{Review} Good Oil by Laura Buzo

Title: Good Oil*

Author: Laura Buzo

Format: Library; hardcover

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Release date: August 10th, 2010

Date Read: March 24th

Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭

A wonderful, coming-of-age love story from a fresh new voice in YA fiction.

'Miss Amelia Hayes, welcome to The Land of Dreams. I am the staff trainer. I will call you grasshopper and you will call me sensei and I will give you the good oil. Right? And just so you know, I'm open to all kinds of bribery.'

From the moment 15-year-old Amelia begins work on the checkout at Woolworths she is sunk, gone, lost...head-over-heels in love with Chris. Chris is the funny, charming, man-about-Woolies, but he's 21, and the 6-year difference in their ages may as well be 100. Chris and Amelia talk about everything from Second Wave Feminism to Great Expectations and Alien but will he ever look at her in the way she wants him to? And if he does, will it be everything she hopes?

I really don’t know how to review this book. It’s one of the only books that I honestly find perfect. I cannot name a single flaw or even an aspect that could have used a bit of touching up.

I picked this book up on a hunch. I had never heard of it before or read a single review for it. I don’t know how or why, but I knew that GOOD OIL would be amazing. From the moment I finished the first chapter, I knew that I was right.

It’s not often that I finish a book and the first thought that pops into my mind is that the book was utterly perfect. While reading, GOOD OIL invaded my every thought. I could not keep away from it. The book ensnared me with its beautiful characters and raw, brutal emotion.

For the first time in a long time, I not only like the main character but I also really “feel” her. I understand her. I can really put myself into Amelia’s shoes. Her flaws, her strengths – they were all believable.

Amelia is one the most multifaceted, realistic characters I’ve ever encountered.

Chris was Amelia’s equal when it came to realistic, multifaceted characters. He had a jealous, angry streak but he was a good person. He was a bad drunk and a good friend. He was a charmer. He was deeply depressed. He was strangely happy. But most importantly, he was real.

The writing was fabulous. Amelia sounded her age and Chris did too. Chris felt male, instead of a guy with secret ovaries that many authors like to portray. Amelia felt her age instead of a strangely mature 15 year old or a girl who acts like she’s 7 instead of her age.

The novel tells the story of Amelia who is utterly infatuated with her coworker Chris, who happens to be 6 years older than her. When I first picked this up, I was sure that GOOD OIL would be about Amelia and Chris’ forbidden romance, as the blurb suggests.

However, GOOD OIL did a THE STATISTICAL PROBABILITY OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT on me and it turned out to be about much more than what I expected.

Buzo has an uncanny ability at creating realistic, witty, and deep conversations and through such discussions, the book’s true themes of friendship, growing up, and love are unearthed. Amelia’s observations and thoughts make you think about your own life and question your own actions.

Buzo’s writing was absolutely amazing and her narrative voice was flawless. Her ability to make characters that are realistic and likable is uncanny. I will read any Buzo book after this and I recommend GOOD OIL to anyone.

*GOOD OIL was published under two different names by two different publishers. I read it under LOVE AND OTHER PERISHABLE ITEMS but I used GOOD OIL in my review because it a) was easier to write and b) I prefer the title as Good Oil is Aussie slang that means roughly “useful information” which I thought fit the book. The summary and cover are from the GOOD OIL version.

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} Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon

Title: Zenn Scarlett
Author: Christian Schoon
Format: Netgalley, egalley
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Release date: May 7th, 2013
Date Read: March 17th through March 20th, 2013
Rating: ✭✭✭

When you're studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school... is a different kind of animal.

 Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she's learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and profoundly fascinating. Zenn’s all-important end-of-term tests at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars are coming up, and, she's feeling confident of acing the exams. But when a series of inexplicable animal escapes and other disturbing events hit the school, Zenn finds herself being blamed for the problems. As if this isn't enough to deal with, her absent father has abruptly stopped communicating with her; Liam Tucker, a local towner boy, is acting unusually, annoyingly friendly; and, strangest of all: Zenn is worried she's started sharing the thoughts of the creatures around her. Which is impossible, of course. Nonetheless, she can't deny what she's feeling.

 Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what's happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she's actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients... or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year....

In early 2011, I read a book called THE GALACTIC GOURMET. THE GALACTIC GOURMET was about a renowned alien chef named Gurronsevas who was tasked with feeding other aliens.

What made this book special was White's imagination when it came to the aliens. Every alien was unique. Most didn’t even have vaguely “Earther” (to steal a word from ZENN) characteristics.

ZENN SCARLETT was severely lacking in exciting and unique aliens. Every alien could both breathe air and drink water. They were all mammals and each one was compared to some Earther life form such as an insect-like or a fox-like alien.

The aliens of ZENN SCARLETT were boring. The Indra - asteroid dwelling "whales" - were as interesting as they got. ZENN SCARLETT could've used some serious imagination when it came to aliens.

While I didn’t expect White-level aliens, I did expect something more than a series of mammalian, air breathing horses. 

One of the lowest points to the book was the feeling that you are constantly being preached at. I know other reviewers have covered this but I feel it needs to be gone over again – just for empahasis
.
Schoon, I agree with you. Science is good and narrow-mindedness is bad. But that does not mean you can spend the whole book drilling it into our heads like a teacher. 

Just because science good does not mean anyone can go up to a religious person and pretty much tell them that for believing what they do, they’re idiots. 

I’m not a religious person and, to be honest, I don’t like overly religious people at all. I can’t stand them. But I would never go up to someone and tell them “Hey, for believing in what you do, you are a complete idiot” which is what Zenn did.

Characters

Zenn wasn’t a very amazing character. She wasn’t a lifeless wall but overall, Zenn was pretty plain.
She’s supposedly a-little-too-smart-for-her-own-good (according to the blurb) but I didn’t find anything that would make me think “ah, she’s too smart for her own good”.

Zenn was infuriatingly oblivious and naïve. There is a guy is flirting with her throughout the book. It’s so OBVIOUS. But our little Zenn spent the whole book wondering “Does he like me? Is he flirting – no he couldn’t be because well, I’m just Zenn”. 




Guys, the naïve-little-girl trope is annoying. I cannot stand oblivious heroines. It is not that hard to see when is someone blatantly flirting with you especially if they have been flirting with you for WEEKS.


Another part that annoyed me was the angst. Girl, I get it. Your life is hard. But that does not give you the right to sit around moping about how you just want to be a real boy normal girl.

With all that said, Zenn isn’t a bad character. Sure, she gets on my nerves but at least she wasn’t a horrible person or a stick in the mud. She was brave at times and I admire her dedication to the animals.

Liam, the love interest, was bland and by bland, I mean, he was nothing. At all. He was pretty much just a name. He couldn’t be called a main character by any stretch of the imagination.

Thankfully, there were two redeeming characters. Hamish, the insect alien, and Katie, the rikkaset (a fox like alien) were absolutely adorable. Hamish was the sweetest insect ever. I just wanted to hug him! Katie was an adorable deaf rikkaset who spoke in sign language. 

They have to be the cutest characters I’ve encountered in a long time.

Plot and Writing

Plot

The book, for the most part, was a monotonous series of alien rescues. The rescues were bland and tedious since they were basically the same steps repeated with different animals. Find sick animal, help sick animal, think you can’t do help it, and then actually save it…

The first two to three times were really interesting and fun but after that, I lost interest. ZENN SCARLETT became a chore to read. It wasn’t bad but I felt less enthusiastic to read it.

The actual plot was a who’s out to get us type book. It was more of a side plot really. Zenn helped numerous aliens but she made these “uncharacteristic” mistakes and OMG someone is trying sabotage her!

This who-did-it plot was extremely predictable. From the beginning, it’s very obvious who “did” it because it’s all but said outright! 

Writing

The best part of the writing for ZENN SCARLETT was definitely the world. How cool is a book set on Mars? The world-building for the facility was fantastic and very immersive. 

The worst part is the dialogue. To be blunt: it’s terrible. It feels like every time Zenn is talking to someone she is either being interrogated or interrogating the other person. 

Through dialogue, most of the info-dumping happens. This is a common practice but it feels even worse in ZENN SCARLETT. I don’t know why or how, but it does.

Likes and Dislikes

Likes

- world building

- setting

- Katie and Hamish

- occasionally Zenn

Dislikes

- Zenn

- dialogue

- aliens

Conclusion

ZENN SCARLETT has a lot of problems. While my review doesn’t show it, I did actually like the book for the most part. It’s honestly not a terrible book and I would recommend it.

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} Double Clutch by Liz Reinhardt

Title: Double Clutch
Author: Liz Reinhardt
Format: Netgalley, egalley
Publisher: Random House Children's Publishers UK
Release date: December 20th, 2012
Date Read: March 15th through March 17th, 2013
Rating: ✭✭

What happens when you fall in love with the perfect guy... twice... in one day?

Brenna Blixen spent her freshman year homeschooling in Denmark; now that she’s back in the States, she’s determined to make her sophomore year unforgettable. And by unforgettable, she imagined awesome classes, fun friendships, and maybe a little romance.

What she got was a whole lot of romance, and all at once.

The same day that dark, brooding Saxon Maclean charmed her with his killer good looks and whip-smart wit, Jake Kelly stole her breath away with his heart-wrenching smile and intelligent, thoughtful focus.

But Saxon is a proud player who makes it clear that he doesn’t know why he can’t get Brenna off of his mind and out of his system, and Jake’s sweet and humble attitude hides a secret past life that might be more darker and more complex than Brenna’s willing to handle.

Complicating the matter is the fact that Saxon and Jake were once best friends and are now arch-enemies... and the more Brenna finds out about their connection to each other, the more intrigued and worried she becomes.

Between keeping the peace with her lovingly over-protective parents, designing t-shirts for her high school’s rising punk band, keeping up her grades in both academic and technical high school, and running the track like a maniac, Brenna has enough to worry about with out juggling two guys who make her heart thud and drive her crazy all at once.

She has to make a choice. But how can she when giving her heart to one of them might mean breaking the other’s?

Pre-review:

While going through the review for DOUBLE CLUTCH, I came upon a review that compares DOUBLE CLUTCH to BEAUTIFUL DISASTER. Before I actually go into my review, I'd like to say that there is absolutely no comparison.

Travis is an awful volatile person who manipulates Abby. He's emotionally unstable, clingy, controlling, self absorbed, and he likes to beat up guys who look at his girlfriend the wrong way. Neither of the love interests in DOUBLE CLUTCH could be called that, unless you count Jake who started acting like that by the end of the book.

Review:

It seems as if I have been confined to play the part of the black sheep. While conformity is always worse, it does get lonely being the only one who doesn’t love a book.

To all the 1,651 five and four star ratings, there are a few people who don’t like this book but we are few and far between. 

I do see where the fans of DOUBLE CLUTCH come from. This is a pretty well done New Adult book with a (mostly) likable main character and a cute romance, which is more than I can say for most NA books.

DOUBLE CLUTCH was meant to be a book that tells people not to be afraid to show sexuality. It’s very pro-intimacy. However I, like others, found this to extremely hypocritical because of the blatant double standards. It seems as though the rampant slut shaming undid all the positive messages.

One scene towards the end was especially bad. As I can’t share every horrible quote from this scene, I will show two of the worst:

I was being taunted by a corset-wearing, gum-cracking hoe with straw for hair.

I was practically deafened by the combined hissing of a dozen rejected hussies.




There are so many things wrong with this. I can’t.

These “hussies” and “hoes” were previously described as “scantily-clad” and “backstabbing hooker-want-to-bes”. Brenna had no background information about them but from looking at what they were wearing, she concluded that they had to be backstabbing hookers. 

They were also described as “hissing and clawing” (yes, hissing was used twice) and “hoochie-looking”.

I should stop talking about slut shaming (even though I haven’t even covered how Brenna is the good one because she doesn’t want to have sex) so I will.

Characters

Despite everything I talked about already, Brenna is actually a fairly good character. For once, I can actually see why the love interest likes the main character, even if his level of absolute adoration is a bit out there. 

Brenna is bubbly and cute. One of my biggest peeves with heroines is when they adore classic literature because it’s often only added to make them seem smart. Even though Brenna loved classic lit, I found her genuinely intelligent.

Brenna was definitely the reason I kept reading the book.

Jake was very annoying because he was the “good one”. His personality entirely revolved around how the other love interest was the “bad one”. For most of the book, he was sweet and cute to a nauseating extent.

But towards the end, he turned into one of those guys who pick a fight with everyone. Jake got into at least three fights with Saxon, the other love interest. The fights often started because Saxon was talking to Brenna.

He was just talking to Brenna and then without warning Jake punches in the face.




Dude, why? He was talking to Brenna. He didn’t do anything! 

Saxon, in my opinion, was the better man. Granted, he was obsessed with Brenna, but honestly both of them were. At least Saxon didn’t beat guys up! While I didn’t like him for the longest time (because he was controlling and a stalker), I sort of warmed up to him.

I’m not really sure whether a controlling stalker is better than a controlling fighter but at least Saxon wasn’t bland and lifeless.

Plot and Writing

Plot

As for plot, DOUBLE CLUTCH was about Brenna trying to make it through high school. This was another purely character driven romance book. There was no central plot, but that was to be expected.

Writing

The writing had its flaws and its strengths. 

Reinhardt is very good with dialogue. The conversations between the characters felt very realistic. They weren’t stilted or fragmented. I really enjoyed the character interaction in the book.

Conversely, there were many typos and grammatical mistakes which made me really annoyed. I do not think it is because this is an ARC copy as this is a republish.

Likes and Dislikes

Likes

- character interaction

- dialogue

- Brenna

Dislikes

- characters

- Jake

- sexism and slut shaming

Conclusion

DOUBLE CLUTCH is actually a pretty good NA book compared to the rest of the mini genre but compared to a normal YA book, it falls short in a lot of categories. I can’t really recommend this book but I probably will read the second one.

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.