Maid for Me

Maid for Me
by Kat Lieu
Published November 18, 2009 by NummyzProd

Summary (from goodreads.com):

Feisty Mina Lin waltzes on glass shards when she lands a job as billionaire Jaiden Daniels's maid. What happens when Jaiden hires her to become his pretend girlfriend? Pretending to be in love with the hot Rich Boy is hard, when Mina's heart only beats for her boy next door, Kiterin Forrests. What happens when Mina doesn't know what her heart wants and a crazy Stalker is after Jaiden's life, and the only person who can save him is Mina?

Find out in Maid for Me, starring Mina Lin, an ambitious, silly, funny, and talented Asian-American heroine who has even developed her own fighting styled called Mina-Jitsu. A fast-paced debut novel for young adults, by Kat Lieu. Filled with hilarious dialogue, suspense, sparkling wit and imagination-- a romance novel packed with action and humor!

Review:
I read this as a free e-book download through my Amazon Prime membership. While I applaud the author for self-publishing and writing a novel, this book was a little bit of a disappointment. While Maid for Me isn't the worst book that I have ever read, it definitely needed a lot of work. The point of view between characters sometimes changed within the next paragraph or even to a different set of characters who were not even in the current setting. Near the climax of the story, the point of view changed so frequently that it ruined the whole pacing and took me away from the suspense. While I thought it was a cute, spunky read that would definitely appeal to fans of Japanese dramas and Korean dramas, or even anime and manga; it has little going for it outside of that. There could have been a little more character development with all the characters of the book, as I often felt I was just reading the story instead of 'being there'.

2/5

The Deathday Letter

Deathday Letter

by Shaun Hutchinson

Published by Simon Pulse June 2010

256 pages

Summary (from Amazon): Oliver lives in a world where at some point in their lives, everyone receives a Deathday Letter, a letter that kindly lets you know you have twenty-four hours left to live. Abraham Lincoln received one, Heath Ledger received one, and on an otherwise typical Thursday morning, fifteen-year-old Oliver Travers receives one. Bummer.

With his best friend by his side, Ollie has one day left to live life to the fullest, go on every adventure possible…and set things right with the girl of his dreams.

Review:

Set in a world like our own where people receive letters letting them know when they are going to die, you think that this story would be a bit darker. The main character Oliver, is a riot. There were so many times I had to stop reading the book because I was laughing too hard. His wit and sense of humor keep the story fresh while he lives out his last day alive with his two friends.

While it is a story about a boy living his last day, there is also great character development. The Ollie we see at the beginning of the story is very different from the one at the end. He learns that even though he’s going to die, there are others that are going to have to deal with the grief left behind. He goes from being a very selfish boy to finally realizing that the world doesn’t revolve around him.

The only thing I found annoying was the constant “me-me-me” attitude of Ollie. At first it’s funny, but after a while it begins to grate on your nerves. Still, I loved this book and it was a fun read.

3.5/5

Fracture

Fracture
Megan Miranda
Published January 17th 2012 by Walker Childrens
284 pages

Summary (from Goodreads):

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

Review
I recieved an ebook sampler containing the first chapter of this book and wow, was I hooked. Delaney Maxwell falls through the thin ice of a lake and is underwater for 11 minutes before she's rescued. But miraculously, after 6 days she's awake and fully functional out of a coma. A modern medical miracle.
But is she alright? You follow Delaney through what her doctors and parents call "hallucinations" where she feels a pull towards people for some reason and the mysterious shadow figures she sees when she follows these pulls.

I liked the relationship between Delaney and her friend Decker, mostly because there was a lot of character developement between the two. Delaney has to deal with very real problems after her stint at the hospital, mainly trying to get her life back into the normal pattern it was in before she died and came back. Her relationship with Decker, her relationship with her mother and father, and he relationship with this mysterious man Troy Varga, that knows about her and almost died from a coma as well.

For a debut novel, this one was a good read. It hooked me from the very beginning, and while some parts of the book felt lacking or the pacing a little slow, I ultimately wanted to know what would happen so I kept reading.

If you like darker stories, I would definitely recommend Fracture. This might also be a good read for reluctant readers because it is rather short and does a great job of catching the reader's attention from the beginning.

3.5/5

You Wish

You Wish
Mandy Hubbard
August 5, 2010, Razorbill
272 pages

Summary(from goodreads):
Kayla McHenry's sweet sixteen sucks! Her dad left, her grades dropped, and her BFF is dating the boy Kayla's secretly loved for years. Blowing out her candles, Kayla thinks: I wish my birthday wishes actually came true. Because they never freakin' do.

Kayla wakes the next day to a life-sized, bright pink My Little Pony outside her window. Then a year's supply of gumballs arrives. A boy named Ken with a disturbing resemblance to the doll of the same name stalks her. As the ghosts of Kayla's wishes-past appear, they take her on a wild ride . . . but they MUST STOP. Because when she was fifteen? She wished Ben Mackenzie would kiss her. And Ben is her best friend's boyfriend.

Review:
First off, I want to say that I loved the whimsy that this book held. How many times has one blown out the candles on the birthday cake wishing something extraordinary would happen? I for one cannot remember wishes from one year to the next, so it was definitely a fun read for Kayla to live through the wishes she had asked for through different periods in her life.

I liked how fun this book was to read, and there were several moments where I laughed out loud. The character growth that Kayla went through from making the wish and to the end of the book was very realistic. She dealt with feelings for her estranged father and tried to gain attention from her workaholic mother. These are situations that teens have to deal with a lot more with working class parents.

I found the book fun and a quick read. For some reason, the book read a bit older than one published in 2010, but it was still a good, fun read.

4/5