Ship Out Of Luck by Neal Shusterman REVIEW

I love the Antsy Bonano series, and I wish that it had been around what I was in Jr. High. The characters are so much fun to read. Not that I don’t enjoy this series now as a recent college grad, but had these books been published ten years before, they probably would have been some of my favorites.

Ship Out of Luck is the third book in the Antsy Bonano series, the first and most popular being The Schwa Was Here. One of the great things about this series, is that even if you haven’t read all three books, you can still pick up any of them and not be too confused, which is especially nice since they come out years apart. This time, Antsy and his family have been invited, well it has been demanded of them, to accompany Old Mr. Crowley on a cruise trip to celebrate his birthday. As usually, trouble seem to find Antsy before the ship even leaves port, when he becomes convinced that someone jumped for the upper deck and into the water. Of course no one believes him, but he meets a strange girl who breaks into peoples cabins, hides out in life boats, and has been smuggling and storing canned food. There is something mysterious about her, and as hard as Antsy tries to stay away from her, she keeps showing up everywhere Antsy goes on the ship. Even Antsy’s best friend Howie takes to calling her a stalker.

But this girl isn’t the only thing that’s weird on the ship, rumors of a Viking ghost run rampant, and both Howie and Mr. Crowley’s nice start acting weird and hanging out with different sorts of people then they do back home. Could this all be coincidence, or is the Bermuda triangle really starting to affect how people behave?

There are some political messages in this book as well. While in today’s world it is hard not to be hammered with political agendas in books, I still sighed inwardly when it started to come up. I think that is the only thing that I didn’t like about the book. Possibly because it is aimed at a younger audience, Mr. Shusterman felt the need to make is obvious what he was trying to get at, but I think the book and its ideas could have been achieved without being so annoyingly obvious. While immigration is a hot button issue, it didn’t need to be so bluntly put.

Again, this series is such a fun read, I was ecstatic when Neal Shusterman tweeted that he had written another book and ordered it right away. I would recommend this book to people ages 11-15, although it can be enjoyable even by adults. There is a brief moment towards the end with one of the minor character’s questioning his sexuality, and while that topic shouldn’t be ignored, some younger people may not fully understand the struggle. People who have real Neal Shusterman’s other young adult novels will also enjoy this, as will people who enjoy Louis Sachar and Roahl Dahl novels.

Eleanor & Park Review

In so many reviews this story gets compared to Romeo and Juliet, and while in simple terms it can be seen as a similar story, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is much more. Set in a small town in the mid 1980s, Eleanor and Park meet when they are fifteen on the way to school. Park is forced by circumstance to share his bus seat with the oddly dressed new girl. Though the course of their bus rides together they slowly develop a friendship and eventually a relationship. The two have very different home lives, Park with the Norman Rockwell family, and Eleanor with her divorced parents and six people living in a two bedroom home. Between school bullies, personal insecurities, and home lives they try to keep from each other; their relationship suffers many ups and down over the school year. A contemporary young adult novel that pulls the reader, and by the conclusion of the novel leaves its reader an emotional wreck.

I liked this book, probably would rate it 4.5 stars. I felt like it started a little slow, took almost fifty pages for me to actually start caring about the characters, but after that I was so invented I finished the book in one sitting (it was a long sitting, but still). I felt like the author pushed a little to hard with the Romeo and Juliet references, as well as the references to hell. I understand that many people feel that high school is hell, and Romeo and Juliet is a story that most people know, but I just felt annoyed.

The narration also took a bit of getting used to. It constantly changes between Eleanor and Park, but not just at the start of a chapter, but constantly throughout the book. Every section is labeled with the character, but I found it frustrating that the POV was constantly shifting.

The development of not just the relationship, but the characters in general was what kept me reading, and I am glad I did. With so many reviews comparing this book to R&J I was concerned that I wouldn’t like the story, but honestly I found very few similarities. I loved the way plots worked their way to the surface of the story, giving little hints and guidance along the way. It was the kind of plot where I could reasonably make assumptions about what I thought was going to happen, and do it with relative accuracy, but wasn’t written in a way that “well duh” ever entered into my head.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction or young adult novels.

Carrie by Stephen King: a review

Carrie is one of the most infamous horror stories ever written by Stephen King. Its story arc is used over and over again in soap operas, primetime TV, and movies (similar to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). Carrie is a nobody in High School, in fact she’s worse than a nobody, she’s weird and comes from a weird family. Carrie’s mother is a crazed religious zealot who believes that her own daughter was a curse from God because she engaged in marital sex, who won’t let her daughter make friends, and doesn’t even explain breasts and menstruation to her daughter. This last issue is where the story starts to take place, sixteen-year-old Carrie, being teased in the gym shower as she starts her first period. Strange things begin happening around Carrie whenever she is frustrated, belittled or teased until the climax near the end of the book.

I honestly never felt the need to read this book. I hadn’t even seen the movie, but it is a plot used so often in TV Halloween specials and Soap Opera prom stories (I still remember NBC’s Passions and how amazing it was) so I never cared to read the story until my book club decided to read it. I am so glad I did, I loved the fanatical character of the mom, and how throughout the mainly linear plotline of Carrie’s Prom sections of newspapers and books from after the event are inserted into the storyline. Even though I knew how it was going to end, I really wanted Carrie to turn her life around. I didn’t want the sappy ending where she’s just accepted and gets a boyfriend, the cookie-cutter ending. What I wanted was for Carrie to say “eff you” to the kids at school, smack her crazy mother in the face (with a hammer), and just go start her own life in the woods or something. Alas, that obviously couldn’t happen, but even knowing how it was going to end, I still really enjoyed the book.