The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann

In Quill, people are divided at the age of 13 into three categories, Wanteds, Necessaries, and Unwanteds.  The Wanteds are sent to university and get the higher level jobs, the Necessaries do the menial labor and the Unwanteds are sent to their death.  But all is not what it seems because at the Death Farm, there is a magical world, Artimé, behind the gates that takes in the Unwanteds and grows their artistic talents (the reason they are Unwanted in the first place).  Alex is an Unwanted with a drawing ability while his twin brother, Aaron, is deem Wanted.  The two brothers are very different and that might cause the biggest problems of all between Quill and Artimé.

I really did feel sorry for Alex and all the other Unwanteds.  Sentenced to die for having creative ideas is terrible.  But the High Priest is determined to keep everyone under her control and forward-thinkers would challenge that so out they go.  But luckily for them Mr. Today, the so-called "Death Farmer," has created a magical parallel universe hidden from Quill to save the Unwanteds and not only foster their artistic abilities but to teach them magic based on their abilities.  So the drawing students learn to paint themselves invisible and use clay to bind people and many other pretty awesome things. The Unwanteds thrive in this world.  But they must say hidden from the land of Quill otherwise the consequences would be dire. It's a pretty neat concept and I liked the magic involved as well as the characterization of Alex and his Wanted twin, Aaron.

I was expecting more older middle grade but this was read younger middle grade to me.  The story was very simple and everyone was fairly straightforward.  Nobody really had gray areas in their personality.  But it was cute and I enjoyed it.  The cover says The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter and that is far from the truth, having neither the grittiness of The Hunger Games nor the world-building of Harry Potter.  It is still charming though.  If I compared it to anything it might be Diana Wynne Jone's Chrestomanci series but it still lacks that intangible quality that makes those books great.  What I'm getting at is that it is cute and fun and provides a largely one-sided view of creativity and that it is worth reading, but it lacks that something that makes a book a classic.  Children will enjoy it, some adults will enjoy it as well.  I would recommend it, just don't go looking for greatness.

Provided by the publisher
Publisher: Aladdin (Simon and Schuster)
Publish date: 8/30/11
ISBN: 9781442407688

The Lying Game (e-book) by Sara Shepherd

Emma is a foster kid bouncing from house to house.  When she sees a disturbing video online with a girl that looks exactly like her, she wonders what is going on.  Figuring out that she must have a twin, she goes to the girl's hometown only to end up impersonating her twin sister, Sutton, while trying to figure out what happened to the real girl and who is out to get them both.

It was a relief to me, too.  Back at my house, maybe we'd finally get some answers.  p.52 ARC e-book 

Gossip Girl meets Desperate Housewives meets Lois Duncan.  And really really good.  This is a carefully woven tale of games people play, lies they tell and feelings that get hurt and the vengeful road that leads down.  I was sucked in almost immediately and spent the whole book jumping from person to person as the suspect.  And then the book ended with no real answer.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  It is a series so I guess I should have expected that.  Having never read the Pretty Little Liars series, I didn't have any ideas of Shepherd's style.  But now, after reading The Lying Game, I do and I'm definitely reaching for the first one of that series. 

All of the characters are so well drawn that I can picture them in my head.  And the whole concept of the Lying Game that Sutton and her friends play.  Chilling.  I really want to know more about Sutton.  She is such an enigma and I feel like there is a whole lot about her that has yet to be explored.  The same goes for her friends and sister.  There are quite a few mysteries going on besides the bigger mystery of Sutton and I'm excited to read the next one. 

Review based on e-galley provided by Net Galley.
Hogwarts: Defence Against the Dark Arts

Adios, Nirvana by Conrad Wesselhoeft

It's true.  I am hard on my books.  You don't get your money's worth till you've slammed them against the wall a few times.  Broken their backs.  My books are my family - the more they hurt me, the more I hurt them. p.6 ARC

Sheer beautiful sadness.  I cried and by cried I mean tears streamed down my face through the last part of this book.  It was so inherently sad and hopeful and there was beauty and pain.  I don't even know.  To lose your brother, your own twin, is horrible, but Jonathan lost a piece of himself and doesn't know how to put himself back together.  His friends, his Thicks as he call them, do their best for him but they miss Telly too.  And Jonathan could care less about being a genius poet or school or anything.  But he receives an ultimatum from his principal to write a World War II veteran's biography and to play a song of her choosing at graduation or repeat his junior year.  Through listening and writing the man's life story, Jonathan begins to connect with his own loss.  And through his guitar he learns about deep sadness and breaking the cords to play it out.

There is a lot of guitar/music talk in this book and I don't play so I couldn't follow along exactly but I got the idea of how Jonathan plays his blues and infuses it into his guitar and into his poems.  The story of the WWII veteran, David, is a sad one but it shows how one day can haunt you forever.  The parallels drawn between the life defining moments of David and Jonathan are interesting.

It is also a deeply poetic book, justifiably since Jonathan is a poet.  There is a lot of imagery and very poetic writing involved.  Most of it was really good, some of it was heavy handed.  But I enjoyed Wessolhoeft's voice for Jonathan.  It was real.

I'm way past writing for the fun of it.  Lots of times it's not fun.  I write because I have to.
If Stalin or Hitler arrested me and tossed me into one of those camps, I would carve words with my fingernails.  If they cut off my fingers, I would write with my teeth.  If they pulled out my teeth, I would blink my worked to any listening bird.  If they cut off my eyelids,  I would fart code into the trosposphere.
You'd have to kill me to stop me from writing.
It's how I breathe.
p.175 ARC

Provided by Traveling ARC Tours
Hogwarts:  Muggle Studies

The Midnight Twins (Book 1)

Meredith and Mallory are identical mirror twins born on the cusp of midnight New Year's Eve making them born in different years.  Growing up inseparable with wildly different personalities, the twins are able to speak to each other telepathically and dream each other's dreams.  But on their thirteenth  birthday, something strange happens and a fire disrupts the twin's telepathic powers while they gain new ones.  But something strange is going on with one of the town boys and the twins must figure out the clues from their visions to save lives.

Without being able to speak aloud, Mallory and Meredith were already speaking to each other in what would become their private language. p. 6

I love the concept of this book.  My husband is an identical twin and although he and his brother don't have supernatural powers, there is a "we-ness" to their lives that I can never understand.  They don't think in the singular necessarily.  So it was interesting to see the extreme of this explored.  The Midnight Twins are deeply attached, but they fight a lot so it was a very realistic portrayal of sisters.  But they are fiercely loyal and protective.  And when they get their new powers, they have a hard time for one because now they are different from each other and secondly, because they don't understand what it going on.

I expected Mallory and Meredith to be older, but there are only 13 throughout the book.  But because of the some of the events of the book I wouldn't recommend this to anyone under 15, maybe 13.  I read this one in a day until the wee hour of 1 a.m. and, frankly, I was a little scared.  There is a major creepy factor and it hit on a couple of my fears.  So maybe I shouldn't have read it at night before bed.  But it was really good and I had a hard time putting it down.

The Dreaming

When twins Jeanie and Amber are sent to Greenwich Private College in Australia, they expect it will be a regular school. Things quickly turn creepy as the sisters are told to pretend they are not twins and start dreaming the same dreams.  As they delved further into the history of the school and the rumors of haunting and missing girls, the twins start to realize that the key might be in their dreams.

Bought to my attention by Amanda who did not like the first one

I went ahead and read all three since manga are short and it's only a three part series.  This is some creepy stuff right here.  The first volume is the introduction to the story with one of the twins getting weirded out right away at their new boarding school.  Then they have the same dream about the bushland that surrounds the school and girls with knifes.  The second and third volume give more history of the school and the disappearances that have happened over the years with the very creepy back story of the vice-principal.  At first, it seemed that the story was going to devolve into some lame fairy tale, but then it takes a sharp turn at what? and then stops at nightmarish so I was actually somewhat surprised at the end.  Though there was a storyline that feels like it was dropped somewhere along the way and I'm not quite sure what happened there at the end.

As far the artwork, it is typical manga style although with more creepy eyes than I have read before.  I had some trouble with who was who until I realized that Jeanie always has a ponytail and then I got it.  I think it is hard to draw twins and not have confusion though.  The art really did add to the overall effect the story was going for and the paintings inside of the school were majorly horrible (like in scary, not in poorly drawn or anything).