Playlist for the Dead - Michelle Falkoff

Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff
Published by HarperTeen on January 27, 2014
Pages: 288
Genres: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Coming of Age
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss

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Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Spectacular Now.

There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, Sam's best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand. To figure out what happened, Sam has to rely on the playlist and his own memory. But the more he listens, the more he realizes that his memory isn't as reliable as he thought. And it might only be by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he'll finally be able to piece together his best friend's story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.

Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.

Playlist for the Dead has a story that has already been out there, a lonely kid whose friend commits suicide and now is stuck trying to figure out why but it still has something new to say about the topic and in a different way. The things that I liked more about this book are:
• The mystery: Sam, our main instead of locking himself on his room and crying forever and ever decides to find out why Hayden killed himself. Also some *things* start to happen making it even more urgent for Sam's to figure out what the hell happened and how does it influences on Hayden's death and what happened next. I have to say that this part was my favorite thing in the book, I always loved detective novels and while this one isn't exactly that the mystery does pick up around 60% into the book and I couldn't put it down trying to find out everything.
• The overall positive tone: I usually love books that make me ugly sob and make my heart hurt but I also like when books can passe a positive message, especially books that are for teenages -- suicide & depression is now (unfortunately) a common thing, I think most teens know someone who tried to kill themselves or committed suicide or suffer through depression or event them passed through theses things, so it's important to have books like this one out there, saying that it's going to get better even when it doesn't look like it right now.
• Mr. Beaumont: Can I get an amen with the last chapter when Sam says Mr. Beaumont has been helping him get through the year? Mr. Beaumont is the school therapist and I just found SO important that books about depression/suicide acknowledge the fact that it's more than okay to have a professional help when getting through hard times. I get really pissed when books with characters that clearly need professional help doesn't even make that as an option (and unfortunately is the case with about 90% of the books about depression that I already read on the young adult gender).
• The songs: THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD SONGS IN HERE! So many that I didn't know and so many that I already loved, definitely read this book with your spotify/iTunes library near you.

The things that I wasn't as head-over-heels:
• The romance: I never got Sam and Astrid's romance! It isn't instalove but there is a lot of "You get me like no one else" and "I never felt a connection like this before" and I never saw this deep connection, idk maybe it was because it was Sam's first crush but still every time they talked I rolled my eyes.
• The characters: This was my biggest issue, despite that we learn a lot of the personal lives of most of the characters that are related to Hayden's death I still never felt like they are fleshed out enough, the only character that felt real was Sam and this was probably because it was on first person. This turned the story more distancing than it had to be and made my attachment to it be less emotional - still, I recommend it to all readers who like realistic fiction, and specially for the ones that love geeky references and a good song taste.

Wonder - R.J. Palacio

Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Published by Knopf on February 14, 2012
Pages: 313
Genres: Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Coming of Age
Format: Hardback
Source: Purchased

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I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?

R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions (flawed, but loving), lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is accessible to readers of all levels.


Wonder quickly become of my favorite reads, not only of this year but of all times and it’s easy to see why. The narrative of this story can be kind of childish for some people since it’s very straight forward, doesn’t make very turns to make things more pretty and also this story has a lot of show and not tell which usually bothers the hell out of me, but I only noticed it 20% into the book! This really shows how effective this narrative was in make me get into the story and connect with these characters and their feelings.

About the characters, it was a surprise to me when I looked inside the book and saw there was different POV’s and at first I thought it would make hard to get to know anyone but really it wasn’t, like I said the narrative is very simple making the feelings and personalities of each of this narrators really get out of the pages – all of them are so realistic and still so different. I think the narrative I most connect with was Via’s, she really got me teared up at so much times.

Also, this book is a lot more positive than I first expected, I mean I knew that it would end on a lighter tone but still I’m a big crier so expected to have some sobbing moments but no, I cried but always just a little bit – the narrative often goes from sad to lighter and funny. What made these turns so easy were the very short chapters, not making them weird turns.

 Anyway, I loved this book with all my soul, it carries an amazing message about bullying to kids, but I think adults/young adults also can get great things from this book. It’s an easy read, that really makes you think about people and the world around you and how you perceive it.

Recommended to: everyone really, it’s one of these books that I just want to push on everyone because I think every single people can take a message from it.

Anatomy of a Misfit - Andrea Portes

Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes
Published by Harper Children's on September 2, 2014
Pages: 336
Genres: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Coming of Age
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss

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This emotional, hilarious, devastating, and ultimately triumphant YA debut, based on actual events, recounts one girl’s rejection of her high school’s hierarchy—and her discovery of her true self in the face of tragedy.
Fall’s buzzed-about, in-house favorite.
Outside, Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair—the third most popular girl in school. Inside, she’s a freak: a mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if local chatter is to be believed, vampire DNA (after all, her father is Romanian). But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life hell. So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika knows she can’t get involved. It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd. So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life? Who cares if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it? Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? Who?
Anatomy of a Misfit is Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Anika’s hilariously deadpan delivery will appeal to readers for its honesty and depth. The so-sad-it’s-funny high school setting will pull readers in, but when the story’s dark foreboding gradually takes over, the devastating penultimate tragedy hits like a punch to the gut. Readers will ride the highs and lows alongside funny, flawed Anika — from laughter to tears, and everything in between.

Honestly the only good thing that I can say about this book is that is really short so even if you don't like it, it will end fast. But that’s it, the rest is just downhill. And maybe the humour will click with some people, with me it never clicked and was just annoying and childish the way Anika thinked everything in a ironical way 24/7, I love irony ok? But it was just bad on this case, trust me. 

Let’s start with our main character, Anika, she starts as one of the most popular girls on the school and is a terrible person in general – she slut shames her sisters, even her supposedly best friend (and also calls her dumb or similar in various occasions, usually together with some remark on how her friends looks), she also drugs her boss (I don’t care if he’s a terrible person, no one can just ‘slip’ some sedative on someone else drink, also the medicine she put in there is a addictive drug which means that after some time the person will not be able to sleep without medicine and will probably suffer insomnia for the rest of her life). Delightful person is Anika right?

Then we have the “romance”, I put romance between quotes because this isn’t really romance, we basically have two cases of extremely instalove. Logan is an outcast, but a really hot outcast that for some reason unknown starts to like Anika, so he starts giving her rides home on his super cool motor bike – but no one can known or Anika’s popularity will be ruined. Despite the fact that, supposedly, Logan gives Anika rides every day after school we only have like four scenes with them before “I love you” come into picture – which made me really not like their relationship. On the other hand we have Jared a super popular dude that every girl wishes to date, for some reason also unknown, wants Anika. Now I may have let Logan intalove slide if their scenes were cute because of the whole “forbidden love” but Jared and Anika scenes made me roll my eyes with intensity, it was so ridiculous the supposed intensity Jared adored her after like 5 seconds talking to her.

But, I mean this is a contemporary book, so of course Anika will grow past all this right? She will get past the appearances and found love and accept her weird family right? She will come of age and found her true self right? Right but only because of a “twist” that really bothered me. The first thing was that the “twist” wasn’t really a twist since I called it on the first time Anika visited Logan’s family, seriously hints need to be more subtle. Second, and what really bothered me, was that Logan’s history was a very painful one and could have been an amazing book all by itself but for some reason it was used only as a background on this one and the only point for being here was to make Anika have a big cheese moment and plot device which, for me, shouldn’t have been the point. Overall this is just the story of a spoiled girl who realizes that live isn’t all about herself.

Recommended to: no one really.