Book Review: Popular by Alissa Grosso

Popular by Alissa Grosso

Publisher:Flux

Publish Date: May 8, 2011

Paperback, 336 pages 
Fiction, Young Adult, Contemporary
 ISBN: 978-0738727998

My Review:
Why I read this: I'm a sucker at a look at the popular girls from their point of view, especially when things aren't so perfect.  And this really sounds like a good book, secrets, a girl who is looking for identity and facing the end of high school.



My thoughts:  One thing that jumps out at me about this book is it rings true.  I've been a high school girl, though not one of the popular girls, but it doesn't matter where you are in the clique hierarchy, girls are girls.  Popular shows this.  It also shows how even girls that seem to have it all together have their doubts and I really liked this.  What I got from this book wasn't what I expected, but I raced right through it all the same.  It's not a Gossip Girl or The Clique book, this isn't about the glamor of being a popular girl.  This is more about what it's like to blindly follow in a popular girls' footstep or to be that popular girl and have people following you.  It's about the fears that go into the Senior year of how it will never be the same.  It's about real life as a high school girl.

That's not to say the book is without drama.  There cannot be a story of high school girls that doesn't involve some sort of drama and there is plenty of drama in this book, but I also thought there was a lot to think about.  There is jealousy and boyfriend issues and then the biggest surprise of all is what Hamilton's secret is.  I have to say I was blown away.  I can't say anymore because I don't want to ruin the book for anyone.

So if you enjoy contemporary young adult books, give this 2011 debut author, Alissa Grosso a try and let me know what you think.  I don't think you will be disappointed.  I think Popular has something to appeal to everyone.

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

About the Book:
For reigning popularity queen Hamilton Best, the very idea of graduation is filled with fear. She's always been the star of Fidelity High's most exclusive clique, idolized for her perfection and her fabulous parties—you know you're "in" when you make Hamilton's guest list. As high school draws to a close, Hamilton is about to lose everything that makes her who she is.

To make matters worse, the clique is slowly coming apart at the seams. Although the hand-picked members—Olivia, Zelda, Nordica, and Shelly—all have their own agendas, desires, and secrets, they do have one thing in common: they're desperate to break away from Hamilton. Yet Hamilton has the biggest and most shocking secret of all, one that only her devoted boyfriend Alex knows. If the truth got out, it would completely destroy her fragile world.

And she'll do anything to keep that from happening.

About the Author: 

Early Days and Education

Alissa was born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1975. She grew up in the Garden State living in Hackensack, Ramsey and later Byram Township, NJ.

She graduated from Lenape Valley Regional High School in Stanhope, NJ where she ran on the cross country and track teams. She earned a B.A. in English from Rutgers University graduating with highest honors and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Professional Life

Alissa worked for Waterloo Foundation for the Arts while attending college as well as after graduating from college in a number of different capacities. She later worked for the Eastern Monroe Public Library in Stroudsburg, PA where she worked in both the circulation and youth services departments, and was the Children's Coordinator for Norway Memorial Library in Norway, ME. She also worked as an editor and writer for Journal Newspapers in White Haven, PA. She presently works as an independent library sales representative for Unique Books, Inc. and is the author of the forthcoming YA novel Popular.

What She's Doing Now

After living for several years in Pennsylvania and briefly in Maine, Alissa has returened to New Jersey and presently lives in Clinton.  When she isn't visiting libraries or busy playing outdoors, she is hard at work on her next novel. 

Website
Twitter
Facebook
Blog

Giveaway:
Teen Book Scene is hosting a giveaway of one copy of Popular, and it's open internationally.  Just comment on this post and for more entries to win, go to other posts during the tour and comment on them.  Giveaway will end a few days after the end of the tour and will be announced on A Good Addiction.  Be sure and come back on June 7th when I have my character interview with Nordica, for another chance to enter.

FTC Information: I bought this book for my Kindle for the Teen Book Scene tour and my honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

Splash Into Summer Giveaway Hop

It's Armchair BEA week and in addition it's time for the Splash Into Summer Giveaway Hop sponsored by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer and Page Turners.  So what is up for grabs today?  A book of your choice valued under $10 from the Book Depository.  If Book Depository ships to your country then this giveaway is open to you!  Runs from 5/25-5/31.  I will announce the winner on 6/1!  Simply fill out the form below.

Armchair BEA Day #2: Best of and Giveaway #2 (international)

Welcome to Day #2 of Armchair BEA and I am already having a blast.  I loved all the comments yesterday and getting to know all of you a little bit.  I also enjoyed the blogs I visited and plan on visiting more today - so many great blogs that I did not know about. 

Day #2 is about Giveaways and Best of 2011.  First let's talk about some of my favorite books in 2011, this was very hard to narrow down, I have read 72 books so far this year, but I made myself do the best 9 books I have read this year (not necessarily published this year):

• Night Road by Kristin Hannah - general fiction
  
• Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd (one of my husband's favorites as well) - literary suspense
  
• Fatal Judgment by Irene Hannon - romantic suspense
  
• Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan - nonfiction
• These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf - suspense, general fiction
  
• Between Shades of Gray by Ruth Sepetys  - young adult, historical
  
• Love You More by Lisa Gardner - suspense
  
• Exposure by Therese Fowler - general fiction
  
• Secret Daughter by Shilipi Somaya Gowda - general fiction, foreign locale

So my giveaway is simple and open internationally (if you live where the Book Depository ships).  To enter comment and tell me your favorite book you have read this year.  The winner will receive the book of their choice $15 or less value from the Book Depository!  Giveaway ends 5/30/11.

Check out this link for other giveaways.
Check out this link for other Best of posts.

Guest Post: This or That with C. Lee McKenzie (The Princess of Las Pulgas)

Today I welcome C. Lee Mckenzie, author of The Princess of Las Pulgas to My Reading Room. She'll be answering my This or That questions.  Stay tuned on June 8th for my review of the The Princess of Las Pulgas.

Pop tarts or cereal?

Bad choices. Neither. 

Vampires or Werewolves?
Werewolves. They're warm. 

Flats or Heels?
Flats 

Skirts or Jeans?

Jeans 

Shopping or Reading?
Reading. . . hands down. 

English or Math?
Ah! 1+1=3. I'll stick with English. 

Dogs or Cats?
Cats. They always look like they've just invested their money wisely. 

Tragedies or Comedies?
Comedies 

Twitter or Facebook?
Twitter 

Paperback/Hardback or Ebook?

Hardback 

Bracelets or Necklaces?
Bracelets 

Middle School teacher or High School teacher?

High School teacher 

Movie in theater or in your own home?

Home 

Sports Car or Sedan?

Sports Car

About The Princess of Las Pulgas

 After her father's slow death from cancer, Carlie thought things couldn't get worse. But now, she is forced to confront the fact that her family in dire financial straits. To stay afloat, her mom has had to sell their cherished oceanfront home and move Carlie and her younger brother Keith to the other side of the tracks to dreaded Las Pulgas, or "the fleas" in Spanish. They must now attend a tough urban high school instead of their former elite school, and on Carlie's first day of school, she runs afoul of edgy K.T., the Latina tattoo girl who's always ready for a fight, even on crutches. Carlie fends off the attention of Latino and African American teen boys, and one, a handsome seventeen-year-old named Juan, nicknames her Princess when he detects her aloof attitude towards her new classmates. What they don't know is that Carlie isn't really aloof; she's just in mourning for her father and almost everything else that mattered to her. Mr. Smith, the revered English teacher who engages all his students, suggests she'll like her new classmates if she just gives them a chance; he cajoles her into taking over the role of Desdemona in the junior class production of Othello, opposite Juan, after K.T. gets sidelined. Keith, who becomes angrier and more sullen by the day, spray paints insults all over the gym as he acts out his anger over the family's situation and reduced circumstances. Even their cat Quicken goes missing, sending Carlie and Keith on a search into the orchard next to their seedy garden apartment complex. They're met by a cowboy toting a rifle who ejects them at gunpoint from his property. But when Carlie finds him amiably having coffee with their mom the next day -- when he's returned her cat -- she begins to realize that nothing is what it seems in Las Pulgas. 

Armchair BEA Introduction and Giveaway #1

Since my health and my finances prevent me from attending BEA (though one day I hope to go), I am staying home and enjoying Armchair BEA this week with lots of other great bloggers.  Today's post is simple:

Who are you, and how do you Armchair?

 

My name is Crystal and I am a bookaholic, I know I am and I am not undergoing any 12-steps to get rid of it. You see I could have worse habits, like 300 cats instead of books. Books don't need feeding or have to use the bathroom, they just sit there and look pretty on my shelves and only cause me some pain when trying to decide what to read next.

Okay that was me two years ago, now that number has probably tripled no matter how many books I give away on my blog. I'm pretty sure my husband is eying me and considering whether the insane asylum is a good idea or if I was gone there would he end up there after having to care for the kids by himself for that period of time. I'm pretty sure the books will win out in the end. Plus he has the benefit of me saying "hey honey, I think you would enjoy this book" and I haven't been wrong yet with book or author recommendations for him.

So who am I? I am an obsessed book blogger, who is going through a rough patch in my health at the current moment and that may have me in Duke Hospital within the next month, but it won't be in the mental health ward. With all of that I also get to say this is the last week of little league for my boys and while I have enjoyed watching them play and the camraderie of the other parents, I will be glad to see it end, because I do work as well and this 8-4 work, then 5:30 - 8:30 running the kids around and finally eating at 8:30 gets old pretty darn quick (and it was close to landing me in the insane asylum). I will be happy to catch back up on my reading and to actually see my boys more nights of the week. I hope also to get back to my blog more and visiting other blogs I have missed out on that while socializing at the ball field lately.

So that leads to the personal me. I am a wife of 13 years and my husband and I have actually been together for 19 years (since the end of our senior year of high school) and no you cannot do the math! I have a 10-year-old who is becoming a know-it-all, but he is a sweet boy and a 6-year-old who keeps me on my toes (he was singing California Gurls by Katy Perry while waiting in line at Walmart yesterday - Bikinis, zuchinnis, martinis). We also are owned by a sweet black cat who keeps getting into disagreements with snakes and his name is Buckwheat. And the final member of the family is our pound puppy Chewey (short for Chewbacca - my boys' are Star Wars addicts). Chewey is part lab and has the prettiest coat. He's also the perfect size, about 3/4 the size of a full-blooded lab. Everyone but Chewey and Buckwheat love to read, and Buckwheat loves to pester us when we read, so maybe he loves to read as well.

That's pretty much it - I have to say that blogging for the last two years has really led me to branch out in my reading and I love that. No longer am I waiting on 3-4 of my favorite authors to release new books, now I have a whole world open to me. Oh and I have a Kindle so I have even more books than my husband knows about, but hey a lot of them were free, okay some of them were free, he doesn't have to know about the ones I do the one-click thing with - you know it doesn't even seem like spending money ;)

So what about you? Tell me something about yourself and be entered in to win your choice of two books my read pile. I'll be putting up a page to look at the choices later today (it's here now), but there is something for everyone. I do have to limit this one to the US/Canada because of postage costs. It takes a lot of money for my book habit, ooops I mean to raise two hungry boys. LOL. Giveaway ends the end of this week, 5/27/11.

I'll also be running other giveaways this week because I like to share the wealth (and my husband likes me to remove some books from the house from time-to-time).

Adele Griffin's Teenage Yard Sale & Giveaway (author of Tighter)

My Teenage Garage Sale from 1988, Fall of Senior Year of High School.

Everything Must Go!

1. My Unrelenting Sarcasm (no value): When I was 17, this was my most overused personality trait and I wish I’d sold it off then. Sarcasm is a way of making people feel bad while safeguarding your own emotions. No fun.

2. My Little Brothers, ages 8-16: (Four for $1.00): Even though I love them all dearly, I probably would have sold them back then. The house always smelled like feet, the backyard was a jungle of skateboard ramps, and the TV was only on the Sports Channel. Ugh.

3. My AP Physics Notebook ($5.00): How’d I place into honors physics?  No idea. I did not belong there and I had no idea what I was doing there. Good doodles in the notebook, though.

4. My Paula Abdul mix tape: (no value, but I could be blackmailed with it).

5. My “signature” Benetton body fragrance (no value): for when you want to smell like inside an old lady’s pocketbook.

6. The real scent of my VW Rabbit (priceless). I think if I caught a whiff of that plastic/tanning oil/French fries scent, it would catapult me into a matrix of high school memories from which I might never return.

7. My impulse-purchase M.C. Hammer pants. ($20.00 for the real silk).  I truly thought I rocked this look. Sad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

8. My freshman-in-college boyfriend’s love letters to me ($200.00): I actually don’t know where these are, but I’d pay a grown-up amount of money to see them again. They were a touch scandalous, as I recall.

Thanks Adele for that fun look into your past!


About the Book
When 17-year-old Jamie arrives on the idyllic New England island of Little Bly to work as a summer au pair, she is stunned to learn of the horror that precedes her. Seeking the truth surrounding a young couple's tragic deaths, Jamie discovers that she herself looks shockingly like the dead girl—and that she has a disturbing ability to sense the two ghosts. Why is Jamie's connection to the couple so intense? What really happened last summer at Little Bly? As the secrets of the house wrap tighter and tighter around her, Jamie must navigate the increasingly blurred divide between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Brilliantly plotted, with startling twists, here is a thrilling page-turner from the award-winning Adele Griffin
 
Giveaway
I have one copy of Tighter by Adele Griffin to giveaway.  Open to US/Canada only, simply fill out the form below.  Ends 5/30/2011.

If you can't see the form below, you can find it here.

Book Tour: The Shepherd by Ethan Cross

 
The Shepherd by Ethan Cross

Publisher: Fiction Std.

Publish Date: March 16, 2011

Paperback, 400 pages 
Fiction, Suspense

 ISBN: 978-1936558063

***My review will come later this week - and this book starts off with a bang and has me entranced so far.***

About Ethan Cross

When a fireman or a policeman would come visit his school, most of his classmates’ heads would swim with aspirations of growing up and catching bad guys or saving someone from a blazing inferno. When these moments came for Ethan Cross, however, his dreams weren’t to someday be a cop or put out fires; he just wanted to write about it.
And his dream of telling stories on a grand scale has come to fruition with the release of his new book, The Shepherd.
Ethan Cross is the pen name of a thriller author living and writing in Illinois with his wife, two daughters, and two Shih Tzus.
For more information about Ethan, you can visit her website at www.ethancross.com

About The Shepherd

Marcus Williams and Francis Ackerman Jr. both have a talent for hurting people. Marcus, a former New York City homicide detective, uses his abilities to protect others, while Ackerman uses his gifts to inflict pain and suffering. When both men become unwilling pawns in a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of our government, Marcus finds himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse trapped between a twisted psychopath and a vigilante with seemingly unlimited resources. Aided by a rogue FBI agent and the vigilante’s beautiful daughter -a woman with whom he’s quickly falling in love- Marcus must expose the deadly political conspiracy and confront his past while hunting down one of the most cunning and ruthless killers in the world.

 

 

 

Book Excerpt

The dream always started the same. With the darkness, came memories and pain. Every night, Marcus Williams found himself trapped in a prison without walls. His recollections painted a dark portrait that didn’t simply reside somewhere deep within his subconscious. He had seen it with his own eyes. The world of his memories and the setting of his nightmares had left a stain on his soul and blood on his hands—neither of which could ever truly be washed away.
Like countless others before him, he had begun his career as a young police officer with a head filled by ideals like justice will prevail and good always triumphs over evil. It didn’t take him long to discover that the old cliché of justice being blind was fairly accurate, and more often than not, evil was better funded than good. He had sat on the outside, looking in on a world fueled more by money and power than by the long-forgotten concepts of honor and virtue.
During his time as a protector of the peace, he witnessed many atrocities. He beheld injustices that consisted not only of the acts that men committed, but also of the punishment, or lack thereof, that they received. He had seen good people, who had committed crimes out of desperation and necessity, sentenced to the harshest degree of the law. By the same token, he witnessed justice turn a blind eye to certain individuals because of the size of their bank account or the amount of power that they wielded.
His time as a caretaker of chaos had left him not only haunted by painful memories, but also plagued by soul-shaking visions that tormented him upon entering the deepest recesses of sleep.
His heart raced as the events of a fateful night from his past played out deep inside his mind. He knew that he was dreaming and that nothing could erase the events recorded forever upon the pages of his memory. The fact that it wasn’t real didn’t make the experience seem any less authentic. He could feel the same chill in the air. He could smell the same scent of the river nearby. And he could hear the same scream that called to him on that night; a scream that his dreams would never allow him to forget.
Through the endurance of countless nights of restless sleep, he had learned that if he focused hard enough and screamed with enough ferocity inside his mind, the echoes from his subconscious triggered a reaction in the conscious side of his brain. Through the act of silently screaming, he could break the chains of sleep and save himself from reliving the painful events of his past.
He awoke alone, drenched in sweat from forehead to rib cage. The clock read 5:15.
He stumbled down the hallway to a room containing the device that would transport him from semi-consciousness to alert coherence. Entering the kitchen, he headed to his trusty coffee pot. Caffeine…every aspiring insomniac’s best friend.
Moving to the living room, he flipped on the television and cycled through the channels. He sat on a folding chair. Unpacked boxes surrounded him. The television and the coffee pot had been the first items to be unboxed.
Only five channels came in clearly, and he found himself forced to choose between a multitude of infomercials or a local news program. Since he had yet to come to the place in his life where he felt the need for knives that could cut through a tin can as easily as a tomato, a boxed set of the greatest country songs from the 60s, or a can of spray-on hair replacement, he switched to Channel Four News.
As he sipped his coffee and watched, an image flashed onto the screen that drew his attention. He was certain that he had never seen the face that stared back at him, but he sensed a vague familiarity in the man’s features that he couldn’t pinpoint. He also recognized something in the man’s eyes that he knew all too well. The man’s gray eyes reflected a hunger that dwelled in the darkest regions of a tainted soul. He saw a raging fire inside the man and knew that neither food nor drink could quench his thirst or appease his never-ceasing appetite. He had seen a similar hunger on a night from his past that he could never remember to forget. He turned up the volume.
“Most recently, Ackerman is believed to be responsible for the brutal murders of three men, including two Colorado State Troopers. But there was an unexpected twist to the story. Ackerman allegedly took one of the men’s family hostage and forced them to play a sadistic game. This is what a representative from the Colorado State Patrol, Major Christian Steinhoff, had to say at a recent press conference.”
The image cut to a man at a podium who expounded upon the details of the incident with the family, describing the miraculous survival of one of the victims, a woman named Emily Morgan. A picture of the woman flashed onto the screen. Her pale features seemed luminescent.
“Francis Ackerman Jr. is considered armed and highly dangerous. He is believed to be responsible for the brutal slayings of an undetermined number of men and women since his recent escape from a mental institution in Michigan and is wanted for questioning in several other ongoing criminal investigations. In an interview yesterday afternoon, a representative from the Dimmit County Sheriff’s Department told one of our reporters, Julian Harms, that this man will likely be remembered as one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history… In other news, presidential candidate and front runner, Paul Phillips, will be speaking in San Antonio…”
In the last moment before politics replaced the killer’s image, Marcus felt frightened and yet curious in regard to the killer from the TV. What could drive a man to commit such terrible acts? He realized that the world was a vast sea of infinite possibilities. Any number of circumstances could account for an ordinary man’s departure from the world of the mentally stable and socially acceptable into the realm of the criminally insane.
He considered that—sometime in the not too distant future—a scientist might discover that the root of all serial killers and violent offenders did not stem from a connection with an abused childhood or dark suggestion from the realm below. Perhaps, the root of insanity was actually yellow dye number five or red dye number forty, either of which could be found in the common Twinkie.
The concept of Insanity by Reason of Twinkie brought a smile to his face and allowed him to stop thinking about the killer from the TV and, if only for a few precious seconds, the dark deeds of his own past.

FTC Information: I received this book from the publisher through Pump Up Your Book Promotion for an honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.