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Book Review: The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

Jun 9, 2016

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

Pages: 432
Publish date: June 7th 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 1619638037
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU

Six were taken. Eleven years later, five come back–with no idea of where they’ve been.

Eleven years ago, six kindergarteners went missing without a trace. After all that time, the people left behind moved on, or tried to.

Until today. Today five of those kids return. They’re sixteen, and they are . . . fine. Scarlett comes home and finds a mom she barely recognizes, and doesn’t really recognize the person she’s supposed to be, either. But she thinks she remembers Lucas. Lucas remembers Scarlett, too, except they’re entirely unable to recall where they’ve been or what happened to them. Neither of them remember the sixth victim, Max. He doesn’t come back. Everyone wants answers. Most of all Max’s sister Avery, who needs to find her brother–dead or alive–and isn’t buying this whole memory-loss story.

The Leaving:

I received a review copy of The Leaving by Tata Altebrando from Bloomsbury Australia, in exchange for an honest review, this has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.

It’s rare that I pick up a book I am not sure about. I find it hard to finish books that I have no interested in, so I normally just pick up books that I am pretty sure that I am going to like. However, there are times that I can be misled and that is what happened with The Leaving.

The Leaving was one of my most anticipated books of the year, ever since I heard the premise I just knew that I had to read it, so to say that I am disappointed would be an understatement.

The Leaving follows five teens as they return to the town where they were born. The thing is, they had been missing for eleven years and now have no recollection of where they were, or what happened during that time. Another problem there was six of them taken.

I loved the idea of this book, six taken and only 5 return with no memory of what happen. The plot was the only reason that I kept on reading the book, I wanted to know what happened. Who took them, why were they taken? I was pleasurably surprised with how it panned. There were a couple of things that I guessed, but other than that what had happened did take me by surprise. Little hints were given through the novel and everything came together in the end.

The Leaving follows three protagonists. Scarlett and Lucas were two of the children that were stolen and Avery, the sister of the missing victim.

First and foremost, I pretty much hated Avery. I just didn’t know how to deal with her, she changes her mind every two seconds and she is all over the place. She drove me up the wall. I understand the things that she did, regarding her brother Max. He was still missing and she wanted him back, she wanted closure. But, everything else that she did. Her obsession with Lucas was horrible and I could not stand it. It was like 3 days after they had returned and she was having daydreams of walking the school halls with him.

Lucas, like Avery could not make up his mind. At first he thought he loved Scarlett, but then he started like Avery – let me remind you that the book spans over about a week – so it was all ‘insta love’and just I didn’t like it.

Scarlett I could tolerate. She was probably the most sensible of the three and didn’t fall for someone that she has just met. She feels that she has this connection to Lucas and she can have that, since she spent the last eleven years with them.

I felt that a great deal happened in this book and sometimes it was hard to wrap my head around everything, especially because we were with three protagonists.

I also wasn’t a massive fan of the writing style of The Leaving. Scarlett was all over the place and while it could have worked it was different for both Lucas and Avery. So each protagonist had a different writing style in a sense and it was just confusing and took from the novel.

Overall, The Leaving is a thrilling novel about what happens when people return having no memories of where they have been. They have come back into a life where they don’t know what is going on or even who people are. I didn’t like most of the characters and the writing style hindered my reading, however, the plot is engrossing and kept me reading.

Have you read The Leaving? Did you enjoy it more than I did? Are you going to read it? Why, why not? Let’s Chat!

Book Review: The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Jun 6, 2016

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Pages: 343
Publish date: April 27 2016
Publisher: Hot Key Books
ISBN: 1471405109
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU – Dymocks

Sixteen-year-old Nix Song is a time-traveller. She, her father and their crew of time refugees travel the world aboard The Temptation, a glorious pirate ship stuffed with treasures both typical and mythical. Old maps allow Nix and her father to navigate not just to distant lands, but distant times – although a map will only take you somewhere once. And Nix’s father is only interested in one time, and one place: Honolulu 1868. A time before Nix was born, and her mother was alive. Something that puts Nix’s existence rather dangerously in question…

Nix has grown used to her father’s obsession, but only because she’s convinced it can’t work. But then a map falls into her father’s lap that changes everything. And when Nix refuses to help, her father threatens to maroon Kashmir, her only friend (and perhaps, only love) in a time where Nix will never be able to find him. And if Nix has learned one thing, it’s that losing the person you love is a torment that no one can withstand. Nix must work out what she wants, who she is, and where she really belongs before time runs out on her forever.

The Girl From Everywhere:

I received a free copy of The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig from Hot Key Books in exchange for an honest review, this has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.

I heard quite a bit of conflicting thoughts about this one, some people didn’t like it, and some loved it. It’s one of those books that you just need to pick up and make the decision yourself. In saying all this, I truly did love The Girl from Everywhere and I am so excited to read more.

The Girl from Everywhere follows protagonist Nix Song as along her father and his crew time travel around the world. They are all aboard The Temptation, a pirate ship that is filled with treasures from all around the world, from all different times.

First, I adored the world of this book. Time travelling on a ship, through maps; yes please. I was just so intrigued and that alone kept me wanting to know more. I thought that the world building was well written and didn’t give everything away, but just enough that we had an idea of how the world worked.

The thing is that you can only travel through a map once and Nix’s father only wants to go to one place; Honolulu 1868. Where Nix’s mother is alive and she doesn’t exist. But no one knows what would happen if they go.

I enjoy Nix as a protagonist in The Girl from Everywhere. She was easy to get along with and I sometimes laughed at her naivety, because it got her into situations that were entertaining. I loved her characterisation and seeing her grow throughout the novel. She is quite strong at the start, but she learns how to stand up for herself and the people that she loves.

I loved the dynamic of all the characters and how they interacted with each other. The banter was perfect and I could read scenes with just the characters talking and bouncing off each other.

Though I loved a lot of the character’s I wasn’t the biggest fan of Nix’s father, but I didn’t hate him. He has his reasons for what he wanted to do and he was too blinded by love, grief and even guilt to think any other way. However, we also see him grow through the novel. We see him realise things that he didn’t know or what to believe before and that was nice to see.

Another problem that I had with Nix’s father is that he is referred as different names throughout the novel by Nix herself. Sometimes she calls him father and other times by his name and this confused me a little.

The romance wasn’t my favourite thing in The Girl from Everywhere. I am not a massive fan of love triangles, like I hate them most of the time. But it was different in The Girl from Everywhere. It was a love triangle of sorts –ish. It is hard to explain. I didn’t hate it, but then again, I didn’t love it.

Kash was my favourite character after Nix. He’s just so loveable and I want to give him a big hug. He was full of sass and banter, and made light of situations, but was also good to have a talk with. The friendship that he has with Nix was truly nice to see and yes, you do end up shipping them eventually, but I loved that we got to see a friendship first.

One of my favourite things about The Girl from Everywhere is that it’s set in Hawaii. I love that place to bits and I am so intrigued and interested in its history, that this was just perfect to read.

The Girl from Everywhere is also hella diverse. I LOVED it. It was so great to see such a diverse cast that were intriguing, fun to read about and didn’t slip into stereotypes.

There were some parts that did drag and I may have gotten a little bored, but overall it was an entertaining and fun read.

Overall The Girl from Everywhere is about friendship, family and love, about what would you do for those that mean so much to you, and that sometimes you have to give up one thing for another.

Have you read The Girl from Everywhere? Did you like it? Are you going to read it? Let’s Chat.

#LoveOZYA Interview: Megan Jacobson

Jun 3, 2016

I love Aussie YA. I love reading books from authors that live in the same country as me, that know things that people out of Australia might be so confused about. I love how sometimes they can incorporate this into their book and it is fabulous.

So in saying that, I have decided to start a new feature on Angel Reads spotlighting Australian YA Authors. Each Friday for the next couple of months, I am going to interview an OZYA Author. I thought it would be a fun way to share my love for Australian Young Adult authors with not only fellow Aussies, but everyone around the world. I want more Australian YA books to be read, because they are amazing.

First week I interview Sarah Ayoub, then Fleur Ferris, followed by Will Kostakis, then Shivaun Plozza, and Gabrielle Tozer, followed by Jay Kristoff, then Kylie Fornasier and last week A.J Betts. This week we have none other than Megan Jacobson author of Yellow (2016, Penguin Australia).

Hi Megan, welcome to Angel Reads. First can you introduce yourself to everyone? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Heya you lovely little starlings, my name is Megan Jacobson and I live at Bondi Beach, Sydney, but I’m originally from Darwin and then the far north coast of NSW in a place called Kingscliff. In Darwin they actually teach you crocodile safety when you first start school! It’s an apt name for the place – nearly every deadly creature in the world lives there, on top of the tropical cyclones that whip through pretty regularly, so if you survive it really is Darwinism in action! It’s a beautiful, wild place and I go back as much as I can.

Right now I work at the ABC in Sydney helping to put the TV news to air, but occasionally I write for TV shows too, I’ve worked in the script department of a couple of shows, including the Channel 7 soap Headland and the ABC children’s drama Dance Academy.

Oh, and I’m also an author. There’s that. My debut novel, Yellow, was released by Penguin early this year. It’s about a fourteen year old girl called Kirra who makes a pact with a teenage ghost who speaks to her through a broken phone booth – she’ll prove who killed him almost twenty years ago if he does three things for her – makes her popular, gets her parents back together, and doesn’t haunt her, but Kirra realises that people can be haunted in more ways than one.

What has your writing journey been like? When did you start? Why?

I’ve always written stories since I was a little girl – I’ve always been drawn to telling stories and I can’t remember ever not doing it – even before I could spell I’d create elaborate dramas with my dolls.

After studying journalism at university I was lucky enough to be offered a job as a script assistant at the TV soap ‘Headland’. I’d been doing extras work on Home and Away and for about a year I’d pop into the script office after my shift and ask if they had a job for me yet.

Eventually a writer heard about a new Channel 7 show which was in production and they put me forward for the role. I worked my way up into a script storylining position from there. I’ve also written short stories in my spare time for most of my life. I began as a kid when I realised I could win small prizes in writing competitions, and I honed my craft from there, eventually winning the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year when I was in year twelve.

I’d always wanted to write a book, and the characters from Yellow had been in my head for years and years, but I didn’t have the confidence to do it, and I was so busy with my day jobs that I put it on the backburner for over a decade.

What was the process of getting your first book published?

I began writing Yellow when I’d moved to New York in 2013, trying to find a TV writing or production job. That proved more difficult than I’d expected, and I had all this free time, and I’m not used to being idle, so I thought I’d write the story that had been knocking about in my head for so long. I plotted it like I would a TV show and began to write, and by the time my US visa had run out I’d had a third of a novel and I really loved it, so I used the rest of my meagre savings to move to Bali for the next three months to finish it. I chose Bali because I knew I could live cheaply, and I found a cheap, tiny little hut in the middle of the rice paddies in the outskirts of Ubud.

I finished the novel there and when I returned to Sydney I googled literary agents and decided upon Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. Agents are extremely busy and it took months before I heard back from her, but I was lucky enough to have her accept me as a client. She then sent it off to all the big publishers and two were interested in publishing me. We decided to go with Penguin and I was so happy when I signed that contract that I had to step outside afterwards and breathe deeply because I wasn’t sure if I was going to hyperventilate or cry happy tears. It was a life’s dream come true.

What was your journey as a debut YA author in Australia? What was the hardest thing?

The process between signing a publishing deal and the book coming out on the shelf is quite a hard one. There are lots and lots of rounds of edits. My editor Amy Thomas is a genius – she knew exactly what the core of my story was and managed to help me draw out the strongest threads of the story and whittle away the bits that didn’t quite further the narrative. It was exhausting though – more exhausting than writing the actual book! It’s like playing jenga with words, you change some scenes or character motivations and that affects the rest of the book and the whole thing wobbles and then you’re frantically trying to fix it before the whole thing collapses! It was worth it in the end though. Totally worth it!

You are an OZYA author, what are some of your favourite Aussie YA books?

Oooh, there are so many great Australian voices, I love reading about my world in print! Obviously the queen of OZYA is Melina Marchetta and her beautiful book Looking for Alibrandi, and I adored Puberty Blues as a teenager – I loved the fact that the authors were young and female and Aussie and they wrote of their lived experiences and it wasn’t just old European men who could tell their stories. I love The Book Thief with a big messy love, and of course the books by my fellow Penguin Teen Australia YA Squaddies – The Sidekicks, Frankie and The Things I Didn’t Say. It’s a bumper year for Oz YA!

I have yet to read Yellow, but I plan to as soon as I can. You can find Megan on twitter at @jacobson_meg or check out her website for more information. Plus add Yellow to your goodreads.
Yellow by Megan Jacobson

Pages: 259
Publish date: 1st February 2016
Publisher: Penguin Teen Australia
ISBN: 9780143573333
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU – Dymocks

If fourteen-year-old Kirra is having a mid-life crisis now, then it doesn’t bode well for her life expectancy. Her so-called friends bully her, whatever semblance of a mother she had has been drowned at the bottom of a gin bottle ever since her dad left them for another woman, and now a teenage ghost is speaking to her through a broken phone booth. Kirra and the ghost make a pact. She’ll prove who murdered him almost twenty years ago if he does three things for her. He makes her popular, he gets her parents back together, and he doesn’t haunt her. Things aren’t so simple however, and Kirra realises that people can be haunted in more ways than one.

***

Thank you Megan for joining me at Angel Reads. That is it for this week’s #LoveOZYA Interview. What did you think of Megan and Yellow.

Come back next week for some more Aussie fun. If you want to know more about the #LoveOZYA movement check out the website for all the details. Also if you have any Australian YA authors that you would like to see me interview, just let me know and I can see what I can do.