Must-read romances: 'Poisoned Apples,' 'Wicked Reflection,' 'Unmade'
Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann
What it's about (courtesy of Greenwillow Books):
Every little girl goes through her princess phase, whether she wants to be Snow White or Cinderella, Belle or Ariel. But then we grow up. And life is not a fairy tale.
Christine Heppermann's collection of fifty poems puts the ideals of fairy tales right beside the life of the modern teenage girl. With piercing truths reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins, this is a powerful and provocative book for every young woman. E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars, calls it "a bloody poetic attack on the beauty myth that's caustic, funny, and heartbreaking."
Cruelties come not just from wicked stepmothers, but also from ourselves. There are expectations, pressures, judgment, and criticism. Self-doubt and self-confidence. But there are also friends, and sisters, and a whole hell of a lot of power there for the taking. In fifty poems, Christine Heppermann confronts society head on. Using fairy tale characters and tropes, Poisoned Apples explores how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, and their friends. The poems range from contemporary retellings to first-person accounts set within the original tales, and from deadly funny to deadly serious. Complemented throughout with black-and-white photographs from up-and-coming artists, this is a stunning and sophisticated book to be treasured, shared, and paged through again and again.
Why you should read it: I loved this book. I'm a fan of poetry personally, so I found these dark, twisted bits of words highly entertaining. The cover is also gorgeous and I loved the photographs that accompanied the poems. I will say that for people who aren't huge poetry fans, the best way to read these is a few at time (50 poems all at once can be a little much). I really enjoyed reading these over the course of a week. It was enough to whet my appetite and make me really enjoy the creepy yet haunting beauty.
What Christine Heppermann has to say …
Favorite words that rhyme?
Christine: Noodle and poodle. Also strudel.
Favorite childhood poem?
Christine: Where Go the Boats by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Favorite poet?
Christine: I can't pick just one! Some favorites are Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye and Dorianne Laux.
What are you working on now?
Christine: I'm working on a novel-in-verse called Spirit Week about a teenage girl in Catholic school.
Favorite line from Poisoned Apples?
Christine: "Are those people for real?" (from "Suburban Legends")
Wicked Reflection by Hank Edwards
What it's about (courtesy of Wilde City Press):
When Kirk Stanford moves into his new home, strange things begin to happen. Messages appear in the steam on his mirror, warning him of a nameless threat. Then someone keeps breaking into his house, looking for something Kirk can't identify. With the help of his boyfriend, Damon, Kirk digs into the house's history and discovers not just the previous owner's brutal murder, but threatening letters written to him from someone named Sam. As the intruder strikes again, Kirk and Damon find themselves fighting not only to solve the mystery, but to keep from being murdered themselves.
Why you should read it: Hank has a way with his heroes and of twisting in the paranormal with the normal. This one is a typical ghost story with a little extra kick. I loved the romance especially (so hot), but I really liked the mystery. There are a lot of players, and we all wonder just who Sam is and what is actually going on. I really loved the build-up. There's a lot of action, and it was the perfect blend of anticipation and mystery. It's fun, it's spooky and has a ton of steam to boot.
What Hank Edwards has to say …
Favorite ghost story?
Hank: The Shining, the book. Oh boy. What a tense, scary story. I get chills just thinking about it.
Have you ever had a haunted/ghost encounter?
Hank: I have not! And, I gotta say, I'm pretty happy about that. :)
What are you working on right now?
Hank: I'm currently working on a Young Adult fantasy gay romance series. I publish free chapters on my blog every Monday morning. Right now I'm in the middle of book two, titled The Well of Tears. In my spare time (ha ha!), I've been working on some new stuff I'm keeping quiet for now. :)
Epic one-liner from Wicked Reflections?
Hank: Oh, wow, lemme think ... It's tough to pick one that works out of context. :) How about this one?
"I'm no sociopath." Lance cut his eyes to the side a moment, then looked back at Kirk. "Of course, if I was a sociopath, I would probably be lying about being a sociopath. But either way, I'd like to come in and continue our conversation."
Unmade by Sarah Rees Brennan
What it's about (courtesy of Random House):
Powerful love comes with a price. Who will be the sacrifice?
Kami has lost the boy she loves, is tied to a boy she does not, and faces an enemy more powerful than ever before. With Jared missing for months and presumed dead, Kami must rely on her new magical link with Ash for the strength to face the evil spreading through her town.
Rob Lynburn is now the master of Sorry-in-the-Vale, and he demands a death. Kami will use every tool at her disposal to stop him. Together with Rusty, Angela, and Holly, she uncovers a secret that might be the key to saving the town. But with knowledge comes responsibility—and a painful choice. A choice that will risk not only Kami's life, but also the lives of those she loves most.
This final book in the Lynburn Legacy is a wild, entertaining ride from beginning to shocking end.
Why you should read it: The Lynburn Legacy is a great series for those looking for mystery, romance and secrets … For fans of this series, you know Sarah left us with a heartbreaking ending with Untold and a long wait for Unmade! I liked this one better than the last and enjoyed the jokes and one-liners. At times it was a bit much, but having said that, this is who the characters are, and I enjoyed the comedic relief. Kami is a great heroine. She's the perfect match for this action-packed series. I like how she's "real," confused at times, and so strong in her beliefs. And the love triangle? There are so many Jared fans and Rusty fans (any Ash fans?) that I'll keep my lips sealed. I will say that I've always loved Sarah's work, and I highly recommend starting with Unspoken.
What Sarah Rees Brennan has to say …
Favorite haunted manor/mansion/house?
Sarah: When I was going around England researching the Cotswolds (beautiful rural area, hills and valleys and golden stone and vistas galore, clearly the place to set a murder), I heard quite a few ghost stories. I found one haunted river, which I thought was more original than a haunted house and determined to use it.
But wherever I went I was told to visit Stanway House, a Jacobean manor in Gloucester. So I figured there had to be a really good story attached to that one. I took several buses and trotted down long roads, twice missing the village of Stanway entirely. (It is not large.)
I saw the house, which is gorgeous and made of Cotswold stone, so it looks like a mellow gold nugget shining in the grounds, and also has tapestries inside it chronicling the noble lineage of some of their dogs. But I wasn't quite sure why people had told me to come here ... what the dark story behind the house was. I kept expecting a murder — a priest hole — a ghost story.
Eventually, I came outside and sat down in a clear space in the gardens. The sun was shining. I was writing in my notebook. People were pointing and laughing at me, which was a bit surprising. The ground started to shake, and then the place where I sat erupted into shattering noise and with a powerful jet of water.
... Turns out, Stanway House has the highest vertical fountain in England.
I thought for a minute that I was going to be the ghost story of Stanway House. (I'd be the worst ghost. "The White Lady does swears, Mummy," small English children would say of me.)
Favorite gothic romance story?
Sarah: The Secret Garden.
... No, no, wait, hear me out!
Nobody loves Jane Eyre more than me: I wrote an affectionate parody of it!
When reading The Secret Garden, though, I realised how like Jane Eyre and other works of Gothic fiction it was. A shadowy ancestral manor full of shadowy ancestral secrets, marked by tragedy. A hidden place. A hidden and trapped person, who sometimes screams the place down. Moors, obviously. There are always more moors in these books.
But it's only in The Secret Garden that I have seen someone both redeemed and rescued.
In The Secret Garden, the heroine isn't the one who gets rescued. The heroine is the one who finds and rescues and reforms the trapped monster. I loved seeing the girl save the day, and I loved seeing the message of hope even in Gothic shadows.
Favorite villain?
Sarah: I would say Heathcliff (of The Postman's Sexy Adventures. No, OK, of Wuthering Heights). He's so interesting because culturally we think and talk about him as the hero. Kate Bush sings about being Cathy and coming home to him. He gets romantic monologues, and initially he is very sympathetic — he's hard done by, and the world is cruel to him, which makes him cruel. But the book actually engages with that: on how far someone can lash back at being victimised before becoming a villain, and Heathcliff does. By the time he's hurting innocent people, he has clearly become a toxic person and for the last half of the book he is the major — the only — antagonist. The book poses some really great questions by showing us Heathcliff's changing position in the narrative: How far do you go before you are irredeemable? What if you do not even want to be redeemed?
Heathcliff kidnaps Catherine Linton (our heroine since her mother, Cathy Earnshaw, is dead) and he keeps her from her dying father until he can force her into marriage with his own cruel (and dying! Those moors, not healthy places!) son, in order to get her inheritance. This is classic villain stuff: depriving the innocent young girl of her liberty in more ways than one, regarding her as chattel and a means to the end of greed. More classic villain stuff — he hits his wife and he hangs a puppy. I'm just saying. PUPPIES. How can Emily Bronte make herself clearer?
The villain of the Lynburn Legacy series is based on Heathcliff, in a way that isn't made clear until the last book, so: spoiler manor. Spoiler moor. (The Gothic equivalents of "Spoiler city.")
What are you working on right now?
Sarah: I'm writing a high fantasy novel in which the heroine is packed off to an arranged marriage ... only to find that both the first and the second candidates for that arranged marriage are dead, and she's now the intended bride of the murder suspect.
I'm editing Tell the Wind and Fire, which will come out next year ... a retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, set in New York, in which our heroine, Lucie, is part of a class who rule through the magic in their jeweled rings, and the two men she meets look exactly the same because one is a doppelganger of the other ... a being created by dark magic, whose face means death for his original to look upon.
Favorite line from Unmade?
Sarah: The last one. ;) (What! I'm so mean! But it's Spoiler Moors all over again.) It was the first and only time I've ever started a story knowing the exact last line it would end on, the line that implied all the things I wanted to: romance and strangeness and communication and magic. Given that all stories change while being written, it makes me happy that this never changed — it makes me feel as if I told the story I set out to tell.
Jessie Potts, also known as Book Taster, adores books in all forms. She also does reviews for RT Book Reviews magazine and works in the submissions department at Dreamspinner Press. You can follow her on Twitter (@BookTaster).