Slasher Girls and Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke

"Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go.
And no one else could pry you free of it..."

This collection of short stories features so many amazing authors (April Genevieve Tucholke, A.G. Howard, Marie Lu, Megan Sheperd, Cat Winters, Carrie Ryan...and that's just the ones I've read) that I HAD to read it. I was a teensy bit nervous that they would scare me too much, but there wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Basically just the right amount of scare for me. It's also really cool how every story lists inspirations at the end, such as other stories or books, movies, or songs.

Among my favorite stories was Carrie Ryan's "In the Forest Dark and Deep." It's about a girl named Cassidy who used to have tea parties in a clearing in the woods with the March Hare, who is not a harmless little rabbit. I also really loved Megan Sheperd's "Hide-and-Seek," about a girl playing a game with Death. I really wished that Jonathan Maberry's zombie story, "Fat Girl with a Knife," had been longer. I'd probably even read it as a full length book. Finally, A.G. Howard's "Stitches" was full-on weird and also full-on amazing.

On the other hand, I wasn't a fan of Tucholke's own story, "The Flicker, The Fingers, The Beat, The Sigh." It's a little predictable, and one of the several stories that feature boys who suck. Though you have to admit that boys do often suck, they suck especially hard when they're being murdery and rapey and the spawn of Satan. Guess that's why they call them "Monster Boys."

This was definitely a good collection. My biggest complaint is that I wished most of the stories were longer. For a decent dose of horror and chills, I definitely recommend Slasher Girls and Monster Boys.

My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

"You may think you know the story. It goes like this: once upon a time, there was a sixteen-year-old girl named Jane Grey, who was forced to marry a complete stranger (Lord Guildford or Gilford or Gifford-something-or-other), and shortly thereafter found herself ruler of a country, She was queen for nine days. Then she quite literally lost her head....
But.....
We have a different story to tell...."

My Lady Jane is a VERY loose account of Lady Jane Grey's nine day reign as Queen of England. In real life, Henry VIII had been King, he married Catherine of Aragon, she gave birth to a daughter, Mary. Henry was not pleased with the lack of a male heir, so he decided to put a ring on his mistress, Anne Boleyn. Unfortunately, England was a Catholic nation and divorce wasn't allowed. Ever the resourceful once, Henry decided to start his own church and have all the divorces he wanted. Poor Anne only gave him one daughter, Elizabeth, before losing her head. His third wife finally gave him a son, Edward. After a few more wives, Henry dies and leaves Edward in charge.

Edward grew ill, and it was soon discovered that he would die. To keep England from falling under Catholic control, Edward changed the line of succession. Instead of going to Mary, the crown would go to his cousin Jane. Mary doesn't take it well, raises an army, and takes the throne back. Jane and her husband Guilford end up losing their heads.

My Lady Jane is, somewhat surprisingly, a comedy. Less surprisingly, it accomplishes this by taking a lot of liberties with the actual history. The main players are all the same. The religious war has been replaced with a battle over shapeshifters. E∂ians are humans who can change into animals. There is a party that opposes them, that believes they should all be killed. King Henry VIII surprised his country by turning into a lion to maul an unfortunate messenger. Unfortunately, he has passed away and left the country to his only son Edward. Edward has recently found out that he is ill with the Affliction, and it's getting worse. His chief advisor urges him to name a successor.

The country would normally go to Edward's oldest sister Mary, but she is strongly against E∂ians. His advisor Lord Dudley's solution is to leave the throne to Edward's sensible cousin Jane. Jane would marry the advisor's son Gifford, and the throne would pass to any male heirs that they produce.

Lady Jane Grey is not well known at court. She has a profound love of reading, and a dislike for parties. She's a girl after my own heart. Jane has been engaged several times, and her fiance always fell into some misfortune. She doesn't think that the new engagement will be any different, but the wedding is scheduled to take place in only a couple of days.

Her fiance, Gifford (He prefers G, but I don't), is also not well known at court. He has a pretty good reason, though: he is an E∂ian and spends his days, from sunrise to sundown, as a horse. Unlike other shapeshifters, he can't control his changes. Gifford is in love with Jane from the moment he sets eyes on her, but she thinks that he finds her ugly. Jane is offended by Gifford's "hobbies." He has worked hard to maintain a reputation as a lady's man in court, but it's a front to cover up his terrible secret: Gifford writes poetry which he reads in taverns.

In spite of being prepared for the "special hug" that comes after marriage, Jane and Gifford do not consummate their marriage. Instead, they live together rather tensely. He makes fun of her books, she makes fun of the fact that he is a horse. They bond on their Honeymoon by taking food and supplies to a village that was attacked by rogue E∂ians. When they finally start to like like each other, they find out that Edward has died. Jane is now the Queen of England.

As it turns out, Edward isn't actually dead. His favorite dog, Pet (Short for Petunia) turns out to actually be the daughter of one of the stablehands. Pet informs Edward that Dudley has been poisoning him in order to make him appear ill. Edward manages to escape the castle...by turning into a falcon and flying away.

Jane is advised to pass the throne to Gifford, but she refuses. This makes Gifford's father angry and hurts G's feelings a bit. Unfortunately, as Jane is being crowned Queen, Mary is gathering an army to fight her. Soon enough, Jane and Gifford are thrown in the Tower of London waiting to get their heads cut off, and Dudley is at Mary's side. This is basically where the real story ends. Fortunately, this one has a happier ending. 

I really loved My Lady Jane. It's really very funny, and I loved the anachronistic humor (There were constant jokes about things not being invented yet). Jane and Gifford were super cute together, even when they were being kind of infuriating. I may have spent the majority of the book wanting them to just kiss already. At least they fared better than their real counterparts. There was a part where they were locked in the Tower, and Gifford carves Jane's name in the wall of his cell, and I was Googling the real story, and...

I'm not going to lie, this made me sob a little. Aww, poor Gifford/Guildford! Poor Jane. Thankfully, as I said, we get a much happier ending here. My History degree is crying a little bit, but the rest of me is satisfied.
   

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. 

 

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

"What if the future doesn't want to be changed? What if it wants what it wants? What if it makes no difference what any of us do, whether we are heroes or cowards?"
"The future doesn't want anything...We're the ones who make the future..."

Prenna moved to New York five years ago, but it wasn't a typical move. It's not about where she moved, but when. In 2090, the world is being ravaged by a blood plague that kills the majority of the population. In order to survive, Prenna and several others emigrate to their past, our present.

The travelers, as they call themselves, must live by strict rules. They have to fit in with normal people, time natives, as they call them. They must limit contact with the time natives. Travelers could expose them to any number of diseases, and vice versa. Most important of all, travelers cannot be intimate or fall in love with a time native. This sounds like a rule waiting to be defied by a teenage couple in love!

When Prenna first arrived in the past, she became disoriented. A young man named Ethan saw her arrival. Now, as a teenager, she walks into his classroom. He recognizes her right away. They form a friendship and then a romantic relationship, rules be damned. Ethan is also friends with a homeless man. They discuss philosophy together, as teenaged boys and vagrants do. The man startles Prenna by telling her about a murder that will occur May 17th, 2014, a pivotal moment that she must stop.

Of course, travelers are not supposed to change the course of events. It's just time travel basics, people. When the homeless man's true identity is revealed, Prenna is determined to change history, even if she has to go against her mother and the other travelers to do it.

 The Here and Now was a solid book. It had a lot of romance, and I loved the time travel stuff. It falls apart a little at the end, but it's overall pretty good.

I received my copy of The Here and Now from Netgalley, courtesy of Delacorte Press. It's available for purchase now.

Pivot Point by Kasie West

Pivot Point was a unique story. If nothing else, I will say that the way the story tells is unlike any other book I've read. It's about a teenager named Addison. She lives in a compound where all the people have special abilities. Her ability is called Divergence. If she is facing a major decision, Addie can look into the future and live out the timeline for whichever decision she could possibly make.

The power comes in handy when her parents tell her that they are getting a divorce. Her father will be moving out of the Compound and living among normal people. Addie explores what would happen if she lives with her dad or with her mom. Each decision is told in alternating chapters. If she stayed with her mom, Addie catches the attention of the quarterback. With her dad, she becomes friends with a group of normal kids, including sensitive Trevor. The stories eventually start to overlap, with the characters appearing in both timelines.

I love the details about the Compound, and I really love having chapters switch off between timelines. I believe that this book will continue in a series. There are a lot of potential directions it could take, so that will be interesting to see. Personally, I didn't connect very deeply with the book, but I still enjoyed the story and originality behind it.

I received my copy of Pivot Point from Edelweiss, courtesy of Harperteen. It's available for purchase now.

Life As I Blow It by Sarah Colonna

I honestly had no idea who Sarah Colonna was before I read this book. I referred to her as "friend of Chelsea Handler" and then "Sarah...something" before I finally remembered her name. The book appealed to me because I love a memoir, and I like the blue dress she's wearing on the cover. Besides, I enjoyed Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, so it was worth a try.

Life As I Blow It is the story of one woman chasing her dream of becoming famous. Along the way, she works at restaurants, drinks, dates, falls in love, has sex, and then drinks some more. There is a lot of drinking involved. I really like that even when Colonna isn't sure about her love life, she never gives up on pursuing her goal.

For good or bad, the book doesn't contain nearly as much depravity as those of Chelsea Handler. By which I mean that there are fewer midgets. Colonna still seems like she'd be a good time. The book is like hanging out with one of your friends, listening to stories of relationship hijinks. If nothing else, you have to admire the fortitude of the woman's liver. Because seriously, there is an abundance of drinking.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I became aware of The Help when it spent forever on the Bestsellers list at work. Women of a certain age would look for it for a book club. These factors don't bode well in getting me to read a book. What happened was that my friend recommended the book to me, and I decided when I started Cannonball Read that if someone suggested a book, I'd read that book. This was my first (and only) suggestion.

The Help is sort of amazing in that it is chock full of book club-worthy topics. It's almost a Lifetime Movie. There's racism, domestic violence, more racism, infertility, feminism, a little romance, and yet more racism. Oh, and cancer. You can't forget the cancer. It's also all about women. Even with all that working against it, I actually ended up enjoying The Help.

The plot centers around three women. Aibileen and Minny are maids for prominent families in Georgia. Skeeter is a young woman fresh out of college. She wants to pursue a career in writing, but is having difficulty because it's the 1950s and she's a dame. A publisher in New York advises her to write about something she cares about, something that nobody else is talking about. Skeeter eventually decides to write a book about black maids and their experiences working for white women.

It's not easy for Skeeter to get a maid to talk to her, let alone help her with the story. The first maid to help is Aibileen. She has been serving as a maid for over twenty years. Aibileen feels that it's important to tell her story. She eventually convinces Minny to talk as well.

At that time, much of the Southern United States was segregated. Skeeter's best friend Hilly is trying to advertise a Home Health Initiative among the Junior League, aimed at building separate bathrooms for maids and service employees of color. This issue is what inspires Skeeter's idea. It also gets Aibileen and Minny to tell their stories.

Unfortunately, nobody gets cured of their racism. I thought maybe if all the ladies played football together like in Remember the Titans...but I digress. The three narrators all had interesting points of view and compelling stories. It was also incredibly sweet to read Kathryn Stockett's essay about her own maid growing up. It's nice to know that this was such a personal story for her. So, in summary, pick this book up if you want to discuss a book with your grandma or maiden aunt, or maybe just wait and catch the movie when it comes out.

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

If you lived in a world where everyone had a personal fairy, what kind would you have?

How to Ditch Your Fairy is set in a world where people believe in fairies and most people have a personal fairy. The fairies vary, from a loose-change fairy to a clothes-shopping fairy to a boy-attracting fairy. Charlie Steele has a parking fairy that she hates. She is attempting to rid herself of the parking fairy by walking everywhere she goes and hoping that it leaves. Because she walks everywhere, she is getting into trouble at her school for tardiness and breaking other rules at her rule-filled school.

Charlie dislikes a girl named Fiorenze Burnham-Stone. Fiorenze has the boy-attracting fairy. Unfortunately, Charlie's crush, new guy Stefan, takes an instant liking to Fiorenze. He still likes Charlie and even claims to not liking Fiorenze whenever she isn't around, but her fairy makes it impossible for him to resist her. Further complicating the situation, Stefan has a never-in-trouble fairy so that he can lavish as many kisses and PDAs on Fiorenze as he wants, and Stefan doesn't receive any punishment even though such things are against the rules.

Two things surprised me about this book. The first was that Charlie was actually very unlikeable. Fiorenze was turned into an enemy by no fault of her own. I actually felt incredibly frustrated when it was clear that Fiorenze is miserable and only wants to be Charlie's friend. Her fairy is even worse than Charlie's, but Charlie is too busy hating her to listen or sympathize. All Charlie does is complain about her fairy, list her demerits and complain more about how life just isn't fair. We are hearing everything in her head and therefore most of these things aren't out loud. Still, as Alice said in The Magicians, "...You can choose to be miserable."

Even more surprising was how dystopian the book was. It is set in a city called New Avalon. Everyone in the city believes that New Avalon is the greatest city in the world, and if a street is the steepest street in New Avalon it must therefore be the steepest street in the world. Stefan just moved to New Avalon and is appalled at the sense of superiority and the pridefulness over local celebrities referred to as "Ours." He also resents that nobody has any curiosity at all about anyplace outside of New Avalon, places where he claims everyone hates them and hasn't heard of the "Ours."

Going even further with the dystopian themes, Charlie and her friends all attend New Avalon Sports, a school specifically for training athletes. These students have super-long days that include lunch and dinner breaks, and their only day off is Sunday. There is a long list of offenses that can earn demerits, then game, then school suspensions, and finally expulsion. These offenses were things like tardiness, kissing, crying, wearing the wrong uniform, not laundering your uniform, wearing the wrong size of uniform, not eating enough calories or protein, and on and on. Charlie claims that the rules are to teach discipline like athletes need, but the whole thing seems kind of fishy to me in a Big Brother kind of way. My concerns are never addressed, the story never strays from the fairies into secret government agencies or anything. It just would have been cool to have a simple fairy story turn in that direction.

Finally, I really enjoyed this book in spite of fairy talk. Despite an occasional belief that I am victim of voodoo when a pain pops up in my tummy, I am not superstitious. I simply do not believe in fairies (Clap to save Tinker Bell, kids!). I liked that some characters had fairies and still insisted that fairies don't exist, that everything was all just luck. In the end, a lot of things could be dismissed as luck or coincidence. Just in time for the perfect parking space, pheromones to attract the boys, and a knack for finding change. Maybe you knew how to fly all along, Dumbo. Who needs fairies anyways?