Book Review: Jersey Angel by Beth Ann Bauman

Jersey Angel by Beth Ann Bauman

Series: Standalone

Genre: YA Contemporary

Publication Date: May 8, 2012

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books

Format: ARC

Pages: 208

Source: Received for promotional purposes from publisher

It's the summer before senior year and the alluring Angel is ready to have fun. She's not like her best friend, Inggy, who has a steady boyfriend, good grades, and college plans. Angel isn't sure what she wants to do yet, but she has confidence and experience beyond her years. Still, her summer doesn't start out as planned. Her good friend Joey doesn't want to fool around anymore, he wants to be her boyfriend, while Angel doesn't want to be tied down. As Joey pulls away, and Inggy tours colleges, Angel finds herself  spending more time with Inggy's boyfriend, Cork. With its cast of vivid and memorable characters, this tale from the Jersey shore is sure to make some waves. (Summary from Goodreads.com)

Goodreads ~ Amazon ~ B&N ~ Indiebound ~ Book Depo

I will be blunt and say that Jersey Angel by Beth Ann Bauman is not fit for all YA readers. In fact, it's probably not fit for most YA readers. This book deals with teens having sex in a casual, frank manner. It will make many teens uncomfortable, and it will make any adults uncomfortable. But for me, this honesty is one of the only redeeming qualities of this book.

Sex happens amongst teenagers. That's something that everyone needs to face. Some teens are responsible about it, others are not. Angel Cassonetti has a lot of sex. With multiple guys. Well, you know, whatever, there are girls like that who exist. I didn't necessarily think of her as a bad person. But what really got to me is that she didn't really face all that many consequences for her actions. I'm not advocating slut-shaming, but Angel is pretty and popular and everyone thinks she's so sweet. Deep down, I believe she is sweet and she tries to do what's right, but the girl has to work through some serious issues. She continuously pushes her on-and-off boyfriend Joey away and then gets all upset when he finally refuses to take her back. So Angel turns to Cork, her best friend Inggy's boyfriend. They fool around while Inggy is only a short distance away--like right outside the car. Angel tells herself she can quit anytime she wants, but doesn't bother spilling to Inggy. Again, no consequences. Despite all of this, however, there's a little part of me that liked Angel (not connected with her, but liked her). Because it is obvious throughout the novel that she's reached that point of her life where she is trying to find herself. She wants to know what it's like to love and she's trying to decide what she's going to do with her life, and there is a pretty good amount of growth for her throughout the novel. And really, it's hard to blame Angel for the way she is, because her Mom sets the worst examples--at one point in the book, she's caught making out with a teenager. I don't really care much for any of the other characters, as they don't have much depth. Angel's little sister's are absolutely awful, making completely inappropriate jokes and use swear words, even though they are only, like, 6 years old.

There's kind of a lack of plot and, well, excitement. I guess the plot is Angel maturing, discovering that she wants to be more than her mother. But there are no clear goals throughout the book. The entire time I was reading, I was thinking, "What is she trying to accomplish?" This got better toward the end when she secretly hopes to beat her friends for the position of "Miss Merry Christmas." But then I wonder, why does she want to win so bad, anyway? There is also a part of this book that involves a dead baby that creeped me out and quickly diminished some of the credibility this book maintains. Not only was it irrelevant to the plot, it was just plain unrealistic.

Overall, I expected to like Jersey Angel because the major thing I saw complained about was how disgusting Angel's actions are. But I didn't like it. This was not the fun summer read I was hoping for. Though this is probably a book I'll remember for a while, it lacks substance and I cannot recommend it to anyone.

Tris and Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison (REVIEW)

Tris and Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

Genre: YA Fantasy - Publication Date: October 11, 2011 - Publisher: EgmontUSA - Pages: 304 - Source: NetGalley

A modern retelling of the German fairy tale "Tristan and Isolde," Tris and Izzie is about a young witch named Izzie who is dating Mark King, the captain of the basketball team and thinks her life is going swimmingly well. Until -- she makes a love potion for her best friend Brangane and then ends up taking it herself accidentally, and falling in love with Tristan, the new guy at school. (Goodreads.com)

*This review contains spoilers.  

The cover of this book was so beautiful, I was certain that I was going to love it. I was so thrilled when I found this book on NetGalley, because I wanted to read it so bad. Now, I'm even more glad that it was on NetGalley because I would have been seriously pissed if I purchased this. Let me make it clear, that I have not read Tristan and Isolde, which is the original story that this is based off of. Therefore, if I say anything that may be considered criticizing to that story it is unintentional.

I thought that the plot of this story was cute and fun, but executed poorly. First of all, when Isolde drinks the love potion, it's just like, "Really, are you that stupid?" That's how I felt about a lot of the decisions that were made in this book. Some of it didn't even make sense.

The writing was nothing special. I hate to feel like I'm just completely flaming this book, but in all honesty I felt like I was reading fanfiction or something. The writing was okay, but not great. There were frequent switches in verb tense, and Harrison definitely broke the infamous "show don't tell" rule. Izzie's narration was not even that exciting. She had nothing especially intriguing about her. No little quirks in what she said or thought that made her entertaining. I had a hard time connecting with her and getting a firm grasp on her personality. Sometimes she was a coward, other times she was brave. Sometimes she was selfish, other times she was selfless. But one thing that I realized was that she only really did things that benefited her.

One thing that really bothered me was the love triangle-square-thing. I'm not one of those people who loathe love triangles. In fact, most of the time I adore them. I love cheering for the underdog and swooning for two hotties at once. However, in this book the love triangle felt forced and pointless. I mean, I wonder who Izzie is going to pick...perhaps the guy whose name is IN THE TITLE? Harrison didn't even make the guys that great, either. In fact, I thought Tristan was just creepy and unappealing. I love love loved Mark. Until he punched Izzie in the face. Yeah. You read that right. He fuggin punched her! And what bothered me even more was that when Izzie broke up with him, after TWO YEARS, after it was made clear that Mark was pretty damn whipped, all of a sudden he was head over heels in love with her best friend. It was completely unrealistic. And Branna...well, she was sort of a bitter bitch. Perhaps she had good reason, but she had no right to be as angry as she was with Izzie.

I feel horrible for trashing this book so badly, but I just wanted to get it over with. The action didn't leave my heart thumping in my chest, didn't get my blood pumping. The almighty big bad villain wasn't even frightening.

I feel like Izzie and Tristan fell in love much too fast, even if there was a love potion. They knew absolutely nothing about each other. I'm thinking that Tristan could have definitely grown on me throughout the novel--if we were to learn anything about him. We don't. Just how his parents died, really. In fact, we see more of Mark  in this book than we do Tristan.

I wish that we could have learned more about the magic in this story. The world just seems to undeveloped. Izzie goes from not knowing she has powers to suddenly being able to kill giants and heal her best friend with it with little struggle. It takes her a few hours to do a simple thing, but after that it was practically smooth-sailing. And supposedly, Izzie is supposed to be super powerful, but we barely even see any of that power go to use. And it is said that Tristan has magic through metal, but there is no further explanation.

The pacing was sporadic. There were several battle scenes, but they just sort of popped up. There was no intense build up or tension that made me jump up and down with anticipation. And they were all definitely stretched, focusing on things that were sort of irrelevant at the moment, like kissing while Izzie's best friend is probably dying. And fighting.

The dialogue was artificial and awkward and out of place. Like when Branna admits her love for Mark. The way she declares herself just made me feel itchy and uncomfortable. "Do you burn for me?" Who the hell says anything like that?

And please, do not get me started on the prologue. I don't usually mind prologues. In fact, just like love triangles, I usually love them. The gushy squishy happy endings. But my god, this one just made me roll my eyes.

I wanted so badly to love this book.I even kept reading it in hopes that it would improve. I wish that I could say my wish was granted, but it sadly was not. I think this book would make for a good fairytale for anybody under the age of ten, though I don't think that was the author's intentions.

The romance was forced and sort of painful to read. The characters lacked in every category. The action was not actionful. And the writing could have been improved by, like, 39857938798.

• The cover. It is so purrrdddy!
• The creatures. I thought the idea of the creatures was pretty nice. A giant, a two-headed dog, and a giant serpent.
• The ending. Just like the plot, there wasw a really good idea behind it. Clever and smart. However, just like the plot, I feel like it was too easy and executed poorly.

Passing Strange by Daniel Waters (REVIEW)

Karen DeSonne is used to pretending to be something she’s not. All her life, she’s passed as a normal all-American teenager; with her friends, with her family, and at school. Passing cost her the love of her life. And now that Karen’s dead, she’s still passing this time, as alive.

Meanwhile, Karen’s dead friends have been fingered in a high-profile murder, causing a new round of anti-zombie regulations that have forced nearly all of Oakvale’s undead into hiding. Karen soon learns that the “murder” was a hoax, staged by Pete Martinsburg and his bioist zealots. Obtaining enough evidence to expose the fraud and prove her friends’ innocence means doing the unthinkable: betraying her love by becoming Pete’s girlfriend. Karen’s only hope is that the enemy never realizes who she really is because the consequences would be even worse than death.

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MY THOUGHTS:

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The first two installments in the series was Okay, but this book really disappointed me.

Karen has always been one of my favorite characters. She's cute and fun and I always suspected that she had a thing for girls. When I discovered that this book would mostly be from her point of view, I was all like "Okay, I'm on board! Let's mix it up a little!" But as I began to read, I literally felt my eyelids closing. It took me nearly two hundred pages to even get interested, and after that I didn't hang on very long. There were several times when I shoved the book to the side and started reading another.

This book also focuses on Tak (one of the creepy zombies) and Pete (a psychopathic zombie killer person). Karen has to date Pete in order to get to the bottom of the charges that were pressed against the zombies in the previous book. I expected it to be sort of suspenseful and really make me feel the repulsion of having to date the enemy. Instead, there was absolutely no suspense whatsoever. Throughout the entire book it flips perspectives from Karen to Pete to Tak. With all three of those combined there was really little mystery left in the plot.

I found myself really missing Adam and Pheobe, because now that they're together and Adam is breaking all sorts of zombie laws, I wanted to see more of their story. But they are only really mentioned in passing.

A lot of the characters felt very flat to me in this story. Tak and Pete especially. I mean, we understand why Pete hates all of zombiekind and why he's going off and trying to eliminate them all. It just feels kind of pushed for me. "Oh, my girlfriend didn't come back so you guys are all evil." That doesn't even make sense to me. I feel like his motives were more crazy than justified.

Now, onto The reasons I liked it:

• The premise. I think the whole "trying to get zombies to fit in with society" idea is kind of nifty. I like that they're not "AHHHH BRAINS!" because, quite frankly, that kind of thing kind of makes me scared to go to sleep. I also like, in this book, the idea of a lesbian zombie. It's just unique.

My rating:

2 out of 5 stars.