Grown-up books

Recently I've read a few grown up books.  One was for pure fun, one was for book club, and one was, well, not for fun exactly because it sounds weird to read a book about murder for fun, doesn't it?  same with recreation or relaxation...so, well, I read it because I like to be a little bit scared when I read sometimes and I like a good mystery.

Size 12 and Ready to Rock, Meg Cabot  This is the Heather Wells mystery I read just for the fun of it.  this is the most recent in the Heather Wells series and it's just a light, fun mystery/romance series by the ever delightful Meg Cabot.  I've read al the other books in this series and I really enjoy them.  Wherever Heather Wells goes, it seems murder follows - usually onto the college campus where she works.  If I were the higher ups, I think I'd be considering firing her, but what would be the fun in that?
Recommended for fans of Janet Evanovich.

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan was my book club book last month.  Loved and hated this one.  The story was fascinating, but everyone in our group was so frustrated with the choices that the main character made. And I think we were even more frustrated than we might have been if it was pure fiction because we knew it was based on a true story and that the main character, Mamah  Borthwick Cheney,  left her husband and her children for another man, Frank Lloyd Wright.  It's hard to know how much of this story was actually what happened because it is historical fiction, though. As I said, though, the story was fascinating.  If you like historical fiction, I'd highly recommend this one.

The Ice Princess, Camilla Läckberg is for people who like to be scared, although it's not nearly as scary as, say, a Chelsea Cain book.  Good mystery with plenty of red herrings that you're pretty sure are red herrings but then again, maybe they're not. I was surprised by the ending, but not especially sure that this direction was the best choice the author could have made.  It was interesting.  If you like mysteries, this is a good one.  I want to read some more of hers and compare them. I listened to this on audio.

Being Nikki - Meg Cabot

Time to catch up on my blogging. I get super busy with school stuff at the end of the year, so I have been neglecting my blogging. well no more! Today is the day I vow to catch up. hang on to your hats, kiddies, cuz here we go!

I am a HUGE Meg Cabot fan, but I have to say I didn't adore Airhead, the first book in this series as much as I have loved most of Meg's other books. I liked it, though, and I was definitely sucked in enough to want to know what happened next, so you can imagine how excited I was when Meg Cabot said on her blog that if you wanted a review copy, all you had to do was ask. How nice was that? But then she sent it a few weeks before the actual release date and said if we read it early we weren't allowed to blog about it until the official release date! That was kind of brutal. Of course I could have written it and scheduled the post to appear, but I wasn't organized enough. Obviously, since I'm just getting to it now!

Can I tell you that this book was WAAAAY better than the original? Because it was WAAAAY better than the original! That's pretty unusual, I think, for a second book to be better than the first in a series. My theory about this one, though, is that I had to have some time to come to terms with what had happened to Nikki, and it took me a whole book to get to the place where could handle it. Se what happened in book 1 was that Emerson Watts, an average looking but pretty smart girl died, and so did Nikki, a supermodel with shall we say less than the sharpest smarts...But really, only Nikki's brain dies and only Emerson's body died, and then the doctors did a whole body-brain transplant thing. See why it was a little hard for me to believe. I mean, come on. But I guess we might be getting to the point where it could happen. Well, maybe not anytime immediately or anything, but not that far from now. Maybe.

So anyway, Em didn't know any of Nikki's friends or how to be a supermodel or anything, and she didn't really WANT to, either. But she's had no choice. In this installment, Being Nikki, I'd come to terms with the whole transplant thing, so I could just go with it, and it was a pretty exciting story. I do admit I wanted pop Meg Cabot one, though, at the end of the novel. How could she just leave us hanging like that?? WAY unfair!

Recommended.

Forever Princess - Meg Cabot

I can't believe it. It's the end of the Princess Diaries series. Admittedly, I have had enough of Princess Mia myself, but it's just that she's been around so long and I've read all of the other books, too, I find it hard to believe there really won't be any more. I'll kind of miss her, actually.

In this book Princess Mia is getting ready to graduate. She'll finally be off to college - but which one, which one? This is a big issue for Mia, who really wants to go to a college that didn't just let her in because she's a princess but because she deserves it. Mia has a boyfriend in this book who takes up a lot of her time, and an ex-boyfriend who's back in town and taking up a lot of her mind. She's still not speaking to Lilly, sister of said ex-boyfriend, and that's another big plot point in this novel. And then there's her whole historical fiction romance novel...So much going on in this book. Mia has grown up a lot over the course of these books, and it's nice to see her being more mature about a lot of things. There are some areas in which she still has some growing to do, but hey, she's just graduating from high school, so of course she does.

Did I mention Sean Penn's in this novel? LOVE Sean Penn. Do not love that Sean Penn sanctions JP's lame, self-aggrandizing play, but still, LOVE Sean Penn.

I read a review that said this, "Mia is where readers love her: insecure and self-deprecating." I think that about sums it up, and I'll be looking forward to whatever Meg Cabot writes next because she's a fantastic writer and you know she's got plenty more great stuff hiding in that oh-so glam girl head of hers!

Available at the Multnomah County Library.

Love, Meg by C. Leigh Purtill

Someone gave me a pre-publication copy of this book, and while it wasn't an all time favorite, it was a decent read. It has a lot of twists and turns along the way, particularly regarding Meg's SISTER, Lucie. Meg has always wanted a true family, but she and Lucie have traveled around a lot and are pretty much on their own. Until a surprising stranger comes along and tells Meg that it's not true. She really DOES have family back on the East Coast. Meg ditches Lucie and heads back. But sometimes what you wish for really doesn't come true, as nice as it would be, and Meg has to face the music.

This story is really Meg's journey of self discovery, and for that reason I think it will appeal to adolescent girl readers.

Big Boned - Meg Cabot

This is the third in a funny light adult mystery series (a la Janet Evanovich) about the former pop rock star turned assistant dorm director turned detective, Heather Wells. I found out right after I read this that Meg Cabot herself used to be a dorm director of some sort herself, so perhaps that was her inspiration. Hopefully the dorm she worked in was slightly less deadly, however. In each installment of this series someone has died, mysteriously of course, in the dorm, and Heather has been at the center of figuring it all out. The mysteries in this series are not very deep or complex, but I enjoy them. Meg Cabot is one write who has the ability to write across the ages, and it's pretty impressive that she does it well consistently.

Jinx - Meg Cabot

Now this is the kind of Meg Cabot I like. Funny and a little suspense and GREAT voice. Much better than the other Cabot book I read recently. It’s not her best ever, but it is good.

This story is about a teenage girl who has grown up with the nickname "Jinx" because the night she was born there was a power outage and ever since then her string of bad luck has seemed to continue. She's hoping that will change when she moves to New York to live with her aunt and uncle, but when she arrives and no one is there to meet her, it doesn't look too good.

It also doesn’t look good when her cousin, someone she thought was a nice person, doesn’t seem to be too thrilled that she’s here...and that’s putting it nicely. Her cousin Tory is convinced that she has witchcraft powers inherited from their great-great-great-great-grandmother and she’s convinced Jinx does, too. Jinx refuses to join Tory’s coven, further irritating her cousin who, despite Jinx’s dire warnings, turns to black magic to try and get what she wants.

As in many Meg Cabot books, there’s also a cute boy and a little bit of romance, but that’s not the overriding theme in this “bewitching” novel.

Enjoy!

Queen of Babble in the Big City - Meg Cabot

I've read nearly every Meg Cabot novel that's come out, and usually I really like her work. This one, however, one of her books for grown ups, left me flat. This story is about a young woman who wants to design wedding dresses, so she moves to New York to chase down her dream, and about the only thing I really liked was that at the beginning of each chapter there were all these different style/design tidbits about wedding dresses (with drawings), and I thought they were pretty interesting. But I thought the main character was pretty flighty and shallow and the plotline didn't really draw me in. I wouldn't recommend this particular Meg Cabot novel, but you can't hit a home run every time, so I'll cut her some slack beause she really is a fantastic novelist.

How to Be Popular - Meg Cabot

Well, when one of my favorite authors is about to publish something, I usually know it ahead of time, but this time I was caught by surprise to see a new Meg Cabot title. Apparently, so were other people, because I got it right away from Multnomah County Library. Since it's a Cabot novel, I was prepared to love it, but when I started reading, I wondered if she hadn't headed down the wrong path this time. The story is all about a girl who thinks she wants to be popular and if she is, then everything will just be great. She finds a very old book among one of her best friend's grandmother's things called _How to be Popular_ and she decides this is her chance. And since school is about to start, she'll be a junior this year, she decides this is the time to implement her plan. Of course she can't tell anyone about it, especially her two best friends, so she has to go about everything clandestinely - not always a great idea.

As I thought about this premise, I was really frustrated, because I know there are kids out there who don't feel like they're part of the popular crowd and that they're missing out by not being part of that crowd. Meanwhile, what they're really missing out on is all the fun they could be having with the friends they do have who are really great people. Why is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? Why do we so often want what we don't have instead of being happy with what we do? Another teacher was just telling me that they read recently about someone who said every month we should have less and be happier. It's a great philosophy, but why is it so difficult to put into practice?

So that's the philosophical rant for today, now back to the book. The good news is, the book Steph found to help her with her plan isn't some book about getting popular by being a mean girl or doing things that take others down (an EIGHT year old little friend of mine recently said that being popular meant you had to be mean, so she wasn't popular!) but really about how if you're a good, kind, and nice person who exhibits leadership characteristics, you'll become popular naturally. And that's what she sets out to do. Mind you, her plan does not go off flawlessly, and she learns several things along the way that make her question her motives, her peers, and herself.

This is a charming, fun and funny book that I would definitely recommend. (And if your mother is expecting a baby, here's another book for you in addition to Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie). I knew Meg Cabot wouldn't let me down!