bloomwood is the shopaholic in question. Every new chapter features a letter from her creditors. Neat! It's just like depressing real life. Unlike most sane adults, Becky chooses to ignore these letters. Her greatest wish is that someone else will receive her bills by mistake and just pay them for her. Until then, Becky just keeps buying crap and not making any payments.

In a truly shocking twist, Becky works as a journalist at Successful Savings magazine. A financial expert who is in extreme debt! Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? She schemes to fix her problems, from spending less to making more money. Lots of cringetastic shenanigans occur.

Then there is the boy. Luke Brandon is some big finance guy that seems all impressed with her for...some reason I don't know. It's the plot, I guess. Unfortunately, he's attached. She goes on a date with her roommate's cousin after, and only after finding out he's a millionaire. She wants to make herself fall in love with the guy to get out of debt, which is what prostitutes do.

Anyways, there is a typical happy ending. It's unearned. Some magical solution just shows up and solves all the problems. Plus, I know that she hasn't learned her lesson since there are a bunch of dumb Shopaholic sequels after this one, which I will not be reading unless I feel like raging against something. Same goes for the movie adaptation!

Heartless by Sara Shepard

I'm in the final stretch now, the penultimate book to be finished with the Pretty Little Liars series. Heartless is kind of a doozy of a book.

Killer ended with the PLLs narrowly escaping from a fire in the woods. They had rescued a girl who looked just like Dead Alison. She vanishes into thin air. Paramedics think the girls were just suffering smoke inhalation-induced hallucinations. Emily is so affected by seeing Ali alive that she refuses to stop mentioning the incident. Reporters start referring to the girls as the Pretty Little Liars.

Aria spends the book trying to contact Ali's spirit. She attends a seance and is surprised to see Noel Kahn there. It turns out that he is more than meets the eye. They later contact an actual medium. Aria asks who killed Alison, and the medium writes a note: "Ali killed Ali."

Spencer lost her college tuition, but her parents finally decide to stop being jackholes towards her. I was really excited for good stuff to happen because I like Spencer. Alas, A gets her to investigate her parents some more. She discovers that her dad had an affair with Ali's mom. They were half-sisters, and Spencer's mom was so disturbed by this that she killed Alison. When Spencer confronts her parents with this information, it turns out that the affair part was right. Spencer's mother never knew, though, and she definitely didn't kill Ali.

Hanna's dad sends her to an asylum for her mental well-being or something. It ends up being a really nice asylum, the kind celebrities go to when they're exhausted. She becomes friends with her roommate, a girl named Iris. Alas, Iris leaks information about Hanna to the press and turns out to be legitimately crazy.

Finally, Emily goes to an Amish community, in hopes of learning about Ali. An Amish girl named Lucy tells Emily about her sister Leah. Leah left on rumspringa to be with her boyfriend and disappeared. That boyfriend was Darren Wilden, suspicious police officer.

In a crazy plot twist, all the PLLs are then arrested. They are released after police arrest a man for Alison's murder. His name is Billy Ford and he had been working on the DiLaurentis' gazebo before Ali disappeared. They got him after they found a new victim: Jenna Cavanaugh.

The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin

The Baby-Sitters Club is one of my guilty pleasures. The first one I ever read was Boy-Crazy Stacey. My favorite sitter was Dawn. I inherited a large collection from my cousins and I used to get new books at Meijer's when I got my allowance for feeding the dogs. Let's just say, I have a history with the series.

As difficult as it may be to believe, I am an adult now. It's comforting to read the BSC. Everything is predictable and formulaic and wholesome, but I love every word. I sometimes sneak BSC books into my piles at library sales and Goodwill, willing to feign ignorance if confronted about my young adult book trash habit. So when I heard news of a BSC prequel, I was very excited.

The Summer Before is the story of the summer before four girls came together to create a baby-sitting super conglomerate. There are four separate story lines, each narrated by the different original members of the club. The highlights of each line are as follows:

Kristy eventually starts the BSC. Her father left their family years ago. She still wishes he would come back, and in spite of her better judgment, believes he will visit on her birthday. At one point, Mary Anne mentions how much worse Kristy has it because even though Mary Anne's mother died when MA was still a baby, she doesn't have any memories to really know what she is missing. Kristy has the memories, plus the pain of a parent voluntarily leaving and voluntarily staying away. Honestly, this is enough to make me tear up.

Mary Anne feels overwhelmed by her father's many rules. He is very strict because he raises Mary Anne all by himself. She is trying to get him to let her become a babysitter. Mary Anne also spends a lot of time looking through a box of her mother's things and trying to feel closer to someone she never really knew.

Claudia has been growing up faster than Kristy and Mary Anne. She is more interested in boys and clothes and this makes her detach from friends she has known all her life. Her summer is spent with an older boyfriend and first love.

Stacey was recently diagnosed with diabetes. She has been dealing with a case of the Mean Girls, worst of all being her former best friend Lane Cummings. Her family decides to move from New York to Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Stacey is excited to get away from her old life and escape to a place that can only be better.

The Summer Before was just as satisfying as reading a regular BSC book. I enjoyed the switching narrators. There were interesting insights revealed, such as how Claudia may have felt that Mary Anne and Kristy were acting like babies, but Mary Anne and Kristy were far from oblivious to these feelings. There were some inconsistencies that make the flowing from this to Kristy's Great Idea a little choppy. It's not horrible, but it is noticeable to a perfectionist like me. There aren't any monumental revelations and nothing new is revealed. Still, I did enjoy a new visit with old friends.