Tag: LetsTakeAMoment

Let’s Take a Moment: When the Moon Was Ours

Posted on by Ashton

When The Moon Was Ours, is a beautiful book from the dedication page and to the Author’s note at the ending. It was a unique and enchanting read, a read that captures your soul and makes you think about who you really are.

To the boys who get called girls,
the girls who get called boys,
and those who live outside these words.
To those called names
and those searching for names of their own.
To those who live on the edges,
and in the spaces in between.
I wish for you every light in the sky.

-Dedication from When the Moon was Ours

 

Miel has roses growing out of her wrists and Sam has secrets that could ruin who he really is. The Bonner girls are four sisters that are believed to be witches. They want Miel’s roses, believing they have powers in them. Miel, cuts off her roses in remembrance of her mother who drowned trying to save her, refuses to give the Bonner sisters the roses. Sam works on the Bonner’s farm, struggling with who he is while he and Miel find that their love for each other isn’t platonic. Throughout the story, we learn more about how Miel came from the water tower that the town had gotten together to push down. We learn that Sam is from Pakistan and in order for his mother and him to have more freedom, he becomes a bascha posh, a young girl who lives as a boy until marrying age. Miel and Sam have been friends ever since Miel fell from the water tower. He paints moons for her and she lets him be him. It’s a simple enough exchange until the Bonner sisters come around wanting Miel’s roses and blackmailing her for them. They even go as far as to punish her for not giving them to her.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. Anna kept me captivated from the dedication page all the way to the Author’s Note, and for that I give her a five out of five.

 

Reviews:

“Magical realism as its most exquisite. McLemore’s breathtaking story is the most unique and magical book I’ve read in years.”

-Laura Resau, Americas Award-winning author of Red Glass

“Lushly written and surprisingly suspenseful….a story of the courage it takes to reveal our authentic selves to each other and to the world.”

-Laura Ruby, Printz Award-wining author of Bone Gap

 

Amazing artwork by: Read at Midnight

 

Location:

This is currently one of our newer books and will be in the Young Adult section on the New Release shelves.

Once it is no longer part of our New Releases, it will be placed in alphabetical order in the Young Adult section.

 

Let’s Take a Moment: Almost Innocent

Posted on by Ashton

almost-innocent

Jane Feather has been one of my personal favorites since I first read: Almost Innocent. It’s such an amazing tale. It draws you in and keeps you interested. It makes you want to put it in your to-read-again pile.

The story begins with the Duke of Lancaster and his mistress, Isolde, who also happens to be with child. Throughout the first few paragraphs you can tell something is about to happen; I personally heard gloomy music in my mind as I continued to read. It turns out that Isolde was trying to poison the Duke and he instead poisons her. While she lays dying, the child within her begins to push its way into the world. He thinks about leaving the child there with her dying mother, but instead decides that there was too much death in the room.

Magdalen grows up believing the Lord of Belair is her father. The lord isn’t particularly rude or nasty but almost indifferent to the young girl, mainly because he believes she is ‘tainted by her birth.’ In just a few short-lived moments, we meet the hero: Guy de Gervais.  He arrives to stand-in for his nephew for Magdalen and him to marry. He takes her under his care. She meets her real father, and though he doesn’t mean to, the Duke is cruel and flings her away from him because of the “eyes of her mother.”

Guy’s wife dies, and even at such a young age, Magdalen believes herself to be madly in love with Guy. So she tells him she shouldn’t marry Edmund, his nephew, she should marry him. Guy tosses it away as the naivete of a young girl. She and Edmund marry and Magdalen is sent back to her old home.

Following this, we see Magdalen grown up and see Guy falling in love with her despite himself and everyone else.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only was I sympathetic to Guy and Magdalen but I was moved by their passionate love for each other.  There was equal drama and action as well as love and romance. It was just the perfect amount of everything that it didn’t give too much or too little.   I do think there could have been some improvements, but nothing too serious. If you aren’t one to read romance novels because of their specific scenes, then this story is perfect for you.

five-out-of-five

Reviews:

“An accomplished storyteller … rare and wonderful.”
— Daily News of Los Angeles

Click here to check out ALMOST INNOCENT!!

Let’s Take a Moment: My Sister’s Keeper

Posted on by Ashton

my-sisters-keeperBefore I begin this blog post let me just say one thing: I don’t like lessons in stories. I’m strictly a romance reader and I don’t like learning anything besides words. So stating this, I don’t particularly like Jodi Picoult mainly because of this reason. Then a co-worker and a classmate of mine told me about My Sister’s Keeper. I’d seen the movie and loved it but they had told me that the book was completely different than the movie, so I chose to check this book out and read it.

“It’s about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone… A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out.” -Campbell Alexander

Let me begin by saying….WOW! This book is probably one of my favorites as of now. I will admit I did find it hard to like Sara, the mother, in the book. The book started out great and somehow drew me in. I already knew the synopsis of the story but for some reason Picoult’s writing just kept me entrapped and entertained. Not only did she include Anna’s point of view but everyone else’s and their back story.

Anna is thirteen in the beginning of this book and she’s selling a locket her father had given her. Her sister, Kate, has cancer and her brother, Jesse, is a troublemaker. Of course, with Kate having cancer all things center around her. Anna herself was conceived to be a donor for Kate. So throughout the book, we learn just how often Anna has been a donor for Kate and the tumultuous actions of these characters as they try to understand Kate’s illness. The story focuses on Anna’s fight for the medical right of her own body because they want Anna to give her kidney to Kate. So, enter Campbell Alexander and Julia. Campbell is the lawyer who decides to help Anna pro-bono and Julia is Campbell’s high school sweetheart and ad-litem (a person who represents a child who cannot represent themselves and decides the right course of action for them). They both decide to help Anna as they solve their own crisis.

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”- Anna Fitzgerald

This isn’t a story about the selfishness of a thirteen-year-old or the fact that she wants attention. This is a story that shows you selflessness and sacrifice in its purest form.

We see the story from all different points of views. From Brian’s (the father) to Julia’s and in doing so, Picoult has not only helped us understand the Fitzgerald family and the supporting characters but cancer and what it does to a family. As I stated above, I didn’t like Sara, mainly because it seemed like she was devoting herself to Kate and neglecting her other children. Then again, I do not have a child dying of cancer or any children to be exact.

The movie and the book are more different than any book turned movie I’ve ever seen. I felt as if they told two completely different stories. As always the book went more in depth with the Fitzgerald’s but not only did the movie change the climax but it changed the ending, and that’s not okay!

“There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass – if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it’s okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.” – Anna Fitzgerald

Reviews:

The author vividly evokes the physical and psychic toll a desperately sick child imposes on a family, even a close and loving one like the Fitzgeralds… there can be no easy outcomes in a tale about individual autonomy clashing with a sibling’s right to life, but Picoult thwarts out expectations in unexpected ways… a telling portrait of a profoundly stressed family.

-Kirkus Reviews

five-out-of-five

 

“I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.” – Sara Fitzgerald