Review: All Unquiet Things

Book: All Unquiet Things
Author: Anna Jarzab
Pages: 337
Published: January 12th, 2010 by Delacorte
Source: Bought

Carly: She was sweet. Smart. Self-destructive. She knew the secrets of Brighton Day School’s most privileged students. Secrets that got her killed.

Neily: Dumped by Carly for a notorious bad boy, Neily didn’t answer the phone call she made before she died. If he had, maybe he could have helped her. Now he can’t get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind.

Audrey: She’s the reason Carly got tangled up with Brighton’s fast crowd in the first place, and now she regrets it—especially since she’s convinced the police have put the wrong person in jail. Audrey thinks the murderer is someone at Brighton, and she wants Neily to help her find out who it is.

As reluctant allies Neily and Audrey dig into their shared past with Carly, her involvement with Brighton’s dark goings-on comes to light. But figuring out how Carly and her killer fit into the twisted drama will force Audrey and Neily to face hard truths about themselves and the girl they couldn’t save.

I'd heard quite a few mixed reviews about this book, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started it. I had nothing to worry about, though -- I enjoyed All Unquiet Things more than I expected to!

I liked the alternating narratives between Neily and Audrey. I could distinguish Neily's narrative from Audrey's, and I really liked that. I think too often authors don't know how to write from the point of view of the other gender, and the result is a boy whose mind sounds like a girl's, or a girl whose mind sounds like a boy's. I didn't particularly like either of them at first -- they seemed somewhat aloof, despite them supposedly being in mourning for Carly. But I eventually warmed up to them and I found the narrators increasingly intriguing characters. Jarzab wrote Carly in a way that made me love her and hate her at the same time, and even though she's already dead during the events of the novel, sometimes I felt like she was the most alive of all of them.

The mystery element of All Unquiet Things could have been executed better. I felt like not much happened in the first third or so of the book, like it was more introducing the characters and setting up the backdrop without really getting into the mystery aspect. It moved really slow at first, but luckily it quickly picked up and I really got into it. I loved how it switched between time periods -- before Carly's death and after. I felt like those served to make us sympathize with the characters and understand them a bit better, and I really liked that insight into their pasts.

I thought that probably the best thing about the book was the writing. This book was written excellently, and I'm jealous of the way Jarzab is able to string her sentences together in a way that makes her characters sound brilliant and still young at the same time, if you know what I mean. Her dialogue was realistic and entertaining, and I think Anna Jarzab is definitely an author to watch.

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars

Cover: I LOVE this cover! It looks so sophisticated but so very attention-grabbing. At first I thought the girl on the cover was posing, but then I was like, oh…she's not lying on the grass, posing dramatically; she's dead. I thought that using that kind of surprise was extremely clever of the publishers!

Review: The Espressologist

Book: The Espressologist
Author: Kristina Springer
Pages: 184
Published: October 27th, 2009 by Farrar Straus Giroux
Source: Library

What’s your drink of choice? Is it a small pumpkin spice latte? Then you’re lots of fun and a bit sassy. Or a medium americano? You prefer simplicity in life. Or perhaps it’s a small decaf soy sugar-free hazelnut caffe latte? Some might call you a yuppie.

Seventeen-year-old barista Jane Turner has this theory that you can tell a lot about a person by their regular coffee drink. She scribbles it all down in a notebook and calls it Espressology. So it’s not a totally crazy idea when Jane starts hooking up some of her friends based on their coffee orders. Like her best friend, Em, a medium hot chocolate, and Cam, a toffee nut latte. But when her boss, Derek, gets wind of Jane’s Espressology, he makes it an in-store holiday promotion, promising customers their perfect matches for the price of their favorite coffee.

Things are going better than Derek could ever have hoped, so why is Jane so freaked out? Does it have anything to do with Em dating Cam? She’s the one who set them up! She should be happy for them, right?

General Overview: A very cute, quick, light read that will put a smile on your face. I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Characters: I'll be honest -- Jane annoyed me at first. She was…perky. Which is maybe something that happens when you work around coffee but really peppy people just bug me. Is it just me, or does it happen to you too? But, I will also be honest in saying that I warmed up to Jane, though it took me a little while. God, I wanted to smack this girl once or twice! Geez! Some of the things that were so obvious and were right in front of her, she didn't notice! Gaahh. Also, the antagonists? Yeah, they weren't so bad to me. Every school has girls like that, and trust me, these girls are not as bad as some of the ones in my school that I've had to deal with.

Plot: This book is very light. It's not serious reading. Therefore, the plot was easy and predictable. I did really like the premise of this book though. Very original! I never would have thought of something like that, and I applaud Kristina Springer for thinking of it. It was such a fun idea! And it was executed pretty well too, in my opinion. The only thing that I hoped for was a bit more depth to the story.

Writing: Kristina Springer sounds like a really happy teenager. I don't mean that in a mean or condescending way -- I said before, really really perky people just annoy me, and since this book is from Jane's POV, she had to sound like a perky person, right (this is where I stop using the word 'perky', it's starting to sound weird in my head…)? But really, this story had the potential to be very stilted and jumpy, and it was not like that at all. It had a definite sense of story and time and a concrete sequence of events, which I really liked. This book could have been awful, but it wasn't. It made me laugh a couple times and smile and go 'aww'.

Cover: This cover is really cute! To be honest, I really looked at it for longer than a second because of the cover. It has coffee on it, okay? Anything with coffee on it sounds (and looks) good to me!

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars