Author Archives: Goddess in the Stacks

Book Review: If I’m Being Honest

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if i'm being honestIf I’m Being Honest
by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka
Young Adult / Shakespeare Retelling / Romance
359 pages
Published April 2019

So I either forgot or failed to notice that this book was written by the same pair of authors that wrote Always Never Yours, a book revolving around a stage production of Romeo and Juliet with a main character based on Rosaline. I LOVED that book, and I don’t think this one would have languished on my shelves as long as it did if I’d realized the connection! (They have two more books coming out, Time of Our Lives in 2020 and an unnamed book in 2021!) The plots of the books are completely unconnected, but the two main characters in Always Never Yours did make a cameo in the end of If I’m Being Honest!

So. This book! I got STRONG 10 Things I Hate About You vibes off this book, and I loved that movie, so that alone should tell you what I thought of this book! I’m just a sucker for Shakespeare in any form, though. What I like about these authors is they don’t really retell the plays – they take one character out of the play and tell a story about HER. In Always Never Yours, it was Rosaline. In If I’m Being Honest, it’s Katherine/Kate. I’m eager to see who Time of Our Lives will be based on!

heinous bitch
So Cameron, our heroine, is a bitch, but as the reader we see her home life and the things she’s struggling with and WHY she is the way she is, so I was rooting for her the whole way. Her otherwise absentee father pays for an expensive private school, so there’s a lot of student politics and status-waving going on. When Cameron yells at another student at a party, her crush sees and is turned off by it, so Cameron decides that in order to win him back, she needs to make him see that she’s a good person. How to do that? Fix the things she’s broken. She starts with apologies, but has to up her game to actual ACTIONS when the apologies aren’t enough.

Through the course of the book, she finds herself actually making friends with the people she’d wronged, and falling for Brendan, who reminds me strongly of – well:

10things
(oh man, I REALLY need to watch this movie again.)

Oh! And Brendan has Celiac’s Disease, which doesn’t play a big part in the present-day plotline of the book, but is a HUGE part of why he’s an outcast.

I like Cameron and Brendan a lot, and this book was another great read from this pair of authors.

From the cover of If I’m Being Honest:

Cameron Bright is gorgeous, popular, and – according to 99% of Beaumont Prep’s student body – a bitch. That doesn’t bother Cameron, who knows how important it is to be honest. But when her crush, Andrew, sees Cameron’s cruelty up close, it’s a major turn-off, and suddenly Cameron’s consumed with winning him back. So she devises a plan: she’ll “tame” herself like Shakespeare’s illustrious shrew, Katherine, and make amends with everyone she’s wronged. If she can reverse her reputation as a mean girl, Andrew will have to take notice.

Cameron’s apology tour begins with Brendan Rosenfeld, the guy whose social life she single-handedly destroyed in the sixth grade. But earning his forgiveness requires befriending the school’s geeky crowd – which isn’t as easy as it looks. Soon, though, Cameron begins to see that her new friends bring out the best in her, especially Brendan, who views her honesty as an asset. Now Cameron’s left wondering if maybe she doesn’t have to compromise who she is for the kind of love she deserves.

Friday 56 – If I’m Being Honest

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if i'm being honestThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from If I’m Being Honest, a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew by the same authors that wrote Always Never Yours. (Which I loved!)

In this scene, they’re in high school English, discussing The Taming of the Shrew.

Elle doesn’t wait to be called on before responding. “You’re just upset because Kate doesn’t conform to her patriarchal society.” Her tone is uncompromising, her expression a mixture of passion and disgust. “She shouldn’t compromise who she is because of some guy or because she’s expected to find a husband.”

“Yeah,” I find myself saying. Kowalski’s eyes dart to me. It’s rare I participate in this class, but I’m fueled by every time I’ve had to listen to Andrew tell me I’m not good enough. “Just because she doesn’t fit your or Petruchio’s notion of a well-behaved woman doesn’t mean she has to change.”

Book Review: A Boy Named Shel

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a boy named shelA Boy Named Shel
by Lisa Rogak
Biography
226 pages
Published 2007

Shel Silverstein’s birthday was yesterday, so I re-read my copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends on Tuesday, and I’ve been sharing my favorite poems over on Twitter. My library managed to send the biography of Shel Silverstein to me VERY quickly, so I raced through it yesterday to review it today!

I actually had no idea how much content Silverstein actually created. He wrote plays, songs, poems, short stories, cartoons, and collaborated on screenplays. He traveled extensively, had houses in multiple places, stayed in the Playboy Mansion A LOT, and generally seems to have kept up an incredibly frenetic pace of living. I really only knew about his children’s books, and now I need to hunt down the books he wrote for adults! I did find Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book which is 80 pages of “Thanks I Hate It.” Just – ridiculous, subversive, hilarious writing. I want to track down Different Dances and Take Ten, two more of his books for adults.

Lisa Rogak’s writing is incredibly easy to read, but one thing did annoy me. When talking about people she’ll switch between using their first names and their last names with no rhyme or reason. Which makes me think she’s talking about two different people, but she’s not. She needs to pick one and stick to it so I know who she’s talking about. Other than that, Rogak is an excellent biographer, and I might look up her back catalog to see who else she has written about!

A Boy Named Shel is an excellent, highly readable story of an absolute icon. Shel Silverstein was a powerhouse of creativity, and it’s actually a little sad that he’s best known for his children’s books, considering just how many other genres he had his hands in. Great book.

From the cover of A Boy Named Shel:

The first-ever biography of the one-of-a-kind author who created The Giving Tree, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic.

Few authors are as beloved as Shel Silverstein. His inimitable drawings and comic poems have become the bedtime staples of millions of children and their parents, but few readers know much about the man behind that wild-eyed, bearded face peering out from the back of the dust jacket.

In A Boy Named Shel, Lisa Rogak tells the full story of a life as antic and adventurous as any of his creations. A man with an incurable case of wanderlust, Shel kept homes on both coasts and many places in between – and enjoyed regular stays in the Playboy Mansion. Everywhere he went he charmed neighbors, made countless friends, and romanced almost as many women with his unstoppable energy and never-ending wit. 

His boundless creativity brought him fame and fortune – neither of which changed his down-to-earth way of life – and his children’s books sold millions of copies. But he was much more than “just” a children’s writer. He collaborated with anyone who crossed his path, and found success in a wider range of genres than most artists could ever hope to master. He penned hit songs like “A Boy Named Sue” and “The Unicorn.” He drew cartoons for Stars and Stripes and got his big break with Playboy. He wrote experimental plays and collaborated on scripts with David Mamet. With a seemingly unending stream of fresh ideas, he worked compulsively and enthusiastically on a wide array of projects up until his death, in 1999.

Drawing on wide-ranging interviews and in-depth research, Rogak gives fans a warm, enlightening portrait of an artist whose imaginative spirit created the poems, songs, and drawings that have touched the lives of so many children – and adults.

Library Loot Wednesday

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Well, today’s post is going to look VERY similar to yesterday’s, because I picked up several of those books at the library this week!

 

Serpent & Dove, Anna Dressed in Blood, The Girl From The Well, and The Suffering all came in this week. The only book that wasn’t on yesterday’s list is The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, a sapphic historical romance that has gotten rave reviews. I’ve had a hold on it for a LONG time.

TTT – My Fall To-Be-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is my Fall TBR. Oh boy. What don’t I want to read?!

So to start we have the October Barnes & Noble Book Club reads – The Testaments for the adult book club, and Serpent & Dove for the Young Adult book club. I bought the B&N book club edition of The Testaments, and checked out Serpent & Dove through my library.

I’d like to read Rin Chupeco’s The Girl from the Well, (and sequel, The Suffering) and Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed In Blood. (And the sequel, Girl of Nightmares.) They all seem like good Halloween books.

There are several anthologies I want to get my hands on – The Mythic Dream and His Hideous Heart being two of my top priorities.

The last two are books I’ve had out from the library for a while and really need to get to – The Witch Who Came In From The Cold, and Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation.

So that’s my fairly spooky fall reading list, what’s yours?

Book Review: Gideon the Ninth

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gideon the ninthGideon the Ninth
by Tamsyn Muir
Fantasy / Sci-Fi
448 pages
Published September 2019

OH. MY. GOD. This book, I just – oh my god. It’s the first in a trilogy about “lesbian necromancers in space” (yes, you read that right) and I just CANNOT EVEN with the ending of this book. Which makes this really really hard to write because the thing I want to talk about is a MAJOR SPOILER so I can’t even mention it!!! But like, the author broke one of the MOST MAJOR RULES OF STORYTELLING AND YET IT WAS SO GOOD AND I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I LOVED THIS AND JUST

mind if i scream
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*deep breaths*

Okay. So. If you’ve already read the book, you know exactly what I’m screaming about; when you read the book, there will be no mistaking what it is. MAJOR RULE BREAKING ASIDE, this book is enthralling, but not in that magical “you’re beautiful” way – it’s a little bit more like you’re afraid the author’s going to kill everyone you care about if you look away, kind of way. (Everyone in the book, I mean! I don’t think she’s going to come hunt down my family!)

My only tiny complaint is I wish there’d been a four or five page prologue on how the Empire came to be, well, the Empire. Everyone in the book knows their history, or knows a story of their history, but the reader is left to piece it together. They know who The Emperor is, and what “The Resurrection” was, but we have no idea. I’m sure that was a conscious choice, but I disagree with it. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I understood those references. (Hopefully Books 2 and 3 will explain that in more detail.)

That aside, Gideon is our viewpoint character, and she is a snarky, bad-mouthed rebel who just wants her freedom away from the Ninth House. Though there is no real romance in this book, it is made obvious that Gideon is a lesbian. (Also, the author has said so.)

A quick overview of the setup to the plot: There are nine houses in the Empire; The Emperor is the First House. The other eight have all sent their heirs (+their heirs’ cavaliers, a cross between a bodyguard, bosom companion, and servant) to the First City at the behest of the Emperor. The Ninth House’s cavalier was not up to the task, so Gideon has been asked to step in for him, with her freedom promised as the prize for doing so. She HATES the heir to the Ninth House, but has little choice but to go.

And then things start getting dicey.

I’m not going more into the plot than that, but there is murder, deception, LOTS of necromancy, and immortality as the prize. Unlike my typical lady necromancer books, (check my Necromancy tag!) the lady necromancer is not the main character of this book, but she is a major character. (All the heirs are necromancers, not just Harrowhark, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.)

The ending of the book is a MAJOR shock, but at the same time, it’s not a huge cliffhanger either. Somehow it manages to both sum up the book’s plot satisfactorily, set up the next book, AND still have me screaming WHAT?! WHAT! at the pages. This is a PHENOMENAL book, from an amazingly talented writer, and I cannot wait to read the rest of the trilogy. Definitely going on my Best of 2019 list!

Do be aware there is murder and gore and necromancy. No sexual violence. No issues around being LGBT. But some dark themes nonetheless. It is definitely Adult SFF.

From the cover of Gideon the Ninth:

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. 

Of course, some things are better left dead.