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Eleanor and Park
RECOMMENDED: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell is $1.99! This book is a reader favorite, with a poignant ending and a powerful set of characters.
When Sarah collected recommendations for the best YA of 2013, this book was mentioned constantly. NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote:
Ultimately, Eleanor & Park is an enormously optimistic book about love and connection, and about the capacity of people to be powerfully consoling and healing to each other, even when they’re 16. And for that healing to be meaningful, there has to be some honesty about the injury.
Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.Eleanor… Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough…Eleanor.
Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises…Park.
Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
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The Diviners
RECOMMENDED: The Diviners by Libba Bray is $2.99! This is YA fantasy set in 1920s New York, so you can bet there are plenty of amazing clothes and fancy speakeasies. I personally loved the cast of characters, especially the heroine Evie and Evie’s uncle, who happens to curate an occult museum. However, some people found Evie to border on the TSTL category. Any readers care to weigh in on what they thought?
Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City–and she is pos-i-toot-ly thrilled. New York is the city of speakeasies, shopping, and movie palaces! Soon enough, Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfield girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult–also known as “The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies.”
When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer–if he doesn’t catch her first.
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One-Eyed Dukes Are Wild
One-Eyed Dukes Are Wild by Megan Frampton is 99c at Amazon and Google:Play! When this book first came out, there were a lot of penis jokes made around SBTB HQ. Some readers felt the book lacked any real conflict, while many loved the heroine’s confidence. It has a 3.7-star rating on Goodreads and is the third book in the Dukes Behaving Badly series.
When does proper behavior deserve a deliciously improper reward?
The scandalously unmarried Lady Margaret Sawford is looking for adventure—and is always up for a challenge. Her curiosity is aroused by a dangerous-looking stranger with an eye patch, an ideal companion for the life she longs for, no matter what Society might say. So when the piratical gentleman turns out to be a duke—and just as boringly proper as any other nobleman—she can’t help but incite him to walk on the wild side.
Well-heeled, well-mannered, and well beyond any interest in society’s expectations, the Duke of Lasham is tired of being perfect. Margaret’s lush beauty and gently laughing eyes are an irresistible temptation to embrace the imperfect—and her. But if a little misbehavior is appealing, unleashing his wild side is completely seductive—as long as the lovely Margaret is the object of his passion . . .
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Three Parts Dead
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone is $3.99! This is a recommended urban fantasy and many of my friends loved it. Reviewers on Goodreads really enjoyed the badass heroine, but some felt it had “first book syndrome” with too much stuff going on to set up the plot. Have you read this one?
A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.
Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.
Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.
When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.
Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.
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I liked three part’s dead, but I was disappointed to find out that Tara is not the heroine of the next book in the series – I felt there was a lot more of her story to tell. Did anyone move on to the next book? Is she in it, or is it the same world with new characters?
I loved Eleanor and Park. It was such a compelling story and so well written! I read a lot of YA, and it’s really exceptional.
E&P was such a life-alteringly spectacular book that i read it in one night and immediately started it over again. I love it so hard. READ IT, PEOPLE!!!!
PSA @ GrizzlyUrsula – a *direct* sequel to Three Parts Dead is coming out this July!
Ah, thanks for the heads up Ellen! I’ll probably check it out!
I’m willing to consider THREE PARTS DEAD a romantic-something (precise something To Be Determined) as a lot story is driven by characters’ desperate measures to attempt to save the other. Hard to go Look! Look! TruLuv(tm) working for HEA! — without being spoilery.
Max Gladstone’s series is really good, but you can’t get too attached to any set of characters (each book follows a different main character, not always women). It really is a fantasy series, where world building and larger social issues are being explored. The books have strong character development (which includes relationships, both romantic and friend), but these are situated in a much larger story. The writing is really smart, I appreciate that the characters are non-caucasian and the mythology is non-western.
Here is one review which captures some of what I love about this series: http://www.npr.org/2015/06/27/416517818/the-craft-sequence-please-do-judge-these-books-by-their-covers
(As a side note: You don’t have to appreciate contract law to enjoy this series, but if you do have a mind that enjoys such intricacies, you really should check out this series.)
I ate up Three Parts Dead, and I am very much looking forward to the sequel with these characters. The next in the series was also very good, but I admit that I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get more Tara and co.
And to anyone who loved the old Gargoyles cartoon or gothic architecture: there are sentient gargoyles in this book. WIN.
Have y’all noticed that Patricia Burroughs “This Crumbling Pageant” is on sale for .99 at Amazon? That’s a great sale, normally it’s quite expensive.
I’ve been trying to read Three Parts Dead for a year. I want to love it so bad. I’m a lawyer. I did extra contracts courses in law school, even though I don’t practice contract law now. I love most of the books that are recommended beside it. I know a ton of people who have loved it. It should be a favorite. But I read five pages and put it down and never really want to come back.
It looks like all of the Craft Series nooks are 4.99 right now.
Ooh, 4 Parts Dead is the next book, and it returns to Tara, for those of us who miss her.
I cried so hard at Elenor and Park. This book was great for getting the ugly, cathartic, necessary kind of cry out of me.
Not a big YA fan, but E&P is a great book for all ages. Had on my Kindle for ages but didn’t read until recently when a mention by one of Sarah’s podcast guests reminded me about it. Simple, straight forward language tells a powerful story. Not to be missed!