Book: Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender

Published September 2013 by Scholastic|225 pages

Where I Got It: I own the e-book

Series: None

Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller

Colette Iselin is excited to go to Paris on a class trip. She’ll get to soak up the beauty and culture, and maybe even learn something about her family’s French roots.

But a series of gruesome murders are taking place across the city, putting everyone on edge. And as she tours museums and palaces, Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks suspiciously like Marie Antoinette.

Colette knows her popular, status-obsessed friends won’t believe her, so she seeks out the help of a charming French boy. Together, they uncover a shocking secret involving a dark, hidden history. When Colette realizes she herself may hold the key to the mystery, her own life is suddenly in danger…

Acclaimed author Katie Alender brings heart-stopping suspense to this story of revenge, betrayal, intrigue- and one killer queen.

Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer was just okay for me.  I was really intrigued by the title, but I was ultimately not too interested in this book.

I like the idea, but the mystery and revenge and everything…I was expecting more Marie Antoinette in the book.  I was also expecting something more creepy, but it was more…shallow…then I expected it to be.  Then again, maybe I had higher expectations than I thought I did.

Still, you’d expect a book titled Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer to be more fun and campy, and instead, I think it tried to be more serious than maybe it should have been.  I don’t know enough about Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution or Paris as a setting to comment on the historical accuracy of the book, and I’m fairly certain there are going to be inaccuracies as far as the history goes…but like I said before, I was really expecting there to be more of a historical mystery.  And it felt like I was reading someone’s impression of Paris, instead of actually feeling like I was in Paris.  Randomly, Anna And The French Kiss and Isla And The Happily Ever After did a much better job at making me feel like I was in Paris.

The murder scenes were interesting at first, but after the first 1-2, there wasn’t much change in that part of the story.  I really wish they had been varied a little bit.

Colette was pretty whiny and selfish, and for someone who was supposed to be smart, she was fairly dumb at times.  Her brother drops out of his private school and goes to a public school so that Colette can stay at her school with friends…her one friend is a horrible human being, and her other one…just goes along with the mean one.  I just wanted Colette to actually stand up to the mean one and care less about the money and social status…she did, I guess, but by then I didn’t actually care, and it was way too late.

And an apology is the thing that saves Colette from a queen who was hellbent on revenge?  And Marie Antoinette just forgives her because Colette apologizes for what her ancestor did?  That’s it?  Really?  It wasn’t creepy like I thought, and we don’t really get a lot of Marie Antoinette.  If you want a book about a girl trying to solve a mystery (that’s also a fast read and pretty predictable), this might be something you’re interested in reading.  I just thought the book would be different, for some reason.

2 stars.  MA, SK was okay.  I sort of don’t care enough to actively dislike it.

Book: The Sound by Sarah Alderson

Published August 2013 by Simon & Schuster|275 pages

Where I Got It: I own the e-book

Series: None

Genre: YA Contemporary

When aspiring music journalist Ren Kingston takes a job nannying for a wealthy family on the exclusive island of Nantucket, playground for Boston’s elite, she’s hoping for a low-key summer reading books and blogging about bands. Boys are firmly off the agenda.

What she doesn’t count on is falling in with a bunch of party-loving private school kids who are hiding some dark secrets; falling (possibly) in love with the local bad boy; and falling out with a dangerous serial killer…

The Sound is another book I’m not sure how I feel about.  I’m glad I’m reading, especially after not reading anything for over a month, but this is the 2nd book I’ve read where I don’t completely know how I feel about it.

Now that I think about it, Ren didn’t do a lot of nannying.  We barely see her with the kids…or even interact with the parents.  It just seemed like a weird way to bring over to Nantucket, and an even weirder way to connect her to something that barely seemed to matter.  Why have the mystery of a serial killer if it’s pretty much mentioned in passing? It didn’t really add anything to the story.  Also, only two girls were killed, and for me, that’s too few people to be considered a serial killer.

Back to the nannying for a second: the few times we did see her with the kids, she doesn’t actually do her job. One of the kids is in day camp for the summer, and I fail to see why she needs a nanny.  We don’t even see her with the younger kid, and even when Ren goes out with the family (especially at parties), Ren tends to wander off and do her own thing.  The nanny thing makes no sense to me.

And the dark secrets?  They’re horrible, but I was expecting something different than the one major thing we got.

I don’t mind if characters are a little bit cliche, but most of the characters weren’t memorable, and I couldn’t tell most of them apart.  Ren, Jesse, and Brodie, one of the kids that Ren is a nanny for, are the only ones that actually stand out.  Ren, because she’s the main character, Jesse because he’s the bad boy Ren can’t stay away from, and Brodie because she is so incredibly unbelievable as a 4-year-old.  Jesse put a guy in a coma, and Ren is warned to stay away from him, and yet she still talks to him.  He would actually be okay if he didn’t put someone in a coma and I get why he put someone in a coma…but he still put someone in a coma.  And Brodie?  A four-year-old should not know about “bases” and ask you if you got to a particular base with someone.  Also, 4-year-olds should not be calling people skanktrons.  She either should have been older, or not acted the way she did in the book.  If that’s how she’s acting, then we have a serious problem.

Also irritating was the fact that girls were slut-shamed…and Ren’s best friend telling Ren that she just needed to have sex and get it over with and that waiting was stupid.  The name-calling in the book also got irritating by the end of the book.

1 star.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about The Sound at first, but now that I’ve written down what I think about it, I’ve found that I really don’t like it.

Book: Taking The Reins by Katrina Abbott

Published January 2014 by Over The Cliff Publishing|154 Pages

Where I Got It: I own the e-book

Series: The Rosewoods #1

Genre: YA Contemporary

Brooklyn Prescott (if that’s even her real name) is the new girl at The Rosewood Academy for Academic Excellence, now that she’s moved back to the States after two years living in London. Rosewood, a boarding school for children of the rich and famous and known for its celebutantes, is missing just one element important to any junior’s education: boys. But luckily for Brooklyn, and the rest of the Rosewood girls, there’s a boys’ boarding school, The Westwood Academy, just a few miles away.

On her very first day, Brooklyn meets Will, a gorgeous and flirty boy on campus to help with move in. But is he who she thinks he is? And what about Brady, the cute stable boy? Or Jared, the former child actor with his grown-up good looks who can always make her laugh? As Brooklyn settles in at Rosewood, she’s faced with new friends, new challenges and new opportunities to make herself into the girl she always wanted to be. Whoever that might be.

Taking The Reins is the first installment of The Rosewoods, an exciting new Young Adult series for readers who love fun, flirty love stories.

I’m not sure how I feel about Taking The Reins!  I felt like it ended very abruptly.  Actually (and I really hate to say this) but I felt like I got an installment or an excerpt of a story- it felt very incomplete and unfinished.  I know the other books in the series will continue the story, but I felt like I didn’t get enough of the story or the characters to know if I even want to keep going with the series.  I was expecting a more complete story going into this book, and I feel like I got the beginnings of one instead.

I’m not even really sure what else I can say about Taking The Reins.  It’s really short (slightly over 150 pages on my Nook), and that made it hard to get into- there easily could have been more to the story, and I feel pretty underwhelmed by it.  Nothing stands out, even though (at the time that I’m writing this review), I finished it a couple of days ago.  There just wasn’t enough of a story to get my attention, but I’m also not a fan of reading a book in installments, and I feel like I’ll be getting that with this series, if Taking The Reins is any indication.  I know it’s unfair to judge an entire series on one book, but at the same time, there just wasn’t anything that made me want to keep reading.  If I do continue (and I’m not sure if I want to), then I’ll probably read the entire series at once, so I won’t feel like I’m reading a story in installments (or if I do feel that way, I probably won’t feel that way as much as I would have if I didn’t read them all at once).

2 stars.  It’s too short for me to get a good feel for the story, the characters, and where everything is headed.