Fiction Vixen Book Reviews

On My Wishlist is a weekly meme hosted by Book Chick City. It’s a fun opportunity to share the books we don’t own yet but are waiting to be bought and devoured. My wish list is huge and ever expanding thanks to all those talented writers out there that keep the amazing stories coming.  Find out more about this fun weekly meme at Book Chick City.

On my wish list this week is:

I read mostly Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance novels but every now and then I feel the need to branch out and dig into something different.  Thirteen Reason Why by Jay Asher is definitely out of the box for me.  This book caught my eye a while back and has been sitting on my wish list for far too long.  I think it’s time to hit the library and give it a try. 

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker--his classmate and crush--who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.

Through Hannah and Clay's dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.

I am an Outlander fan and I adore Diana Gabaldon.  I’ve read all the books in the series and have really looked forward to Echo In The Bone.  Although I’ve seen some not-so-favorable reviews for it, I still intend to read it and decide for myself.  I feel like Jamie and Claire Fraser are family and I have to know what the future, (or is it past?) holds for them. 

Jamie Fraser, erstwhile Jacobite and reluctant rebel, knows three things about the American rebellion: the Americans will win, unlikely as that seems in 1778; being on the winning side is no guarantee of survival; and he’d rather die than face his illegitimate son — a young lieutenant in the British Army — across the barrel of a gun. Fraser’s time-travelling wife, Claire, also knows a couple of things: that the Americans will win, but that the ultimate price of victory is a mystery. What she does believe is that the price won’t include Jamie’s life or happiness — not if she has anything to say.
Claire’s grown daughter Brianna, and her husband, Roger, watch the unfolding of Brianna’s parents’ history — a past that may be sneaking up behind their own family.

I laugh out loud every time I read the synopsis for People Are Unappealing, Even Me by Sara Barron.  I have a strong suspicion that Ms. Barron and I share a similar sense of humor.

Born the child of a homo and a hypochondriac (Okay, okay. Her dad’s not really a homosexual. He just acts like it. Her mom, however, really is a hypochondriac), Sara Barron never stood a chance of being normal. At age eleven, she starts writing porn (“He humped me wildly with his wiener”). At twelve, she gets mistaken for a trannie. The pre-op sort, no less. By seventeen, she's featured on the Jerry Springer Show. And that’s all before she hits New York.

People Are Unappealing tells the strange, funny, and sometimes filthy stories of Sara Barron’s twisted suburban upbringing and deranged attempt at taking the Big Apple by storm–first as an actor (then a waiter), then a dancer (then a waiter), then a comic (then a waiter). It’s there that she meets the ex-boyfriend turned street clown. The silk pajama-clad poet. The OCD Xanax addict who refuses to have sex wearing any fewer than three condoms.

Barron has a knack for attracting the unattractive. People Are Unappealing is her wickedly funny look at the dark side of humanity.

So that’s what I’m wishing for this week.  With any luck I’ll be reading these books soon and perhaps you’ve discovered something you’d like to read.