What I've Been Reading

I'd Tell You I Love You But Then i'd Have to Kill You

The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women lives up to its name. Not only does this exclusive boarding school teach advanced language skills and correct deportment; its students also master the arts of tapping phones, hacking into computers, and spying in public places. At school, second-generation Gallagher Girl Cammie Morgan has impeccable credentials: She is fluent in 14 languages and able to kill an assailant in seven different ways. But recently life has dealt Cammie a card that she never anticipated: She has fallen in love with an ordinary boy who knows nothing about her exotic double life. A truly covert romance.


I thought this book would be a nice break from all the dystopianness. I am usually not a fan of girlly books, but I sincerely tried. I got to the last 30 pages or so before I kind of just wanted to give up. I thought it was going to be a big time girl power spy book. But then the minute she meets a boy, she kind of wants to give up all the spy stuff to sneak around. 


I felt the characters were one dimensional. Cammie was too much of a girlie girl and while watching a girl fall in love for the first time is always heart warming, I found it a little self deprecating. It was told in first person so we got to know her pretty well. On the other hand she had the tough friend, Bex and the smart friend, Liz. Macey, the new girl was the only stand-out, but mostly because she was trying to be a mean girl.


I know this is a series. I think that it probably has redeeming qualities as you read more, so I would still recommend it as an easy quick read for any girl. I would recommend Gossip Girl to the same type :-). 

The Water and the Wilds

When Bee woke up, there was a girl standing in her room. "You are me," the girl said. Then she was gone.

I am a thirteen-year-old double Gemini. I get bad grades, write poetry with my left hand, dance in my room, surf the net. I Google images of the tattoos my mom won't let me get. . . .

But my world belongs to someone else. Someone who lives below the concrete of Los Angeles, someone with wild eyes and twigs in her hair.

And I think she wants her life back.

Quotable Francesca: 

"How do I know right from wrong? I come from a place where it isn't the same."

"Under the ground where the roots take hold and everything end but also begins" 

 As per usual, I loved every word. I read this book in about an hour. I remember reading Weetzie Bat about 16 years ago at the same speed. That's what I love about Francesca Lia Block. No matter how old I am still amazed by her words. And I feel like I should be on a first name basis with her, mostly because I am her friend on facebook. I will re-read this, because she always uncover the story little by little, doesn't really make complete sense until the end.

The characters are beautifully written, completely complimentary to one another and all necessary in each other's life. It is a character driven story, more than a plot driven story. It is a snippet out of someone's life that we are chosen to be able to view. It would make any outcast feel like there is hope. And everyone who dream of fairies and doppledangers believe that the could indeed exist.

This book is hard to recommend at my particular library. They're in to graphic novels, urban fiction and fantasy. I know that this is considered fantasy, but... it is bit too wordy in the world of graphic novels.