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For many kids, August is back-to-school month. The stories in this month's hot new release kids books will make back-to-school (and anytime) reading a breeze.

May Contain Spoilers

Review:

Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brutally frank look at one of the most racially charged moments in the history of the United States.  Sarah Dunbar is a teenager, and she’s one of the first black students to attend a traditionally white school in the south.  Sarah is a bright girl with a promising academic future – until her parents enroll her Jefferson High School.  She faces opposition every day, and the honor student’s schedule is full of remedial classes, because the school administrators don’t want these new, unwanted students holding back the rest of the class.  The white students don’t want her there, their parents don’t want her there, and even the faculty looks the other way as she is tormented daily. 

After reading this, all I can say is “Wow.”  I don’t know where Sarah found the strength to endure the daily abuses she suffered at the hands of her white classmates.  To say that she was constantly bullied understates her situation.  She was taunted, called names, spit on, tripped, pelted with spitballs – the list goes on.  There was no one at school for her to ask for assistance because the teachers practiced selective blindness when it was happening.  Before even starting at Jefferson, Sarah and the small group of teens who were selected to attend with her were given training and strict instructions to never talk back, to always be polite, and to never fight back.  I don’t think I could have done it.  I know I wouldn’t have lasted more than a day or two if I had been in Sarah’s shoes.

Linda is one of Sarah’s white classmates.  Her father is the editor for the local newspaper, and he is very outspoken in his thoughts on integration.  He is totally against it and he’s still fighting it, tooth and nail, even after the court order paving the way for Sarah to attend the former all white school.  Linda’s relationship with her father is contentious, but what she wants most in the world is his approval.  Even a shred of attention is uplifting.  To gain his approval, she parrots his views on the colored interlopers at her school, but as she gets to know Sarah, against her will, she starts to question her own poisonous views.

I enjoyed getting to know the girls so much.  The story is told in alternating POV, and Sarah’s narrative made it difficult to put the book down.  It took a while for me to warm up to Linda, because of the things she said and did.  Every now and again she would do the right thing, then, in the next breath, she would do something to negate her selfless acts.  Argh!  She made me so frustrated!

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot.  Lies We Tell Ourselves is a thought-provoking read that will make you angry, sad, and ultimately, hopeful.  I loved the ending, and it left me reassured that both Sarah and Linda would find their place in the world, and they would meet each new challenge with courage and strength.

Grade:  A

Review copy provided by publisher

From Amazon:

In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. 

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily. 

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.” 

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another. 

Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

The post Review: Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley appeared first on Manga Maniac Cafe.

Title:  Belonging Author: Karen Ann Hopkins

May Contain Spoilers

From Amazon:

Review:

Belonging picks up right where Temptation left off.  Rose has just been introduced to her new Amish guardians, the Hershbergers, and she’s immediately confronted by the community elders.  They are an intimidating group of old men, and they warn that they will not tolerate any poor behavior from Rose.  If she’s going to court Noah, she has to work hard and prove herself to them.  Both Noah and Rose are disappointed that Rose will have a ramping up period before she’s allowed to join the church.  Until she’s an official member of the community and officially courting Noah, they aren’t allowed to be together. 

This is a soap opera on an epic scale.  Rose is so in love with Noah that she’s willing to give up her family to be with him, though she’s less than happy at the thought of being a drudge for the rest of her life.  She definitely irritated me, because even as she’s pretending to go along with her new way of life, she’s convinced herself that somehow she will coax Noah into leaving the Amish and becoming English for her.  I realize that she is young, and that she’s gotten everything she’s wanted to this point in her life, but I really wanted to shake her every time she thought about Noah abandoning his family for her.  He already explained that he is content with his life, that he enjoys the community, and that he is counting on the assistance of his family and friends to start his adult life with his new wife.  He made perfect sense to me, and his behavior remained comfortingly steady.

After Rose’s father discovers that she’s taken to the Amish way of life a little too well, he and Sam plot to kidnap her and send her off to live with her aunt in Cincinnati.  They both think that once she’s back in her old life, with her old friends, that she will forget about Noah.  To ensure that their plan is a success, they meddle even more, and turn Noah against her.  And this is where  I actually, finally, started to like Rose.  She didn’t forget about Noah, and she began to look back on her time with the Amish with fondness.  She made friends with them, life was a little more laid back, and there was her life with Noah to look forward to.  Sure, doing the laundry by hand sucks, and so did the constant cleaning and unending chores, but the community, for the most part, had been welcoming and encouraging of her efforts to belong with them.

As her time apart from Noah stretched on, Hunter resurfaced in her life.  I’ll be honest and say that love triangles aren’t my favorite trope.  Love triangles are probably one of the major reasons that I don’t read as much YA as I once did.  I just don’t find them that compelling.  If the heroine is that confused about who she wants to be with, she’s not ready to be with anyone yet.  Just hang out with both of them, because there is a lack of commitment for either guy and avoid all of the drama.  Since Rose thinks that Noah hates her, she doesn’t have a reason to not hang out with Hunter, and when he tells her how much he cares for her, she thinks that they might have a future together.  Good thing that Sam suddenly suffered from a guilty conscience, thanks to Rose’s friend Summer, and he comes clean to Noah about how he interfered in their relationship.  Hunter is a great guy and all, but compared to Noah, he’s boring and shallow, and a huge pushover whenever Rose so much as smiled at him.

I enjoyed Belonging better than Temptation, though I had the same reservations about Rose.  The novel is character driven, and we have the addition of Sam’s POV this time around.  He is just as over indulged and spoiled as Rose; probably more so, as he’s made himself a reputation of loving and leaving countless high school girls and their broken hearts in his wake.  Even though I didn’t necessarily like him, his POV still made for engaging reading.  The drama, drama, drama at times is overwhelming, but I couldn’t put my Kindle down.  Every emotion and setback is huge and over the top, and made me want to see how Rose, Noah, and Sam would handle these conflicts tossed at them throughout the book.  The ending is a huge cliffhanger, and made me want Forever, the next book in series, RIGHT NOW!  I am so curious to see how everything plays out.  Will Rose leave her modern life behind, and embrace a life with Noah,in his Amish community?  I would have a really hard time giving up my electric gadgets, so I’m dying to see how this series ends.

Grade:  B

Review copy provided by Kismet Blog Tours

About Karen Ann Hopkins

Blog | Goodreads | Facebook

A native of New York State, Karen Ann Hopkins now lives with her family on a farm in northern Kentucky, where her neighbors in all directions are members of a strict Amish community. Her unique perspective became the inspiration for the story of star-crossed lovers Rose and Noah. When she’s not homeschooling her kids, giving riding lessons or tending to a menagerie of horses, goats, peacocks, chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs and cats, she is dreaming up her next romantic novel.

Here are some nicely priced YA books for your Kindle!  Grab them today!

Pushing the Limits by Katie McCarry  is 1.99

Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa is only 1.99

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa is 1.99

Speechless by Hannah Harrington is 1.99

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter is only 1.99!

Cover Shot! is a regular feature here at the Café. I love discovering new covers, and when I find them, I like to share. More than anything else, I am consumed with the mystery that each new discovery represents. There is an allure to a beautiful cover. Will the story contained under the pages live up to promise of the gorgeous cover art?

This cover gets a big old YUM!  I love this cover!  And Beth is such a flawed character, so Dare You To should be all about the angst.  What do you think of this cover?  Did you read Pushing the Limits?? Did you like it?

Welcome to my Fangs, Fur, & Fey Giveaway,  hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer and Reading Lark.  This hop runs from October 2nd to October 8th, and you can win lots of new reads.  Click here for a complete list of blogs participating in the hop.

I am giving away an ARC of Julie Kagawa’s Immortal Rules.

US mailing addresses only, please.

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I am happy to announce that Katia Raina sold her Historical Young Adult novel titled, Castle of Concrete to namelos - pub. date TBA.  This was the first book she wrote and is her debut novel. I remember reading this manuscript at one of our New Jersey Writing Retreats.  It is set in the collapsing Soviet Union and is about a shy Jewish teen who falls for a boy whose political convictions make her question her own identity.  I am sure you will all join me with congratulating Katia.  Just goes to show if you don’t give up and you work hard, it will happen!  Wishing Katia more published books to come.

Harper Announces Paperback Mystery Line, Bourbon Street

Harper Collins will launch Bourbon Street Books to publish “all types of mysteries,” featuring paperback originals, reprints, backlist titles, and reissued classics. The line starts with fall with two paperback originals: British author Oliver Harris’s debut THE HOLLOW MAN and Lynda La Plante’s seventh book in the Anna Travis series, BLOOD LINE, both publishing on October 23. Also in October they will bring back into print Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey with Harriet Vane series and in winter they will reissue four Mary Kay Andrews novels — Happy Never After, Homemade Sin, To Live and Die in Dixie, Every Crooked Nanny ― all originally written and published under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck.

As part of the Harper Paperbacks imprint (it has a logo and a list, but it’s not an imprint–just a “line”), Bourbon Street will draw resources from the Perennial staff and any Harper Collins editor will be able to acquire for the line. It falls under the direction of Jonathan Burnham and Cal Morgan.

Former Harper UK executive John Bond and former Harper Press senior editor Annabel Wright have formed Whitefox Publishing Services. They “deliver bespoke, cost-effective and flexible creative excellence to help publishers, agents and writers to solve every publishing challenge.”

Eric Winbolt has been promoted to the newly created role of digital creative director at Harper UK, reporting to group publisher Belinda Budge.

Alice Rahaeuser has joined Random House Children’s as production associate, reporting to Timothy Terhune. Most recently she worked at Neuwirth and Associates, managing book production for customers including Tor, The Experiment and Pegasus Books.

At Harlequin, Emily Rodmell has been promoted to editor at the Love Inspired imprint.

Annie Stone has joined Harlequin Teen as associate editor. Previously she was an assistant editor at Harper.

Laura Hopper has joined Hyperion as editorial director of franchise publishing, based on the West Coast, focusing on identifying, developing, and editing new print and digital projects within the Disney/ABC Television Group for Hyperion. Hopper was vp of the motion picture department for Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, and most recently she represented writer and director clients on various film and television projects.

Victoria Comella has joined HarperCollins 360 as publicity manager. Previously she was a publicist at Putnam.

Jeanette Shaw has been promoted to editor at Perigee Books/Prentice Hall Press.

Cengage’s Gale has sold Sleeping Bear Press to Minnesota-based Cherry Lake Publishing. Sleeping Bear and their staff of 10 will remain in their Ann Arbor, MI offices.

Graphic Arts Books has acquired the trade titles and publishing rights of Pruett Publishing Company in order to build and expand its imprint, WestWinds Press. Pruett, based in Boulder, CO, was founded in 1954 and , specializes in western regional publishing.

Thanks to Harlequin Teen, I have a shiny new copy of Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry for one of you to win!  Here’s more information about the book, in case you haven’t heard about it yet.

About the book:

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can’t remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo’s world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she’ll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

You can learn more about author Katie McGarry by visiting her website.

Want to win a copy?  Good!  It’s as easy as filling out the widget below.  Extra entries for following.  US and Canadian mailing addresses only.

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Didn’t win? You can order a copy of Pushing the Limits from your favorite bookseller or by clicking the widget below.

Today we bring you our weekly sampler of cool youth media and marketing gigs. If your company has an open position in the youth media or marketing space, we encourage you to join the Ypulse LinkedIn group, if you haven’t yet, and post there for... Read the rest of this post

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harlequin; Original edition (July 27, 2010)
• 0 Comments on BLOGMANIA PREVIEW! Review: Intertwined as of 9/14/2010 5:13:00 PM