Immortal In The Pages

I'm in one of those weird moods where everything is just getting to me today.  One of the randomly weird things that popped in my head, was the death of a beloved book character.  I have found that the death, or even the ending of a book/series with a favorite character always gets to me.  Then I
reminded myself that even though a book may end, or a character may die...I can always go back and reread a story where they are alive and well.  For some reason today this did not make it any easier.  I don't know if the knowing that a character is gonna leave me changes the way I go back and read about them, or that I already know the whole story or what.  Anyways...not really sure where I am going with this.  I guess I'm just writing this to remind my self that as long as I keep reading, nothing every has to end and all my literary friends are essentially immortal.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Christmas Party

One of my favorite things about my Hubbin is the random conversations he starts.  The other day he asked me what literary characters I would invite to my wonderful Christmas Party of Awesome.  So guess what, you guys now get to read a post about my fantasy literary Christmas Party.

The March Sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy from Little Women would be the first people I would invite.  There industriousness, creativity and varied personalities would be invaluable.  They would be able to help me plan and execute the party and during the event any other guest would find a kindred spirit in at least one of the girls.

Lexi the Fox - In the Legend of Holly Claus the little fox Lexi is the reason Holly is so well and appropriately dressed for all of her adventures.  I would hope that having this little vixen around would assure that not only would I look fabulous for my party, but that the guest would enjoy her spirit as well.

Mr. Tumnus - In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the faun Mr. Tumnus embodies the spirit of hope that the world can be a better place.  I feel that this guy could make my party a positive and fun experience for all of us, and if we were lucky we could get him to play his pipes for some entertainment.

The Weasley Twins - The intrepid duo from the Harry Potter series would bring the magic...literaly to our shindig.  Their sense of humor and inability to take anything other then fun seriously would be just the touch our party needs to bring it from good to AWESOME! And since there are two of them, we could spread the fun.

Heather and Morag - My favorite buddies from The Good Fairies of New York would bring the music and dancing...and probably a wee bit of mischief  to the proceedings.  Nobody would be able to keep still when these two go their fey music started...provided they could get along for the duration.

Calcifer - A fire demon who is also a sarcastic wit would brighten up the fete considerably (did you see what I did there...brighten...get it...he's a fire demon...I crack myself up sometimes).  He would have a place of honor in my fire grate and only be fed the best yule log.

The Ghost of Christmas Present - My favorite ghost in A Christmas Carol  would be the ultimate guest.  This jolly guy would bring the spirit, the charm. the feel and all the good stuff that the holiday season is supposed to evoke.  I can't imagine having one crabby guest with this guy in attendance.

This of course is just a few of the illustrious literary characters I would invite, but I have to save some good stuff for next year.  Who would you invite to your literary holiday party?  Happy Reading Everybody!

Melting Tingling Alice

Dear Baby Sis, please don't read this post, love your Biggest Sis.  Ok now that is out of the way, today we are going to ramble about The Collector's Society by Heather Lyons, the first in a series also called The Collector's Society.  I'm going to tell you two things right off the bat.  One I did not really like this book.  Two I am in a very small minority as the reviews on this thing show it to be insanely popular and well received.  Why is this?  I'll tell you but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Alice has returned from her third trip to Wonderland as a 25 year old woman.  She checks herself into a mental institution to try and essentially detox from her adventures in the hope that she can rejoin a normal Victorian English society.  All of this gets blown to pieces when she is invited by a Mr. Brom Van Brunt to join an organization known as the Collector's Society.  The only information she is given is that without her help Wonderland will be destroyed.  She agree's and they step through some sort of doorway into modern day New York City.  Here Alice meet's a host of characters that give her absolutely no information about anything, which is fine because Alice does not share anything either.  After a bit of not sharing back and forth Alice meets Finn Van Brut...formally known as Huckleberry Finn.  She falls in instant lust, melting every single time he so much as glances her way...which happens quit a bit.  Alice (and the reader) finally find out that the point of the Society is to find the catalyst for each Timeline.  A Timeline is a world that comes to life somehow when a book or series of books, or an author becomes widely read and loved.  Apparently each Timeline has a catalyst that if destroyed will destroy the Timeline...I'm not sure in anyway shape or form how this works, or why it works, or how it was discovered, or how a Timeline can disappear when the books are still around and loved, or well all kinds of stuff that makes no sense but is never explained.  Anyways the Society sends agents (who are usually characters or related in someway to the characters in other Timelines...it all gets very meta)  into the Timelines to collect the catalysts to keep them safe from some sort of villain that for some reason is destroying the Timelines.  The majority of the first two thirds of the book however is taken up with Alice keeping some sort of secret from everybody including the reader, while also melting and having the little hairs stand up on the back of her neck every time Finn is so much as thought of.  Finn (who is an impossibly stand up guy) seems to reciprocate the melting and the tingling and the secret keeping.  So pretty much we have a very repetitive secret romance going for a really long time.  Eventually the book picks up a bit when we FINALLY get to Wonderland.  We discover that Alice was made the Queen of Diamonds and fell in love with the White King.  Because of some sort of screwed up Wonderland politics, Alice agreed to leave Wonderland in the hopes of alleviating the suffering of her people.  Alice, Finn and a couple of their friends (Victor the son of Dr. Frankenstein and Mary Lennox of The Secret Garden) go to Wonderland to get Alice's crown which is the catalyst for this Timeline.  They enter a Wonderland in the middle of a brutal war and eventually meet up with the White King who aids them in their quest.  There are some moments between Alice and the White King, but she makes a choice to stay with Finn in the new world she is now part of.  They bring the crown back and melt and tingle some more and we never figure out anything else because that is what the next books are for.

In case you didn't pick up on it, I did not really like this book.  In general it felt like a rote romance book with a potentially couple of good idea's thrown in that suffered from execution issues.  I'll go through what bugged me the most, and then tell what parts I did like.  To start with the book was in first person, so we were stuck in Alice's head, which was problematic for many reasons.  First off, she did not know ANYTHING so we didn't either and we only got an extremely limited view of what was going on in this new world.  This works if the character learns and discovers as they go, but that was not the case.  Second of all, even though we are stuck in Alice's head, we are not even privy to her thoughts and secrets so pretty much we spend the vast majority of the book with vague, yet overly dramatic phrases meant to keep everything in the dark.  This is one of my biggest pet peeves when an author drags out a supposed secret or bit of information for no other reason then to try and keep you reading.  This is especially aggravating when the secret finally gets revealed and really is not that big of a deal.  There was nothing that got revealed that made me gasp out loud.  The romance drove me absolutely batty.  I am not a huge fan of romance novels in general, mostly because they all feel like the same book to me and at least on the romance side to me this book was no exception.  Alice was supposed to be this strong kick-ass character, but she spent the majority of the book alternating between dramatically declaring to herself that she does not want to have any sort of human contact with Finn and melting and tingling and going weak kneed every time Finn is even mentioned.  This happens over and over and over and over and the worst part is the author uses pretty much the exact same phrasing in every angsty encounter.  Even worse, when they finally get together and have sexy time...well lets just say it was so tame and bland and repetitive that I would let my eight year old nephew read it (ok not really, but you get the point). Finn was waaaaaay to perfect to be of any interest to me.  He was always doing an over the top good guy thing, with his only real flaw being his getting super angry when those he loves are hurt, seriously I don't see the appeal.  The White King was a much more interesting and complex character and I would have loved to spent more time with him.  Ok let's move on.  Getting away from Alice for a few minutes the premise of the book could have been pretty cool except for the fact that I still don't really know what it is.  It felt like the author had an idea about using characters from different books to create a society to protect books, but let it get to complicated with no real world building at all.  We never really get a good explanation for anything.  There were a couple of parts I did enjoy.  I liked it when Alice wasn't getting all angsty and just had conversations or some very witty one liners.  What I really liked was the time spent in Wonderland, I really wish the author had pretty much skipped everything else and just written this future Wonderland.  I like the idea of Alice as an adult and the potential adjusting from Wonderland back to her home.  This idea would have been plenty for a really great book.  I am most definitely in the minority in my feelings on this book, the vast majority of the reviews have been very positive and glowing.  I am thrilled that so many people love.  It's books like this that prove my point that not every book is for every person and just because everybody else loved it, doesn't mean I have to.  Nor does every book I love have to be a home run for anybody else.  Overall I give this book 4 out of 10 cups of tea and recommend to anybody who enjoys romance, or some potentially good ideas.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Editing Humanity

I have finally finished that last book in the Divergent series, Allegiant by Veronica Roth.  All of my fellow bookies have been dying for me to finish this series so that we could talk about it.  I love all the various reactions to this book and how other people thought I would react to the book.  Some people thought I would love the ending, others thought I would hate it...in the end, as with this whole series I have mixed feelings.  As always SPOILERS, SO MANY HUGE DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU WANT ANY SENSE OF SURPRISE TO THE ENDING OF THIS SERIES, SERIOUSLY SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Ok, here we go with my new and improved shortened synopsis of this book.  As before we pick up right were we left off.  The factionless are now in charge and they are hellbent on revenge for all of their suffering through out the years.  Tris gets put on trial and using her super Divergent powers is able to resist the truth serum enough to get her and her friends set free.  Tobias pretends to break up with her so his mom (the factionless leader Evelyn) will continue to trust him, but really they just sneak out for almost sexy fun time.  They, along with their friends get recruited into Allegiant, a group dedicated to following the precepts of their ancestors, which includes reinstating the factions and sending the Divergents out into the world.  Of course our intrepid band gets chosen to set out into the big bad world including Tris, Tobias, Cara, Will, Christina, Uriah and Caleb who gets rescued from certain execution by Tobias.  Off our group goes and once they are outside the fence are almost immediately picked up by some former faction members who had either dissapered or supposedly died.  They pretty quickly learn that the video they found was mostly a lie to get the Divergent to come out of the city.  They are told that back a while ago people started messing with their genes to try and eradicate the bad stuff, selfishness, violence, cowardice, untrustworthiness, and

ignorance...sound familiar.  This led to people also losing the opposite of whatever they cut out...so selfless people had no sense of self preservation, truthfulness at the cost of tact and so on so forth.  Because all good dystopia's need a war the people with damaged genes fought the people with the pure genes, causing what is called the Purity war.  This lasted long enough and caused enough damage that the government could blame all the bad stuff on the people with the damaged genes.  This led to groups of what they call Genetically Damaged or GD's being put in sealed cities and treated with serums and experiments to try and fix the genes and then get them passed down to other generations...yeah it's supposed to make sense but never does.  Anyways when people are born with fixed genes they become Divergent, come out to the real world...and yeah.  So anyways in the real world it is found by our group that the GD's are very oppressed by the GP's (Genetically Pure).  The experiments are a big reason for the prejudice as all of the countries resources are being used to fund these experiments instead of rebuilding the country.  All kinds of chaos, and yet a whole lot of nothing occurs.  Near the end they find out that the leaders of the experiment are going to use a memory serum to wipe the memories of the people left in Chicago and start again.  Tris and her gang come up with a plan to stop this, while at the same time modifying the memories of the experiment leaders for a better world where both GD's and GP's can live in peace. Tobias goes and makes peace with his mother, and comes to terms with his father, stopping a potential massacre. In the end Tris takes the most risk and dies for it...yep Tris, the heroine dies...for real...I told you spoilers.  The risk pays off and everything goes as planned.  The country looks like it is one the right track, Tobias comes to terms with Tris's death and becomes a leader and they all attempt to live happily ever after.

So...here we are...at the end of this series and I have to try and figure out how to explain my feelings on this book and the series as a whole.  Lets start with the good, shall we?  I have fallen hard for Tris, Christina and Cara.  Christina is just awesome, loud, adventurous, smart, funny and deals with life in a fairly realistic, yet healthy way. Cara is a super smart person who has had to come to terms with her own humanity and grows in leaps and bounds through out the books, especially this one.  She also proves herself to be a fantastic leader.  Tris is just awesome, I wasn't sure at the beginning, but by the end of this book, so much love.  I think this last book is where I finally picked up on what I love about her...she is not a push over.  At one point in the book Tobias pulls his stupid double standard paternal crap and Tris calls him on it so hard I just wanted to kiss her.  Another time Tobias does something really stupid, after Tris tried time and again to talk to him and in the end she pretty much broke up with him over it...in a totally mature, hey this is not cool and I am not kissing a guy who refuses to respect or listen to me.  Of course they get back together before the end, but still, I feel Tris can hold her own against him.  I also feel Tris is a good window into humanity in general, she has strong moments, weak moments, funny moments, serious moments, hard moments, and crazy moment I just really like her. Props to the author for writing a wide variety of positive females.  The other thing I liked in this book is the realistic way the author killed a couple of good characters.  I love it when an author realizes that when you have a violent book...people die.  Uriah's death was a sad, slow brain injury instead of the normal sudden violent death which is awesome because it gave the other characters time to reflect and respond in a totally different way then normal.  Tris's death was significant because, well, she was the main character and her death made sense and brought home the real cost of rebellions.  I loved it.

On to the bad.  I hate Tobias.  In this book the author had the narration go back and forth between Tris and Tobias and I hated hated hated it.  Tobias came across as a whiny petulant 14 year old girl with a bit of angry 15 year old wanna be gangster boy thrown in just to really annoy everybody. I liked nothing about him, at all, not even a little bit.  I was excited to finally find out about the whats and whys of the whole Divergent thingy, but the explanation just did not work for me...or anybody who has gotten past third grade science.  It probably seems super nit picky, and I know I drone on and and on about it every time I review a book in this series, but seriously, it goes against human nature, it goes against science and it goes against all reason and as before, it ruins the premise for me.  There was not a lot of world building outside of there was a war, stuff was destroyed now there are the haves and have nots...makes me miss the Dauntless areas.  I also hate when reveals make the first couple books irrelevant, which this book seems to do.  There seemed to be a disconnect through out this book, a kind of feeling like I should care more about certain things then I did.  There is so much more about the serums, and how they worked, and how does one tell a GD from a GP unless you are holding their genetic results in your hand, and how does the genetic damage and repair even work, and so much stuff that probably only bugs me so I will end this here.  Overall I felt about this book how I felt about the series, I enjoyed a lot of the characters, but the world building, the premise and the story just did not ring true for me.  I give this book a 5 out of 10 truth serum.

How did you feel about this book compared to the overall series?  Does the lack of any sensible science in this book bug you anywhere near as much as it does me?   Am I sick and twisted to be happy when an author actually kills off a character in a meaningful, adept, realistic way?

BFF's Forever

A hallmark of a good book is good characters, characters you love, characters you hate, and characters you might want to hang out with.  There are certain books that I look forward to the arrival of certain characters just like you would a good friend.  Here are a few people I think I would love to hang out with...if they were real...which there not...or so my shrink keeps telling me :-)

Elizabeth Bennett-This plucky gal from Pride and Prejudice seems like my kind of girl.  I would love to go visit her at Pemberly, do some hiking and poke fun at Darcy.  If Caroline Bingley happened to be around I would totally tag team with Lizzy to get under her skin :-)

Piemure-Our funny little friend can be found hanging around Harper Hall  .  Snarky, caring and a good ear for music make this guy our go to when you are in need of a good friend.  He is the one I would sit next to in class making comments under our breath and trying hard not to laugh out loud.

Ophelia-This Liveship from the Liveship Traders Trilogy is a dame and a half...and a ship.  Yep this friendship has multiple benefits from transportation on the high seas, to all of the latest gossip.  This woman/ship knows how to have a good time.

Heather and Morag - These Good Fairies of New York crack me up.  Their spirit, love of music, mischievousness, and sheer vibrancy make me smile.  I would love to run around New York with these two, causing trouble and making music.

Reepicheep-Our little Narnian friend is a whole lot of awesome in a little package.  He is brave, gallant, fierce and loyal.  He is also great for a good laugh. This man in the body of a mouse would be my first pick when it came to a companion for adventuring, battling and/or drinking.

Anne-Anne of Green Gables (spelled with an e) is pretty much how I was as a child.  The dreamy, imaginative, trouble finding red head sounds like so much fun to play with.  I think hanging out with her would enhance any situation.

Jo-Our bookish sister in Little Women could count on me to read her books and articles with a non-biased eye before they were sent in for publication.  I would also be a great go to person for any play or performance she felt like putting on.  I am well versed in sisters, so I could give her advice on that score as well.

Fred and George-These twins liven up the Harry Potter series.  There love of live, brilliant yet mostly harmless pranks and genuine love for their family make these two an essential part of my friends circle.  Think they would give me a discount at their joke shop?

Nellie Olsen-The girl everybody loves to hate.  This girl was the villain in most of the Little House on the Prairie books, being the scapegoat for every mean little girl ever encountered.  I like that the character seems to own her badness, I could learn a lesson or two about being yourself from this girl.

Puck-This trickster from A Midsummer Night's Dream just makes me happy.  His skipping around causing havoc all in the name of love is awesome.  I would love to flit from place to place with him, meddling in affairs both mortal and fae.

Ok so their are many more besties out there, but this post is already getting long and I am now in the mood to go hang out with all my book peeps.  With that I will leave you to contemplate wither I am as crazy as I sound or just really enjoy good characters.  Never fear I will do a follow up post with all of my friends from books that did not make this list...there are just so many, makes a girl feel popular.

Who are your best book friends?  Do you feel the need to limit your book friends, or do you not bother with limits? Do you think I'm crazy for considering fictional characters as friends?

Mystically Sensible

Ok I am finally awake enough to attempt a semi-coherent rambling.  I finished this book last week and have been mulling it over trying to figure out how I am going to talk about it.  The book is called The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater and is apparently the first book in a series.  This is a book that had me thinking about it when I wasn't reading it, always wanting to go back to this little piece of the world the author has created so that is a good thing, the weird thing is I can't really remember the plot...hmmm, anyways here is a quick convoluted synopsis that is probably missing the point of the book, but we will discuss that in a few minutes.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Blue will kill her true love with a kiss, yep this is how the book starts, no punches pulled, Blue Sargent better never kiss her true love.  See Blue is the daughter of a psychic. Not a fake one who uses your own stuff to make vauge generic references to a nebulous possibility, but an honest to goodness see possible paths for a specific individual or group psychic.  Maura (Blue's mother) and Blue live in a house full of psychics and other women who have a finger on the pulse of the spirit world, including Maura's semi-famous half sister Neeve who has recently shown up.  This group lives in Henrietta VA which contains what they call a corpse road.  On St. Marks day every year Maura (or this year Neeve) goes with blue to an old ruined church and watches the spirits of people who are going to die that year pass through the road.  They can then use this information to give general warnings of imminent death (mostly old people) to the residence of this little town.  They cannot prevent them, just give people time to get there affairs in order.  Blue cannot see these spirits, her gift is not one of sight, but of essentially being a signal boost to allow the others to see and hear more clearly.  This year is different though, Blue see's the spirit of a young man who tells her his name is Gansey.  The only reason Blue can see him is he is either her true love, she is the cause of his death or both.  Obviously Blue is a little freaked out by this, but being a sensible sort of girl, just resolves to stay away from boys for the year.  Meanwhile in town we meet a gang of four boys all who go to a super elite school called Aglionby who's mascot is a raven, hence the students being known as Ravens Boys. The boys are Gansey (yep the one who is supposed to die this year), a super rich, super smart, super eccentric boy who is

searching for the supposed burial place of the legendary Welsh King Owen Glendower.  He is obsessed with this quest, using as a way to prove he is worth more then his money. His friend Adam, a scholarship student who is very aware of money and the fact that he does not have any.  Adam is a practical sort who does not want to take handouts from anybody, including his friends.  He is also regularly beaten by his father, especially now that he is hanging out with his "rich" friends.  Ronan is a troubled little rich boy who's father was murdered a couple years earlier.  He has become completely wild, controlled only by Gansey's constant influence.  Ronan is described as sharp, he does not care for convention or even rules and will say what ever he wants.  He is under the thumb of his older brother until he can graduate from Aglionby and get his share of the money.  Finally we have Noah, a very quiet boy who you keep forgetting is there until he is mentioned.  He does not like to go out much and keeps to himself, always appearing a bit disheveled and messy.  Gansey has recruited his three friends to help him find and awaken what he call ley lines, lines of power that criss cross the globe while trying to help all three of his friends get through school and life in general.  They meet Blue while she is working at a local pizza joint, initially making a really bad impression and reinforcing her pre-conceived idea of what a Raven Boy is, being the sensible (are you sensing a theme here) person she is, she has made it a point to never get involved with the Raven Boys as they always lead to trouble.  Eventually Adam gets to talk with her and leaves a good impression, even obtaining her phone number.  This is where the actual plot gets a little crazy and convoluted and a wee bit mixed up so I'm just gonna say that the boys go see Blue's mother and her friends for a reading, learn all kinds of crazy stuff and Blue ends up hanging out with the whole foursome.  They eventually find this wooded area that is all kinds of weird including a note in Latin on a stone from a future Ronan.  More stuff happens and Blue finds herself alone with Gansey doing some recon.  They stumble onto a skeleton and (SUPER SPOILER) they discover it is Noah, yep Noah is a ghost.  His killer is a man named Whelk Barrington (don't worry even in the book they know it is absurd) who used to be a rich Raven Boy but lost everything when his father was arrested for illegal activities and now he is forced to be a poor teacher.  He killed his friend Noah in an attempt to awaken the ley lines on his own quest to find Glendower, as a sacrifice is required.  More stuff and craziness and Blue learns a bit about her father (he mysteriously appeared from the woods and then disappeared after she was born) and that Neeve has been messing with the Dark Arts.  They all end up in the weird woods trying to save each others lives when Adam decides to sacrifice himself, but not his life to awaken the ley line and have control of it?!?!  This was not very clear at all. Anyways the epilogue has the crew reburying Noah's body on the ley line so that he can continue living as a solid ghost, Adam finally moves out of his abusive home, Ronan informs everybody that the raven he has been taking care of was plucked from his dreams, and Neeve has vanished.  A weird abrupt ending, but we will see how it continues in the next book.

As I am sure you can figure out I glossed over a lot of the plot, mostly 'cause I'm still not 100% sure what the plot was. The whole feel of the book was reminiscent of the Susan Cooper The Dark is Rising series, it was a page turning experience but by the time I was finished I still could not tell you the story.  What I really found fascinating about this particular book was the characters and there interactions with each other. I love books about friends, I love books about family, I love books that examine these relationships and acknowledge that as much as they love each other there are still difficult times.  Blue was about as awesome as a female character as I have seen in a long time.  She lives in this world straddled between the spirit/nebulous/arty space and time her mother and friends occupy, and the practical/sensible/work-a-day world the rest of us have to try and survive.  Blue believes in the spirit world, knows that the ley lines, corpse road, future readings and all that are real and have a part in her life.  She also knows that you have to pay bills, finish school, and even socialize on occasion.  Her attitude towards falling in love is great, she is not cold or bitchy about the fact she is destined to kill her true love, rather accepting and aware of the situation.  I think I like her so much because she tends to act and react the same way I think I would in these types of situations which makes her very identifiable, at least to me.  The four boys, there history (or what we know of it), there relationships with each other are just so perfect.  Gansey as the glue who holds them all together, yet is constantly saying the wrong thing and pissing his own friends off.  Adam who cannot tell the
difference between a handout or charity and a true selfless gift from a good friend.  His inability to accept anything from anybody, while Gansey just wants to make Adams life, if not easier then at least safer and this is a constant sore point between these two incredibly good friends.  Ronan may be one of my favorite characters of all time.  He is so twisted and tortured (though we never really find out why in this book) but the way he deals with it is just bizarre and perfect.  As I said before he is described as sharp, as if he will cut anybody who gets to close.  He has tried to commit suicide at one point and now is just wild.  He fights anybody he can, especially his perfect and proper older brother who holds the reigns to the family fortune, he is bitter, sarcastic and has no qualms about cutting somebody down with his words.  Ironically he is the one who eventually forces Adam to leave his abusive home, takes care of an abandoned baby raven he names Chainsaw, and with a few entirely blunt and honest words can actually make you feel better. Gansey tries to keep him reigned in enough to at least finish school and not hurt himself, he is the only one who can get Ronan to stop and think for even a second.  Noah is interesting, he starts out as the quiet one, and I figured something was up because he was obviously supposed to be part of the group, but was missing or ignored a lot.  The revelation that he was a ghost was not to surprising for me, but learning a little about him was fun in that context.  The boys interaction with Blue was done superbly I thought.  She initially is attracted to Adam (who is the one who asked for her phone number) and joins the group on there research trips because of him.  She is quickly accepted into the group and essentially becomes the fifth person in the group, to the point when she goes with any one of them on her own, it feels weird.  Each boy has a different interaction with her, but they are all positive and friendly.  She is not a force to break them apart (though there is potential later for a rift between Ganesy and Adam over her) but one more facet to the dynamic.  She is taking things very slow with Adam, even telling him she does not want to kiss him (though not the reason), no insta love for this sensible girl.  It is really nice to see a girl be actual friends with boys, not always a potential love interest.  Speaking of friendships, I love love love the portrayal of Blue's mother Maura and her housemates.  We meet a couple of the other tenets and they are all as vastly different as the boys are, and they share a similar bond with each other.  They have there moments of snappiness as all people who live together do, but seeing adult females bond in a healthy way is a great example not only for Blue, but for anybody reading this book.  It was weird to read this book and love the characters and relationships so much, and still not really know what the story is.  There are mysteries that have not been solved yet, but that does not bug me really.  The two things that got to me were the almost lack of cohesion between the characters stories and the plot story, I had a hard time tying the two together. I also did not like the ending of this book at all (big surprise right, I almost never like endings :-) ).  The open endedness was fine as it is part of a series, it was the way it ended.  First off, the whole bit where Adam supposedly sacrificed his self, or free will, or something never really solidified, I am not sure exactly what happened, or what changed, or...well anything.  After this nothing really seemed to change, the epilogue said nothing of what happened after this big climactic event, we just see them going about there lives...like most of the book never happened.  All in all I love the characters and will continue reading the series just for them if for no other reason.  There is a lot to take in and hopefully future books will straighten out some of the basic plot details. I give this book 7 out of 10 raven beaks and will be reading the next one shortly.

What is your favorite part of a book, world building, characters or plot?  If at least one of these elements is strong is that good enough to keep reading or do you need more?  How much coffee do you think it took me to write this epic post?