Review: BREAKING BUTTERFLIES

3.30 avg rating — 156 ratings

BREAKING BUTTERFLIES is one of the books that I'm revisiting at the end of year.

From ChickenHouse/Scholastic, BREAKING BUTTERFLIES is one of those books that has somehow been overlooked by too many readers. Not to mention dissed by quite a few at GoodReads.  

I-personally thought the writing was excellent and that the characters were very well drawn. The story unfolded with subtlety, and an every increasing sense of creepiness kept me turning pages.

The story begins with a description of Sarah's (Sphinxie's mother) childhood and how she met the charismatic Leigh.  It's a relationship founded on dominance with Leigh being the brighter star and Sarah being the awkward child desperate for friendship and acceptance.  Their relationship evolves over time as they become adults, but strikingly they are compelled to stick to their childhood plan. That they would each marry and each have a single child. And that those children would grow to adulthood and marry.

This is the legacy that Sphinxie and Cadence have inherited. A plan that they were indoctrinated with; that they accepted the way children will accept the plans of the parents. And it all goes according to plan until the children hit their 10th birthdays. Then Cadence does the unthinkable. He hurts Sphinxie. He takes a knife and cuts her face. And after that Leigh escapes to England with the boy, harboring the hope that a different environment and school system will change Cadence.  For in truth there is something wrong with this beautiful, intelligent child.

But nothing changes and the disturbed boy begins to see a series of doctors and at the end they deliver two diagnoses.  As we suspect, one is that he is a brilliant psychopath.  The other though is unexpected.  Cadence is dying and has only weeks to live.

It's the death of Cadence and the ultimate death of 'The Plan' that brings the four characters together again.  For one last time.

WHO WOULD GO?  I think that's the question that plagued some readers. They couldn't accept that anyone would go and visit someone so dangerous. Someone who had already proven that they would hurt them.  

But I understood why Sphinxie would.  She had loved Cadence and still loved him. Moreover she had been indoctrinated from babyhood with 'The Plan'. And now it was over. It would be impossible for The Plan to come to fruition, and perhaps she was hoping that given a chance, Cadence would redeem himself at the last moment.

Needless to say that won't happen.

I found BREAKING BUTTERFLIES to have a powerful voice in Spinxie, and I thought this book was an amazingly subtle work of literature. The subtlety of the plotting, the subtlety of the characters and how this drama unfolds: M. Anjelais builds a world that's convincing. Her/his characters are brilliantly drawn. So fatally weak.

Pam~


BREAKING BUTTERFLIES
(Chicken House/Scholastic)
by M. Anjelais

**all ratings from GoodReads 
**all links to Amazon.com

Reading Information:
Page Count: 272
no Accelerated Reading information currently available
Lexile: 870L
--sample pages and reviews available

Review: NEVER ENDING by Martyn Bedford

4.09 STARS from 56 GoodReaders

**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist

Death.  NEVER ENDING is about death and life, guilt and the choices people make. It's about how microscopic missteps can lead to catastrophes that carry people beyond their abilities to cope. And as you can expect, it takes finesse to make stories like this work. John Greene can do it. And so too can Martyn Bedford. 

BACKSTORY

In the wake of 12 year old Declan's death, Sioban (Shiv) and her family break down. Her mother becomes silent and distant while Shiv acts out, having spells of destruction that she can't even remember. And when local therapies prove to be insufficient, Shiv's father signs her up for a different sort of in-patient therapy.  This is how Shiv finds herself with 4 other young people at the Korsakoff Clinic.

Siobhan's story is told through two time lines.  Shiv's (Siobhan's) torturous journey through therapy is intertwined with the tale of her family's sun kissed vacation in Greece.  The first time line made her tragedy very real to me. The second kept me chained to the book so that I read it all in one day.  I was so curious about exactly what had happened that led to her 12 year old brother's death. I was also curious about whether the other participants could make it through their 60 days of therapy.  Whether they could shed enough of the guilt that they could finally resolve to go ahead and live their lives.

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Review: INFINITE SKY
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: REALITY BOY
Review: FANGIRL  
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NEVER ENDING is a fast paced contemporary novel. Part drama, part mystery. There's humor and good writing.  The ending flowed naturally from the narrative but it was almost anticlimactic after all the characters had been through.

Definitely recommend this to readers looking for a smart drama. 

Pam~


Never Ending
by Martyn Bedford

Reading Information:
Page Count:  304
no reading information currently available
--sample pages and reviews available
-- read review by Outlaw Poet

Review: INFINITE SKY by C.J. Flood

3.79 STARS from 462 GoodReaders

You can't tell that the coffin holds the body of a boy. 

He wasn't even sixteen, but his coffin's the same size as a man's would be.

It's not just that he was young, bu because it was so sudden. No one should die the way he did: that's what the faces here say.

I think about him, in there, with all that space, and I want to stop them. I want to open the box and limb in with him. To wrap him up in a duvet. I can't bear the thought of him being cold.

And all the time the same question flails around my head, like a hawk moth round a lightbulb. Is it possible to keep loving somebody when they kill someone you love?

This is the prologue to CJ Flood's INFINITE SKY.  The narrative by thirteen year-old Iris Dancy gives readers the bitter sweet story of young love. A forbidden love that ends in murder.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: REALITY BOY
Review: FANGIRL  (light-hearted drama)
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BACKSTORY

The Dancy family is self destructing.  Iris' mother upped and left. In her absence the household routine has ceased. Meals are haphazard and the house is a mess. Iris and her brother, Sam, struggle with their feelings of abandonment.  And their friends and father don't make the situation better. Mr. Dancy is drinking heavily, so when Gypsies move onto their property, it's possible for anything to happen. Even love. Even death.

It was three months after Mum left that the Gypsies moved in. They set up camp in the paddock one Sunday night while we were asleep.  My brother Sam was excited when he saw them.

"Gypos!" he shouted.

Sam used to have a Gypsy in his class: Grace Fitzpatrick. She'd been famous at school because she could do as many things with her feet as with her hands. She could even write her name with them, which was funny because she couldn't read. Sam, who'd sat next to her in assembly, said she smelled like cat piss and fire smoke.

The prolog sets the stage of INFINITE SKY.  As the book unfolds the reader is left wondering who was killed and how.  Is it Sam?  Is it the gypsy boy, Trick? 

The story is bitter-sweet and many of my friends loved it. To be truthful though it wasn't for me. The writing was excellent, but I just couldn't connect with Iris.  But don't keep you from investigating this debut novel.  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk  review

amazon reviews

theguardian.com review

Pam~


INFINITE SKY
by C.J. Flood

Reading Information:
Page Count: 256
no reading information currently available
--sample pages and reviews available

Review: CHASING SHADOWS by Swati Avasthi

Junior Library Guild Selection

**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly

**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal

CHASING SHADOWS is Swati Avasthi's second novel and a definite departure from SPLIT, her wonderful first book.

One of the twists she's employed to make this book different is to include graphic-novel pages like the one that follows. These pages don't just reduplicate visually what readers are told; they stand in place of text.

Artwork by Craig Phillips

Backstory

In CHASING SHADOWS the principle characters are Holly, her twin brother Corey, and their best friend and girl friend, Savitri (Sav).

The three of them are high schoolers in their senior year, and while deeply bound to one another, they realize that the coming year will most likely see their group fall apart as Savitri, the most academic of the group, awaits responses from Princeton and other first tier schools.

It's not that Corey and Holly aren't interested college, but they aren't inspired to leave the home town they love.

Related books...

SPLIT by Swati Avasthi - Sixteen-Year-Old Jace Witherspoon arrives at the doorstep of his estranged brother Christian with a re-landscaped face (courtesy of his father’s fist), $3.84, and a secret.

All of this turmoil about schools and the future is brutally stripped away and made moot when Corey is shot and dies. His sister doesn't recall much of the nightmare event, but Sav bears the scars of a survivor who wishes she could have saved him.

(Corey, Holly, and Sav are seriously into freerunning)

As a read, I found this story gut wrenching. Swati's portrayal of Corey's family's and friend's grief made me have to put the book down twice. But I always came back. Basically because there's a mystery to be solved. And because I needed to know what the girls would do. Were they crazy enough to try to find Corey's assassin. And could Sav find the strength to leave and find her future.

Another element that worked to keep my attention was the question of the strange alternative world that was portrayed. While she was in a coma, Holly 'entered' this world where Corey was being dragged off by Death.  (a simplification) The story was written so that I was never certain whether this was a product of the drugs Holly was given, a sign of madness, or whether it was simply a view into a real other world.

CHASING SHADOWS won't be a read for everyone.  It's very much into the drama, and it's not a topic that everyone is going to take to heart. One of Avasthi's strength though is her characters.  They live.  They breathe.  They are dimensional and so realistic that it's hard not to be drawn into the stories where she places them.  Suitable for Adults and Young Adults.

Pam~

------------------------------------------------------------------
Review: INFINITE SKY
Review: REALITY BOY
Review: FANGIRL  (light-hearted drama)
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CHASING SHADOWS

by Swati Avasthi

Craig Phillips (Illustrator)

3.92 Stars from 60 GoodReaders

Reading Information:

Word Count: 61,004

Page Count: 320

Accelerated Reader:  4.2 / points: 9.0

AR quiz: 160989

Review: REALITY BOY by A.S. King

4.15 Stars from 305 GoodReaders

Wow.  Just wow.  King's REALITY BOY is a heavy roller.  I loved this book but sometimes it was difficult for me to read, as I was drawn into the thoughts of a boy who grew up in such an unloving and hostile environment. 

Background

Gerald is 17.  Back when he was about 5 years-old his mother agreed to have his home invaded by cameras and 'reality creators'. Next thing you know, family life is worse, everyone is stressed out, and worse, Gerald is permanently labelled 'the crapper' for his use of poop as a means to communicate to adults how unhappy he was.

Forward 12 years...

Gerald's mom and dad are still inept and as a result of the 'help' they received from the fake Nanny and the show's director the whole family is living in hell.  There oldest child despises her siblings, and Lisl, Gerald's slightly older sister, has escaped to Europe.

And Gerald.  Gerald is filled with almost uncontrollable rage.

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Review: INFINITE SKY
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: FANGIRL  (light-hearted drama)
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REALITY BOY is an amazing book.  Alternately sweet and uplifting, and then again, angering and insightful.

[I swear I will never look at Realty TV the same way again.  And the irony of my observing Gerald so closely, when this was just how his life got so screwed up in the first place, isn't lost on me either.]

Gerald and Hannah are simply fantastic characters.  Her oddball quirkiness is the perfectly complimented for him, and it was so enjoyable to watch them slowly forge their relationship.

If you are in the mood for a pretty intense read, READ THIS.

REALITY BOY is probably not suitable though for middle-graders.  There is fierce bullying, profuse profanity, and mild sexual content.  So it's probably not going to be for all adults or young adult readers either.

Pam~


REALITY BOY
by A.S. King

Reading Information:
Word Count: 75,243
Page Count: 368
Accelerated Reader: 3.8 / points: 10.0
AR quiz: 162363
Lexile: HL620L--sample pages and reviews available

Review: FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell

4.28 Stars from 9,676 GoodReaders

FANGIRL is a solid 'Romance' for New Adults. 

Characters
Cath - is the fangirl. She's a pretty famous writer of a fan-fic blog about the Simon Snow characters. She's a delightfully geeky introvert with a wicked sense of humor. And she's come hesitantly to college to up her writing skills, and is more than a little put off by having to leave her comfort zone.

Wren - is Cath's twin.  She's the extravert to Cather's introvert, and while she's loving, she not as wise in the ways of the world as she think she is.  And this gets her into some serious trouble.

Dad - poor dad.  He's suffering more than a little bit from empty nest syndrome.

The boys - there are some wonderful guy characters.  Levi, for one, is the kind of guy most girls are going to wish were theirs.

The book begins with dad dropping off the girls on their first day at college.  It's a particularly trying time for dad and Cath, as now dad has to return to an empty house, and Cath has to face the fact that Wren doesn't want to room with her anymore.

Wren cheerfully leaves Cath to her own devices and heads out to experience all college has to offer, leaving Cath to fret and stumble her way through so many new experiences; none of which are particularly welcomed.

There's the new roommate, who is hardly every around and who doesn't seem friendly at all.  And there's the mysterious cafeteria, which is out there somewhere, if only she could get up the nerve to seek it out.  Not to mention the strange classes and the whole boy thing.

As it turns out though, Cath's hesitant approach to life leads to a lot less serious bumps in the road.

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Review: INFINITE SKY
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: REALITY BOY
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This is the first Rowell book I've read, and I have to say that her writing is superb.  Her characters are well thought out and very complete; and the story comes off as real, honest and smart. It's no wonder Rowell gets such high praise.

So, Good plot and Good characters. The writing is clever, intelligent and funny, and there are plenty of rewarding moments that make this a good read.

But having said that, FANGIRL won't be for everyone as there's many adult-sized problems that are tackled --sex, drugs, and love.

Pam~


FANGIRL
by Rainbow Rowell

**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** Kirkus

**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist

Reading Information:
Word Count: 107,994
Page Count:  438
Accelerated Reader:  3.9 / points: 15.0
AR quiz: 160991
--read sample pages & get other reviews

Review: RED KAYAK

(This book was reviewed by Laura, aged 13)

3.88 Stars from 2,238 GoodReaders

The RED KAYAK is a dramatic book full of plot twists.  The story is set in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia where life is changing for Brady and his friends.  Rich people, like the DiAngelos, are moving in and are changing their way of life.

The plot revolves around a tragedy where Mrs. DiAngelo and her 3 year-old son are in a kayak that overturns. When Brady finds Ben hooked on a rotting log he picks him up and tries to save his life.  Once they get back to the bay Brady's cousin Carl performs CPR and they say "we have a pulse !" However, later in the book he tells Brady that Ben is dead.  Brady is very sad, but it gets worse because he finds out from Digger that they got the idea to sink the boat from him.  Brady tries to find the truth.  But does he really want to know the truth?

My Thoughts

I didn't like this book because there were too many plot twists.  Every time some problem is solved and you think that the book is going to be about what happened after that, then another problem would crop up.  For example, when you think that Brady is an only child you find out that he had a sister named Amanda, who died of SIDS.

And when you think that Brady is going to tell the police about the drill, you find out that he throws it in the water.  These twists made me feel like I was reading a Goose-Bumps book because the twists seemed artificial, and not realistic.

I think if you want to read something that is exciting that you should look at Gary Paulsen's book HATCHET.

Laura~


RED KAYAK
by Priscilla Cummings

Reading Information:
Word Count: 50,353
Page Count: 224
Accelerated Reader:  4.9 / points: 8.0
AR quiz: 82252
Lexile: 800L
--get sample pages and prices

Review: SPLIT by Swati Avasthi

SPLIT is a quick read. A light read. I'd like to say it was fun read but that seems somehow inappropriate given the book's central theme of domestic abuse.

The story is about a family where the father domineers by virtue of his fists and anger. The elder son escapes only to find his estranged younger brother at his door, five years later.

The Book Description describes the situation thus:

Sixteen-Year-Old Jace Witherspoon arrives at the doorstep of his estranged brother Christian with a re-landscaped face..., $3.84, and a secret. He tries to move on, going for new friends, a new school, and a new job, but all his changes can’t make him forget what he left behind—his mother, who is still trapped with his dad, and his ex-girlfriend, who is keeping his secret.


Excerpt:::
He slams the door, then glances over his shoulder at the light in Professor Coe's study next door. Paranoid-at-all-hours Prof Coe moves to the window and opens it. Everything slows down and changes: my dad is sauntering, not storming; his grimace downgrades into a casual smile. He bumps my mother out of the way with his hip and leans into the car.

"Come back, and I'll kill her." His tone is controlled— taut and calm. Except for his grip on the door, he could have been saying Drive safely.

The blood runs out of my face. My breathing shallows, and I glance at my mother. Her eyes are shocked wide. This is my dad at his most dangerous. I've only seen him like this one other time, the time she tried to leave him before.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Review: INFINITE SKY
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: REALITY BOY
Review: FANGIRL  (light-hearted drama)
------------------------------------------------------------------

SPLIT is not the sort of book I usually read. You see, I don't generally pick up books set in the present, and I'm not especially interested in books that deal with the serious problems of teens in the present— and so the fact that I could not put it down makes me conclude that Swati Avasthi's writing is really good, if not downright addictive.

And Avasthi does a superb job of portraying how this abuse effects the relationships of these young men and their ability to move on with their lives. And yet, I found myself drawn more to the secondary characters than to Jace and his older brother, Christian. There was the mother, for whom I felt both sympathy and anger. She became the focus of not only Christian and Jace, but me as well, as the question cropped up as to whether she could escape the demon that was their father, And there were the girlfriends (and potential girlfriends) that really brought home to me the consequences of being brought up in an abusive household.

This is a very good read. You should know though that there is violence and adult situations that may not be appropriate for sensitive readers.

Pam~

SPLIT

by Swati Avasthi

4.09 Stars from 3,259 GoodReaders

Reading Information:
Word Count: 68,444
Page Count:  288
Accelerated Reader:  4.1 / points: 10.0
AR quiz: 136277
Lexile: HL610L