{Review} Splintered by A. G. Howard

Title: Splintered

Author: A. G. Howard

Format: Library, hardcover

Publisher: Amulet Books

Release date: January 1st, 2013

Date Read: July 8th

Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭

Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family.

She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

I really don't know how to tell you how much I love this book. I'm pretty much sitting here thinking "wHAT IS WORDS" even though I finished the book two days ago and should, theoretically, know how to write this review by now.

But, I don't because I'm still in a state of





and while accurate, a review consisting of keyboard smashing does not make a proper review.

Splintered is an Alice in Wonderland retelling, a type of retelling I'm not exactly a novice about. I've read many retellings, watched many retellings, and for gods' sake, I've played American McGee's Alice (which, by the way, I wholeheartedly recommend). I'm definitely not new to the genre, yet Splintered still was an entirely new experience for me.

Instead of being a traditional retelling Splintered acts more like an addition or a sequel. It didn't really retell the story we all know, nor did it have any similarities when it came to storyline. In fact, the only similarities were characters. It functioned much like an AU fanfiction with the same characters but a completely different storyline.

While I could definitely see the similarities to American McGee's Alice in the world-building and overall feel to the book, Splintered was wholly original and beautiful. If you are not familiar with McGee's Alice, it's an very odd, yet thoroughly enjoyable, horror game in which Wonderland is turned upside down and about 217% wackier than the original. Likewise, Splintered was insane and unsettling at times, yet still lyrical. It managed to retain the Alice-ness of the original book, while still being a fairly original novel.

The best part of Splintered is most definitely the world-building. The world is as disturbing and unnerving, as it is beautiful and wonderful. The descriptions are vivid and bright, making the reader feel as if they are down the rabbit hole themselves, something often absent in average Alice retellings.
The first fifty pages of Wonderland are absolutely impossible to put down because of the vivid imagery and absolute magical-ness of the whole scene. It's incredibly surreal and just, a+ your parents should be proud of you Mrs. Howard. Honor on you and your cow. 

However, Splintered wasn't entirely perfect as there was one problem, whether it is minor or major is up to you. 

The majority of the characters of Splintered are very nicely done. Alyssa is a very nice heroine - appropriately kickass but also vulnerable. She is actually pretty likable, though admittedly not amazing. Morpheus, the star of the book, is extremely likable (which may be just me because he's not exactly the good guy nor a good guy). He is awesome and insane and brilliant. 

And then, there's Jeb who's basically the one character who doesn't really fit in with the book. He's supposed to be Alyssa's human anchor to the mortal world but, to be honest, he was more of a pain than anything. Just because you're flipping gender standards and having a guy be a Mary Sue and have him be damsel distress doesn't mean it's any less annoying and stupid. Damsels in Distress are annoying no matter the sex.

Admittedly, this is only one character among four or five many. This may annoy you more or less than it annoyed me. It's a relatively minor complaint, I suppose but it still managed to annoy me and pull me from the story because all I could think was, "Are you kidding me Jeb? Dude, seriously, again?"

Overall, Splintered is an absolutely beautiful, magical read that I recommend to anyone who loves Alice in Wonderland and even to those who don't necessarily like it that much. Splintered is a fantastic book that should be read no matter what.

Lisbeth is an American teenager who enjoys blowing shit up in videogames and discussing decapitation in great detail. She's also obsessed with Oceana, but you're not supposed to know that.

{Review} Ink by Amanda Sun

Title: Ink

Author: Amanda Sun

Format: Netgalley egalley

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Release date: June 25th, 2013

Date Read: April 10th through 12th 2013

Rating: ✭

I looked down at the paper, still touching the tip of my shoe. I reached for it, flipping the page over to look. 

Scrawls of ink outlined a drawing of a girl lying on a bench.

A sick feeling started to twist in my stomach, like motion sickness.

And then the girl in the drawing turned her head, and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.

On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.

I've been really wondering if I read the right book or if I somehow got sent a different book on accident. It's seems like the most logical explanation for this failure I read. The real INK just can't be this bad, right? 

... right?


The reason INK was so bad was because it was so average. There wasn't anything unique about it other than the premise of paper gods. It's a very standard YA paranormal romance that deviates very little from the set of "rules" that much of the genre follows. Y'know, this stuff:

- someone moves into new town

This step is a must because how else are you going to find an awesome, mysterious guy that the heroine doesn't know? While the love interest can be the one to move to the town, it is much preferred to have the heroine move as to add to her outcasty, uniqueness. durh

- girl has trouble at school

This is also a must. The girl must have enemies so add a popular girl and get some stupid and silly reason for her to utterly despise the main character. Sometimes there isn't even a reason really.

- "best friends"

These "best friends" usually have zero personality and are used as filler material. There isn't any real reason for them other than nice and cheap plot and character development. Often they are used to push the heroine into the love interest.

- the heroine must bump into a hot paranormal dude

The sad part about this is that when I say, "bumps into", I mean quite literally as the heroine usually falls into the love interest. I'm quite certain that every one of these guys have the power to somehow make the force of gravity stronger on these heroines. 

---

INK fits into every one of these categories and more. It's like Amanda Sun had a pile of clichés and very poorly stitched them together. The main character, Katie, not only moves into a new town, she moves into a new country and continent. 

Wow, way to take that nice and far. 

While you can't often escape clichés and tropes, I really hate when the entire book is such walking cliché like INK is. There isn't a single point that makes this book even sort of redeemable unless you count the fact that it's set in Japan. Katie is an extremely annoying character and the romance is so insta that you just need to add water.

Katie is, for the most part, a bland Mary Sue. She can't lie at all. This character point is actually really depressing if you count the fact that it's one of the first things that come to mind when I think of her. She loves to endanger her life - y'know because you obviously it's a perfect idea to stalk a guy who supposedly beat up his best friend. She often morphs into possessive stalker a la Lucinda Price. She's also got a habit of being incredibly overdramatic:

I stared at him, my hands shaking. I'd been standing until then, but my legs buckled under me and I sank down to my knees beside him. I opened and closed my mouth, but no sound.- 21% in ARC

What elicited this response? He told her that his mother is dead. She was having a completely normal conversation and then all of a sudden, she just falls to the ground. Guys, read the passage in a really dramatic voice and picture that. It's so hilarious.

Tomo is pretty bland as a character. He's supposed to be this awesome hunk with an equally awesome personality but tbh, he's more of a hot guy than anything else. He doesn't have any qualities that jump out at you, whether they are positive or negative. He's a nonentity that I really don't care about.
The one fairly redeeming quality that saved this book from a disgusted DNF was the setting and the lore. I am the biggest lore sucker there ever was. I live for it. The lore behind the paranormal aspect of INK was interesting enough to keep me reading. 

If Sun had focused on this aspect instead of the romance, the book would have been so much better and actually would have lived up to the hype.

The writing was fairly average for the most part but I really enjoyed the sequences that described Tomo's art. They really felt like what I thought the book would be like. 

This book has so much wasted potential that it almost makes me sad to think about it. It could have been so amazing if it weren't for the averageness of the story, it could have gotten a much higher rating. I cannot recommend this to anyone and I won't be reading the sequel.

Lisbeth is an American teenager who enjoys blowing shit up in videogames and discussing decapitation in great detail. She's also obsessed with Oceana, but you're not supposed to know that.

{Review} Tough Girl by Libby Heily

Title: Tough Girl
Author: Libby Heily
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Libby Heily
Release date: January 14, 2013
Date Read: February 4, 2013 - February 6, 2013
Rating: ✭✭✭

Danger lurks everywhere in eleven year old Reggie's world—from the bully next door to the unwanted attentions of a creep at school. Raised by her mentally ill mother, Reggie is left to fend for herself. She escapes in daydreams, battling aliens with her alter ego, Tough Girl.

When Reggie's mother disappears, her fantasy life spirals out of control and starts to invade reality. She is hunted by a creature of her own design, and even Tough Girl is not strong enough to stop him.

Will Reggie survive long enough for her mother to return, or will her dream world take over?

Free copy supplied by the author Libby Heily in exchange for an honest review. 

I've been avoiding writing this review for weeks, because I knew it was going to be hard to write. But I HAD TO GET IT OFF MY SHOULDERS eventually you need to get over it.

TOUGH GIRL was kind of a surreal book. It was... strange. Not bad, but definitely different.

It's about a young girl named Reggie, a troubled and misunderstood eleven-year old and her alter ego, Tough Girl. Reggie's unstable mother disappears and during this time, Reggie's alternate life begins to creep into her real life. Soon she can't tell what's real and what's not as she's hunted down by someone she created.

It all sounds very simple and original, and it is. I mean, it's original. Is it simple?



I was completely, utterly, and totally lost when I didn't want to be.

I mean, I literally had to go back and read chapters again because it was such a whirlwind, and sometimes I still didn't get it, which as readers know, is one of the most infuriating feelings in the world. There was a lot of info-dumping through conversations, so when someone was talking for a long time, I sort of just skimmed over it.

Except when the conversation is filled with all the information you need to know so you're not lost in Wonderland, YOU CANNOT PULL THAT SHIT.

I got the feeling that the author knew exactly what was going on (well, obviously), but the reader basically got this:



It's all so confusing, but it becomes intolerable around half-way through the novel. Politics, death, corruption, blackmail, planets, creatures, creatures changing gender and lying about it (??? I think I'm going to have to re-read that part), galaxies...?

I don't even know, you guys.

The writing fit perfectly for the story: dark, intense, and powerful. It's probably not competing against Laini Taylor's writing anytime soon, but it was very good for a self-published novel and I didn't really have a problem with that part.

I didn't feel any real connection to Reggie whatsoever. I admired her - brave, determined, and badass - but I didn't like her. She was weird as hell. She was supposed to be weird, and the scene was supposed to show that Reggie would give anything to have food a comfortable life, but c'mon now.

Sneaking into an apartment to touch a six-hundred pound woman's fat rolls.



In fact, I didn't like any of the characters in TOUGH GIRL. I remained icily unattached from them and respected them from the sidelines. I didn't hate them at all - they just didn't interest me and I wasn't emotionally invested in them. They were all extremely well-developed, however, with interesting back stories and different personalities.

Reggie lived basically on her own in a very dangerous environment, which required her to mature very quickly and learn to take care of herself, but I still think that asking an eleven-year old if she's still a virgin is seriously wrong.

I mean, has the girl even gotten her period yet?

Just because you've learned to fend for yourself and grew up pretty quickly doesn't make you sexually mature. I would know.

The ending was very disappointing and quite dull. A better ending could have greatly improved TOUGH GIRL, but all in all, it was an absorbing, dark, and intense read.

Oceana is a French-blooded teenager who enjoys stalking British boys and asking them to marry her. She was diagnosed with severe fangirl disorder in 2011. Able to curse like a sailor with an angelic voice.