Bibliophile Support Group

A contemporary YA Throwback Review for you ravenous bibliophiles, this time. Originally posted back in February 2013! Love and Other Perishable Items is a YA contemporary fiction novel by Australian author Laura Buzo. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – and to celebrate I bring to you a story about first love. Not the mushy romance novel kind (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or the paranormal kind (not that there’s anything wrong with that either) but the regular, difficult, real-life kind. It didn’t take long for Amelia to fall for Chris, her trainer at the supermarket in which she works. His easy way of talking, his friendliness, humor, and charisma has done her in. This is a problem because Chris is twenty-one, a university student hungry to become an independent man. And Amelia? Fifteen. Having always had a good head on her shoulders, Amelia knows it won’t go anywhere. Sure, it’s like a knife to the heart every time she sees him flirting with a girl his ...

Another throwback review this week! This one was posted originally in July 2009 and is still one of my favorites! Here ya go: Eyes Like Stars in the first book by Lisa Mantchev in the Theatre Illuminata trilogy. Bertie lives on a stage. Her friends are fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Her crush is Nate, a pirate from The Little Mermaid . And her childhood friend and now frenemie is Ariel, a hunky spirit from The Tempest . That’s right. On the stage Bertie lives on, all those characters from all those plays? They’re alive and bursting with drama. And not just the characters from Shakespeare. Every single play that has ever been written is represented in The Book. The Book that makes all of this possible. The Book that creates the magic. But Bertie isn’t one of these characters; the theatre has taken her in, with a rather murky explanation as to why. It is her home. The only place she knows. However, Bertie isn’t the most gracious of guests. She can’t seem...

Due to time restraints, instead of a new review I am doing a throwback! This review was originally posted back in April 2011 - and is definitely a great read! Here goes: The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a YA post-apocalyptic, literary zombie novel by Carrie Ryan. I know what you're thinking - "literary" zombie novel? Yep, never read anything like it! Well, that's not exactly true. The whole reason I became obsessed with reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth (beyond the amazing title) is the short story Carrie Ryan wrote in Kiss Me Deadly , a compilation of a bunch of stunning stories written by some of today's best YA paranormal authors. It was called Hare Moon and it took place in the same world, the same village as The Forest of Hands and Teeth - and it was flat out spectacular. So I knew that I absolutely had to read The Forest of Hands and Teeth . So, lets get to the synopsis, shall we? Mary lives in a village surrounded by a fence. The fence k...

Feeling Sorry for Celia is a YA contemporary novel by Jaclyn Moriarty. Elizabeth’s best friend Celia has gone missing… again. She has a habit of taking off due to her “free spirit.” Which is really quite inconvenient. Elizabeth’s father has announced that he will be staying in Australia for the next year, rather than Canada – meaning lots of father/daughter time. Again, quite inconvenient. In the meantime, Elizabeth’s mother is so busy that they tend to correspond with each other entirely through notes on the fridge. So though Elizabeth initially finds her English teacher’s homework to start writing actual, real letters (to rekindle the “Joy of the Envelope”) to a stranger at another school quite ridiculous, soon she finds herself telling this stranger more about herself than most know. Entirely written in the form of letters – either to/from her pen pal at the other school or from silly invented societies like “The Association of Teenagers,” Feeling Sorry fo...

A Worthy Heart is a Christian historical fiction novel by Susan Anne Mason, also the second book in the Courage to Dream series. Desperately wanting to remove herself from an uncomfortable ended romance, Maggie is gleeful about leaving Ireland to visit her brother and his wife in America. Even if she does, of course, miss her family at home. Hopeful to never have to return to Ireland, Maggie intends on digging her feet in and making something of herself in America – and then she meets Adam O’Leary. Initially she thinks he is just an alluring stable hand, but soon enough she is told that he is the recently released from prison black sheep of the O’Leary family – and her brother Rylan’s brother-in-law. They encourage her to stay far away from him. Yet there is something about him, and a bond that develops between the two, that is impossible for her to ignore – despite everyone’s best efforts to destroy it… A Worthy Heart features many characters and is much ...

Cruel Beauty is a YA retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Rosamund Hodge. Nyx’s birth was the result of a bargain between her father and the evil ruler of their kingdom, the Gentle Lord Ignifex. In order to provide Nyx’s mother with children, the Gentle Lord secured the promise that one of the daughter’s would become his bride. Her father never thought to confirm that his wife would be able to survive the birthing. No one ever does think through their bargain entirely… Since her childhood, Nyx has been being prepared to marry the Gentle Lord – this demon king who caused the death of her own mother. Her family preps her to kill him, to enact the ultimate revenge and save their people from his ongoing bargains and tyranny of curses. So it is that on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx weds the immortal Gentle Lord via a stone proxy in the town church and proceeds to the mysterious castle that no one but the desperate – looking for a deal – ever comes near. Yet Igni...