The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

From GR:  Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

Upon finishing this book, I asked myself two questions.
1. WHY THE HELL WAS THIS AMAZING BOOK SITTING ON MY SHELVES FOR A HALF A YEAR BEFORE I PICKED IT UP?!?!
2. HOW THE HELL WOULD I HAVE SURVIVED IF I HAD READ THIS WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT AND I COULDN'T READ THE NEXT ONE RIGHT AWAY AFTERWORDS?

Luckily, 1. I did get around to reading it, and 2. I read it now, and last week I found the second book used but in perfect condition in Joplin for 4 bucks. Yeah. I'm a beast.

I don't want to overexplain this book. All that I can tell you is that I just sat down in a chair and read the last 200 or so pages and when I was done I was like oh...three hours just passed? Huh.
And you know, it was worth it.

Read this book. It's exciting, interesting, creepy, heartbreaking, and altogether amazing. Just...read it. Don't let thiis one pass you by. I'm serious. It's worth every penny.

Books that I have on my shelves

Okay, so if you're anything at all like me, you have approximately 30 billion books on your shelves that you haven't read, and at least 1 billion of those you probably never will read, but I just thought I would tell you what book I have on my shelves that are begging to be read, that way if I never get around to it, they will at least get a little nod here. So here they are:
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Marberry
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
Gone by Michael Grant
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeiffer
City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
White Cat by Holly Black
Caught Between the Pages by Marlene Carvell
Five Flavors of Dumb by Anthony John
Night by Elie Weisel
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Girl who Loved to Run by GP Schultz
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
Cujo by Stephen King
Blaze by Stephen King
3 of the 4 Bachman Books by Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King
A Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemingway
Everyman by Philip Roth
Blackbox by Nick Walker

Phew! That's a lot of books. So, you ask, why aren't you reading right now?
Because, silly blog reader, I am the world's most ridiculous procrastinator! Don't question me!

The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan

How to describe this book...
It's about a bunch of people.
Who go to the same school. And they talk about stuff. So much is covered in this book, such as eating disorders, boys who feel the need to be big and strong, sex, homosexuality, and all that jazz. There are 20 different voices, one for each 'chapter'. Basically, the reason this gets such a low rating is that the characters would each talk for about ten pages (which, in verse, isn't very much.) and then it would move on to the next character without me having any attachment to the character at all. Honestly, you don't have much of an emotional connection with any of the characters by the end of the book. Really, the only character names I even remember out of the 20+ are Jed, Daniel, and Pete. That's not a very good ratio. That's because I didn't care about any of the characters at all - the three mentioned were just in the book more often, so I remembered their names.
I thought after reading Will Grayson squared, I would see how this author functioned on his own, and I will try another of his books because I really want to read Love is the Higher Law because of its subject matter, but I now see that John Green is the force that pushed WGWG to the awesomeness that it is. Not Levithan.
So right now, I'm lowering my eyebrows in a suspicious glare at David Levithan. We'll see how I feel about him in a little while, after I've read more of his work.
2/5*

International Covers #2 I Am Number Four

'Murica.

France.

Germany

Italy

Portugal.

They're all pretty cool, IMO. Which do you like best?

International Covers #1 The Hunger Games

America

Dutch

Chinese.

Danish

German

Greek

Russian


Personally, I like the American and Chinese versions best. I hate the Russian cover.

Triangles by Ellen Hopkins

From Goodreads:
In this emotionally powerful novel, three women face the age-old midlife question: If I’m halfway to death, is this all I’ve got to show for it? Holly, filled with regret for being a stay-at-home mom, sheds sixty pounds and loses herself in the world of extramarital sex. Andrea, a single mom and avowed celibate, watches her friend Holly’s meltdown with a mixture of concern and contempt. Holly is throwing away what Andrea has spent her whole life searching for—a committed relationship with a decent guy. So what if Andrea picks up Holly’s castaway husband? Then there’s Marissa. She has more than her fair share of challenges—a gay teenage son, a terminally ill daughter, and a husband who buries himself in his work rather than face the facts. As one woman’s marriage unravels, another one’s rekindles. As one woman’s family comes apart at the seams, another’s is reconfigured into something bigger and better. In this story of connections and disconnections, one woman’s up is another one’s down, and all three of them will learn the meaning of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness before it is through.

My Review:
How to describe this book? It's very good. I don't know why, but when I picked this one up, I was expecting to not like it as much as Hopkins' other books. I had read a review on Goodreads that said people under thirty wouldn't understand it. I would have to disagree with that; being a seventeen-year-old male (and having read a somewhat extensive amount of adult fiction for my age) I understood it fine. I don't think age is everything in liking this one or not.

Also, there's the issue of will I like this if I am not a woman? And I would say...maybe. I personally loved it, and I am a heterosexual male. However, I would say that it's more likely that I am the exception and not the rule, not that you shouldn't still try this one.

As for the story itself, it was pretty much flawless. Ellen has a way of creating stories that show the underbelly of the everyday in such an interesting way that I absolutely adore. However, the one problem that I had with it was that I knew what the big ending was going to be when I was less than twenty pages in. Predictability can really hurt a book.

Still, the book was intriguing, sad, and well-written--Although it's an adult book, you can still feel Ellen Hopkins in it.

The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan

Wow. Wow. I loved TFOHAT, but not so much The Dead-Tossed Waves. And then...there's The Dark and Hollow Places.
That just blew my mind.
It's not so much about running from zombies. The zombies aren't so much the evil ones in this book. I mean, they're definitely a problem, but they aren't the ones we're worried about for most of the book. It's the recruiters...this book just really shows you how hideous people can be.
It's by far the best zombie book I've ever read. It's also the darkest book in the entire series, and my favorite of the trilogy.
If you are hesitant after The Dead-Tossed Waves, go ahead. This one's incredible.
People say quite a bit in their reviews that they hope for a fourth book. No. God no. Don't make a trilogy longer. That's one of the worst things, in my opinion, a writer can do. If you don't write one that's equally good if not better, then you're just going to piss off a lot of people *cough cough The Mortal Instruments*
And really, where would she go with this one? I loved the open ending.
5/5*