Reviews written by Renae M

I have yet to read a negative review for Pushing the Limits, and when I went to find one on Goodreads, I really had to dig. [Edit: I found one negative review.] As a reader and a book blogger, when a book gets this much massive hype, I get suspicious....

First of all—the cover. I realize the cover has nothing to do with the actual book, but it’s a very nice cover, you must agree. Aside from the cover, the story itself was good. It wasn’t too predictable, like so many YA books happen to be. I wouldn’t say...

First of all—the cover. I realize the cover has nothing to do with the actual book, but it’s a very nice cover, you must agree. Aside from the cover, the story itself was good. It wasn’t too predictable, like so many YA books happen to be. I wouldn’t say...

“The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we’re willing to believe.” — Rot & Ruin Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin comes advertized as a zombie novel. And I suppose that’s what it is, on the surface. Certainly, the latter...

For me, Throne of Glass wasn’t a book I was particularly looking forward to reading. As a rule, fantasy isn’t my favorite genre, and I was very afraid that Celaena would turn out to be some macho super-human knife-throwing chick (AKA, taking female empowerment too far). However, I was pleasantly...

You know those books that you want to give 5 stars, even though they don’t exactly deserve that rating? Mothership is ones of those books. It’s so cuddly and fun and adorable that I couldn’t help loving it. Strong, proactive protagonist who isn’t afraid to tell her...

I didn’t start out on friendly terms with Stormdancer, I’m sad to say. For some reason, I just could not get into the beginning of this book, which was somewhat upsetting because I knew that what I was reading was top-notch stuff. So the first eighty pages or so were...

There are very few things in the world that will get me on a soapbox as quickly or thoroughly as rape, especially in relation to modern perceptions of rape and rape victims. I went into Rape Girl not sure what angle Klein was going to take, but hoping very much...

This is a book that I want to love, one that I think I should love, but for whatever reason I can’t quite do it. Kody Keplinger wins a lot of awards from me for being open with sex in YA, but then she contradicts herself. And she wins awards...

If there’s one thing I’ve heard consistently about Kody Keplinger’s writing, it’s that her portrayal of teenagers (especially with regards to sex) is extremely realistic and unapologetic. And if YA fiction needs anything, it definitely needs to sugarcoat sex less than it does now—in my opinion, of course. ...

You know those books that should be terrible? The ones where just the concept is so ridiculous and awful that there’s really no way they should be able to redeem themselves. Except they DO work, for whatever reason, and in spite of yourself, you can’t help liking that book. ...

This is the first sentence of The Immortal Rules: “They hung the Unregistereds in the old warehouse district […]” From where I sit, there is no excuse for a traditionally published, copy-edited book to contain a mistake like that. Much less in the first...

Juliet Immortal made some pretty valiant attempts toward being a compelling novel. And the majority of those attempts worked pretty well. Unfortunately, when one is writing a book that’s a spin-off of the most infamous case of isntalove ever, there might be more problems. Namely: more instalove. Say what you...

Books like Wanderlove are the reason I started reading young adult in the first place. Vampires, oppressive governments, and dark and mysterious boys aren’t really my thing, and sometimes I try too hard to make them my thing. But they’re not. I dig contemporary/realistic fiction, and this book was just...

I think this is a perfect example of why Goodreads is so awesome, because I never would have found this book otherwise. The summary for Mary Hooper’s Newes from the Dead had me hooked, and I went out and bought it right away. A 17th century vivisection gone wrong (or...