Book Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Age Range: Young Adult
Publication Date: November 30, 2010

Author Web Page:

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow between perfection and passion.

After the Hunger Games, Publishing Houses have been looking for the new dystopian world to fill the void Mockingjay left.   Matched is the one Penguin found.   There’s been so many comparisons, news about the story’s copyrights among others and, however, Matched fell short for me.   Matched narrates the story of Cassia, a girl who grew in a “world” where mankind’s history has been altered and the truth of it is portrayed in glimpses in a society that lives or survives based on “correct ” probabilities.   In Cassia’s life everything runs according to the life every citizen is planned to life until the day her perfect match is selected and ever since her life is haunted by two faces.   I must say the society presented by: Condie is interesting, but even so the “what if” term the dystopian base themselves always makes it appealing for the reader even though it does not feel as something new, special or original.   I kept reading and even though Collie’s writing technique is clean and good, I kept thinking about the missing elements.    There is no action, the story is slow and aside from the world itself there was no deepness in the story.   The different types of relationships are fine, but certainly insipid.   Surprisingly, the only one that caught my attention for its deepness was Cassia’s with her grandfather.   As a reader, he was more relevant in making me see what was wrong with the world the narrator was living at.   Cassia’s family core, regardless there’s a message on why the act like they do, reaches a point that after the circumstances becomes weak and there’s when I start screaming for Katniss to appear. Romance is more intellectual than physical, which is fine because of the circumstances it cannot be otherwise.   Again, as a reader, I felt there’s something missing in the relationship to make it magical, to make ship battles born and the eternal debate if one or the another is “the one” invade the forums.   I reached a point I didn’t cared.   Cassia failed to let me see as a narrator what made Ky so special before her eyes, but I don’t think there’s an explosion of feeling just because he could write cute cursive.   The worst part is that this led me to believe that the mentioned government was right of why Cassia developed “feelings“ for Ky when they are supposed to be the bad guys.   The war that apparently exists in this world was mentioned between lines without letting the reader see or feel the important role this will play since it will and here is where I ask: where did the comparisons came from?    When I finished reading the only comparison I had was a quilt made out of different pieces of fabric,I felt  the same way about Matched, it  was made out of different other stories and forged into a new one.   That’s what I try to say, there’s nothing wrong with the way it’s written or narrated, the problem is  the absence of that flame which makes stories unique.

Book Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Penguin
Age Range: Young Adult
Publication Date:  September, 2010

Author Web Page:

Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory’s magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself.  Soon she’ll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe’s ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn’t been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save herself?

Extraordinary is the next novel presented by Werlin after Impossible. With really high expectations to be fulfilled, Extraordinary combines a real touch in between a fairy tale.   The story is narrated from Phoebe’s point of view and in third person where the reader has the opportunity to see which crucial factor plays the Fairy Kingdom in Phoebe’s life.  Phoebe’s life is normally according to her circumstances until the day she meets Mallory, who turns into her best friend and a little ahead when she meets Ryland, Mallory’s “brother”.  There’s something special that makes impeccable the way Werlin writes and Extraordinary is not the exception.  However, the story lacks the element that made Impossible a masterpiece.  My taste and tolerance for dysfunctional relationships in real life as in literature is not my favorite cup of tea and in this presentation, the topic is rich.  Phoebe’s relationship with Mallory is built based on lies, Mallory’s relationship with her “human mother” is so dishonest or even worse the one she has with Phoebe and on top of that  issue Patch’s twin brother from Hush Hush AKA Ryland makes his appearance.   Ryland and Mallory make everything possible to break down the spirit of an innocent girl for their own benefit and it’s disgusting to see how much they mutilate the girl.   The only character that has likable qualities was Banjamin and it was not quite enough to carry the story’s weight.    At the end, there’s remorse and a message that, to my understanding, lacks deepness, but what’s quite worse is how much a human being can tolerate before developing character and love their selves for what their qualities already are; ordinary or extraordinary.  Extraordinary, a great writing technique with a story platform Impossible to love, at least for me.

A group of three books cover images that I like the most from the titles to be released in the current month. Usually I already pre-ordered the titles or own them. I named the section like I did because I like thinking about these covers like they are something that its meant to look.

*Eye Candy: visual images that are pleasant to see.

Prada and Prejudice is a cute, sweet and funny read. Callie, the main character is a girl you can really identify with. Her “time travel” experience is so funny. The writing style is nice and the author’s 19^th century descriptions of period are very well done, my favorite was the descriptions of the dance balls. I have two complaints about the story in general; there’s no explanation for Callie “time travel” experience and I use quotation marks because the reader never knows for sure if it was a time travel experience or a dream. That left me not disliking the ending but not loving it either.

questions.

This book can be used by teachers to show 19th century references in a fun concept. It could be baneful to drive dynamics about stereotypes, group cliques at certain ages and the ways each youngster battles for self searching.