Kari's Top 10 of 2011

Here are mine in no particular order.  Honestly, I had more than 10 but these are the ones that stood out for me.
  (OK I cheated like Autumn and added an extra to make 11.) Enjoy!



The Last Blind Date By Linda Yellin
Forbidden by Ted Dekker
Darkness Dawns by Dianne Duvall
Cloaked by Alex Finn
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
The Heart of a Killer by Jaci Burton
Die for Me by Amy Plum
Hereafter by Tara Hudson
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
Lover Unleashed by J.R. Ward
Treachery in Death by J.D. Robb

Cloaked

Author: Alex Flinn
Publisher: HarperCollins

I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frog-napping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don't believe me? I didn't believe it either. But you'll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got cloaked.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this audiobook. I haven't read anything else by this author. I am so glad I did. This was such a cute story. Johnny, who thinks his life is going nowhere, gets sucked into an adventure of a lifetime. Not only does he learn that magic does exist, he also learns about integrity, the value of true friendship and love along the way. He does get his own fairytale HEA, but you'll have to read the book to find out what that entails.

Alex Flinn has woven several fairy/folk tales into this book. Ms.Flinn is kind enough to list them out for the reader in the author's note. A few of them are "The Shoemaker and the Elves"," The 12 Swans", and "The Frog Prince". Some of them are a bit obscure, so it was nice of her to clue me in as to which ones she used. It made me want to look them up and read them.

So, I would definitely recommend this one! It was good clean fun and so appropriately labeled YA. I would even say a 'tweens' would like this one.

--Kari

Beastly

By:  Alex Flinn

Summary from author site:  I am a beast. A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog, but a horrible new creature who walks upright – a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll stay this way forever – ruined – unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and a perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly beastly.

I listened to the audiobook for this one because it was listed as a freebie on Audiobook Fans.  First impression was that it was a lot better than I expected.

Basically this is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in present day New York City.  I imagine that would have presented quite a lot of challenges!  Kyle Kingsbury is a horrible jerk in the beginning of the book.  A witch puts the spell on him because of a cruel prank he was going to pull on her/a classmate.  The little twist that makes the whole story a little more interesting is that Kyle's dad is very famous and very rich.  The need for secrecy about the whole thing is a lot more pressing and their methods for going about it are quite lavish since there is an endless supply of money.

I don't want to say who Beauty ends up being because that would kind of be a spoiler, since quite a lot of the story is devoted to him looking for and giving up on ever finding her.  I did like their relationship though.  I liked how the author managed to work difficulties with parent/child relationships across the socio-economic statuses  (Another YA book with absent parents...amazing how they work that in!).  I really liked how Kyle/Adrian came to develop such a love of books through his Beauty and his time in hidden away. 

In terms of the audiobook, I thought it was fairly good.  I think the reader was maybe reading for a younger target audience than say me, an adult.  A lot of it kinda came off cheeseball.  I didn't like the way he characterized Kendra.  He made her sound like a valley girl.  I don't know what the heck was going on with Will's speech pattern, but it was odd and kind of off putting.  He was blind, blind people can talk normally.  However, other than the cheeseball moments and those two characters it was pretty good.  Several sections of the book was done in chat room dialogue and that couldn't have been easy to translate into audiobook, but it was easy to follow along. 

Overall, I liked it and it was free and that's always good (I just checked and unfortunately it's not available as a freebie anymore, sorry!) and it was short (and that's fantastic after The Passage).