Review: All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen (Blog Tour Stop)

All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen
Publisher: Entangled Teen
First published: December 11th, 2012
Source: Received from publisher
Format: eBook (Kindle)
Pages: 304

Goodreads Summary:

What if your life wasn’t your own?

Liv comes out of a coma with no memory of her past and two distinct, warring voices inside her head. Nothing, not even her reflection, seems familiar. As she stumbles through her junior year, the voices get louder, insisting she please the popular group while simultaneously despising them. But when Liv starts hanging around with Spencer, whose own mysterious past also has him on the fringe, life feels complete for the first time in, well, as long as she can remember.

Liv knows the details of the car accident that put her in the coma, but as the voices invade her dreams, and her dreams start feeling like memories, she and Spencer seek out answers. Yet the deeper they dig, the less things make sense. Can Liv rebuild the pieces of her broken past, when it means questioning not just who she is, but what she is?

My Rating: 4.0 / 5

First thoughts:

Even though memory loss stories can be found very often in YA books at the moment and can therefore become a little bit tiring, I thoroughly enjoyed All the Broken Pieces.  

More detailed:

... the narration and the plot:

I usually prefer stories told from a first person narrator, because they make it a lot easier to connect with the main charcter. All the Broken Pieces is told from a third person narrator who isn't omniscient though. At first this confused me since I'm not as used to this technique, but soon it no longer made a difference. We get to experience the world from Liv's point of view, who isn't a very reliable narrator thanks to her memory loss, which makes stories like this so very interesting.

As I already mentioned above, memory loss stories aren't unique and so far I have read a couple - some were good, some not so good. All the Broken Pieces is definitely one of the better ones, even though it cannot replace my current favorite. The problem I've had with its plot is the rather slow pace and the missing action. While it's mysterious, I found it to be more like a "simple" contemporary coming-of-age story with some elements that are supposed to keep us guessing. Nonetheless I loved those moments that hint at a big secret behind Liv's awful accident and I loved trying to find out about it.

... the characters:

Liv is a character you can't help but end up liking. She isn't too whiny even though she has enough reasons to be and tries to figure out the mysteries of her accident without forgetting that she has a life to live nonetheless. What I didn't like about her though, were her inconsisent reactions. There were moments when she completely overreacts, while I'm completely baffled after some scenes where her reactions are just too mild.

Spencer, too, is a very likeable main character and a great love interest for Liv. He has to work through his own issues, which makes him a very understanding friend and boyfriend for the poor girl, who never fails to support her when she needs it the most. The other characters we meet in All the Broken Pieces are diverse but none of them really stick out (except for Liv's parents maybe).

... everything:

All in all, I can definitely recommend All the Broken Pieces, if you're looking for an entertaining and slightly mysterious contemporary to your tbr-pile. It's a lot of fun to guess along with Liv and Spencer and find out what really happened. And while it's definitely possible to guess the truth (I wasn't too mistaken actually), I'm sure some of you will definitely be surprised by what truly happened.

This review is part of All the Broken Pieces' blog tour.

Cindi Madsen sits at her computer every chance she gets, plotting revising, and falling in love with her characters. Sometimes it makes her a crazy person. Without it, she’d be even crazier. She has way too many shoes, but can always find a reason to buy a new pretty pair, especially if they’re sparkly, colorful, or super tall. She loves music, dancing, and wishes summer lasted all year long. She lives in Colorado (where summer is most definitely NOT all year long) with her husband and three children.

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Waiting on Wednesday #83

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pick is BEAUTY by Nancy Ohlin.
It's going to be published on May 7th, 2013 by Simon Pulse.
ISBN: 9781442472655 | pre-order: The Book Depository / Amazon US / Amazon UK / B&N

Goodreads Summary:

Looks to kill for...

Ana is nothing like her glamorous mother, Queen Veda, whose hair is black as ravens and whose lips are red as roses. Alas, Queen Veda loathes anyone whose beauty dares to rival her own—including her daughter.

And despite Ana’s attempts to be plain to earn her mother’s affection,

she’s sent away to the kingdom’s exclusive boarding school.

At the Academy, Ana is devastated when her only friend abandons her for the popular girls. Isolated and alone, Ana resolves to look like a true princess to earn the acceptance she desires.

But when she uncovers the dangerous secret that makes all of the girls at the Academy so gorgeous, just how far will Ana go to fit in?

What are you waiting for this Wednesday?

Review: This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Speak (Penguin)
First published: May 27th, 2002
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Pages: 345

Goodreads Summary:

When it comes to relationships, Remy doesn't mess around. After all, she's learned all there is to know from her mother, who's currently working on husband number five. But there's something about Dexter that seems to defy all of Remy's rules. He certainly doesn't seem like Mr. Right. For some reason, however, Remy just can't seem to shake him. Could it be that Remy's starting to understand what those love songs are all about?

My Rating: 4.0 / 5

First thoughts:

Craving more contemporary stories, I decided to finally pick up one of Sarah Dessen's books that were so often recommended to me. And while I definitely enjoyed This Lullaby, I felt as though all the hype surrounding her novels had raised my expectations a bit too much.

More detailed:

... the plot:

As I don't read contemporaries too often, I always find the normalcy very refreshing. Without any paranormal secrets to reveal, I know that many people can be bored by realistic fiction, but This Lullaby has enough twists, turns and heart-breaking moments to keep me interested. And even though its narration still concentrates heavily on Remy's emotions, I was never bored.

... the characters:

I couldn't help myself but feel sorry for poor Remy who just cannot make herself believe in true love because of her mother's constantly repeated pattern of wedding and divorce. Therefore she ends up being slightly cynic, but that makes her a very entertaining first person narrator. Her attitude toward relationships can be a little bit tiring though. While she realizes that the relationship with Dexter is different than what she usually prefers, I would have wished for her to change more thoroughly toward the end.

On the other hand, Dexter turned out to be a very swoon-worthy love interest whom I was very happy to meet. While he's not the type of guy Remy usually falls for, I knew from the beginning that I'd love meeting a guy like him, because he never fails to make you smile and feel good. The secondary characters of This Lullaby are very diverse and entertaining, even though I had a hard time connecting to some of them - especially Remy's mother.

... everything:

While not completely meeting my expectations for This Lullaby, it still was a very enjoyable read that makes me want to read more of Sarah Dessen's books. It was a cute but still slightly heart-breaking contemporary read that could be the perfect beach read for the upcoming summer, if you're looking for a feisty main character and a love story that is anything but conventional.

Buy this book:

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository

Have you read any of Sarah Dessen's books? If yes, which one would you recommend me to read next?
Carina

Excellent Review of Lawyers, Guns and Money at Men Reading Books!

Men Reading Books: Lawyers, Guns and Money by JD Rhoades: No matter what the population, information is power. Small town and county politics are being played out in rural North Carolina. Andy Col...

We're Not Going Platinum

Latest Newspaper Column:

With the recent crisis over the nonexistent “fiscal cliff” averted, the president and Congress seem inevitably headed toward another confrontation over the debt ceiling.

The Republicans, who inexplicably continue to be “led” by Cryin’ John Boehner, insist that they won’t allow the United States to borrow more money, even to pay its current outstanding bills, without an agreement to massive spending cuts.

The Obama administration, no doubt remembering that the last “deal” on the debt ceiling resulted in the very debacle we just went through, is saying, “No way. No deals. Do your job, raise the debt ceiling without conditions, the way you did without a negative word when there was a Republican president in office. Then we talk.”

If the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised, the mightiest nation in the world does what even a Third World banana republic should be ashamed to do: It goes into default. The government shuts down. So, with this disastrous showdown looming, some people have begun talking about an allegedly clever plan to save us, in the form of the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin (or, as I call it, the TDPC).

Here’s how it would supposedly work: A federal law, 31 USC § 5112, allows the Treasury secretary to order the creation of platinum coins in any denomination. The law was originally meant to authorize commemorative coins, but it’s not specifically limited to those.

So, TDPC advocates say, the president should just order the secretary to mint a single platinum coin, declare it worth a trillion dollars, and deposit it in the Federal Reserve. Hey, presto! We’re solvent again, and we move on.

Sounds completely absurd, you may say, and you’d be right. But as a number of people, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, have pointed out, what would be even more absurd would be to let the United States become the world’s largest deadbeat nation, able to pay its current outstanding bills but unwilling to do so.

Because, make no mistake, this isn’t about new spending; this is about Congress refusing to pay for spending it’s already authorized. As several writers have noted, it’s like a father declaring that the family’s run up too high a balance on the credit card, so he’s just not going to make the payments on the debt they have.

All that said, the TDPC raises some practical considerations that would need to be worked out. For one thing, how does one “deposit” a trillion dollar coin? Does the Treasury secretary just stick it in his front pocket and walk it down to the Federal Reserve? Does the Fed have tellers? Does he have to fill out a deposit slip? And hey, wouldn’t this be an open invitation to some supervillain to try to steal the coin?

Also, whose face goes on the TDPC? A number of folks have made suggestions: John Boehner; The President Who Must Not Be Named; and for some reason, swimmer Michael Phelps.

As for me, my choice would be late night TV host Stephen Colbert. No one, in my opinion, does a better job of saying ridiculous things with a straight face to make a point. And that is exactly what advocating the TDPC is: a ridiculous answer to a ridiculous impasse.

Some — not all — liberal commentators have urged the adoption of the TDPC, not least because of the possibility it would make John Boehner’s pumpkin-colored head explode. For its part, the Obama administration has shown no signs of actively considering this plan. Nor should it. It also shouldn’t bargain with the shrinking Teahadist caucus that wants once again to hold the U.S. economy hostage.

There’s a time and a place for discussions about spending, but it’s not at gunpoint. Congress needs to do its job and not send the country into actual bankruptcy today in the name of keeping it from going bankrupt tomorrow.

The last vote on the Senate’s fiscal cliff deal, arrived at after the House punted so disgracefully, showed that while there is still a crazy faction of the Republican Party willing to blow things up if they don’t get their way, it’s smaller than we originally thought. Some of them, thank goodness, will still vote not to wreck the country.

And if not — well, the wingnuts finally get what they want. A government that doesn’t spend money and does absolutely nothing for its citizens, one that’s so shrunken, in the words of wingnut icon Grover Norquist, that you could “drown it in a bathtub.”

Let’s see how much the people love them then, and how long before they realize they’ve overplayed their hand and they cave.

Call the bluff, Mr. President.

Fictional Distractions of the Week #55

Welcome to Fictional Distractions of the Week. It is inspired by Book Journey's It's Monday! What are you reading? and Fiktshun's My Reading Pile and it will show you what I'm planning to read during the next week.

The books I plan to read this week:

At first I'll finish reading All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen, which I'm very far into and liking a lot at the moment. While I wish that the plot would move a little bit faster, I really like the mystery surrounding Liv's past. If you like memory-loss stories, this could be a great one for you! My review will be up on Friday for its blog tour.

After that I want to read Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt. I really like contemporary books at the moment and this one sounds really interesting. I already know that it's not the happy read I first thought it would be and I've heard some mixed things about it, but I'm really curious to find out what I'll think about it.

And maybe I'll even get around to start Hooked by Liz Fichera, which is another contemporary that sounds like a perfect addition to my reading pile. I haven't heard a lot about it yet, but some quite good things, so I'm looking forward to read it myself.

What are your Fictional Distractions of the Week?

New Distractions #20

New Distractions is a weekly feature on Fictional Distraction, inspired by various memes that make us share the new books we got during a week, e.g. In My Mailbox by The Story Siren, This Week in Books by Pop Culture Junkie and Stacking the Shelves by Tynga's Reviews.

The books I received this week:

For review:

The Nightmare Affair | Things I Can't Forget | Losing It

Huge thanks to Tor Teen, Sourcebooks Fire, and William Morrow Paperbacks.

Slowly things are getting a bit more quiet for me, but in February I'll start another internship for six weeks which will keep me super busy again. Really hoping to find enough time to read and review. Luckily I only have one side job now, which at least gives me more free time during the weekend.

And YAY! for these awesome books. Can't wait to read them!

Which books did you get this week?
Carina