Me Before You, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, & The Heart of Betrayal

That's quite a long title for a blog post.

Me Before You - Jojo Moyes - 369 pgs
35) A book you started but never finished

No, I didn't put this book down because I wasn't enjoying it. I actually had to return it to the library before I moved out of the state. To be fair, I didn't get very far, only four or five chapters, but I was certainly captivated by the writing style and happy to pick it back up.
If you haven't heard about Me Before You, it's about a young lady named Lou who hasn't done too much with her life besides work at the same cafe job for years and now has to find new employment since the cafe is boing bought out. She lands a job caring for a quadriplegic named Will. Lou has no experience with medical field anything and is rightfully shocked to receive an offer of employment right off the bat. She finds out it's more like, she lands a job from Will's mother to care for him emotionally. To make him happy again. It's a big job, easier said than done.
This book is a romance. Flat out, I wouldn't label it any other way. It's obviously not your typical romance story (although, I'm not exactly sure what that would be) but it will cut you to the core and really make you think about what you would do for the person you love even if it hurts you.
It's a down to earth story with realistic characters who make you want to hug them (or slap them) and it's easy to put yourself in Lou's shoes as she gets to know Will. It's not a frolic through the flowers and at times it's heartbreaking, but it's worth it.
Moyes released a sequel this year that I'm very interested in picking up. If you like a story that will make you laugh, cry, and open your eyes to the world, pick up Me Before You.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford - 290 pgs
21) A book with antonyms in the title

Ha. It's not War and Peace.
This is a good book. Not great, but it's good.
It can get tedious and long winded, but it's a good book.
That being said, I didn't really enjoy it that much. It took me a long time to get into this short book. I'm not saying stuff didn't happen, it's just that the SAME stuff kept happening and I found it to be a bit more bitter than sweet. (Yeah, I went there)
This book switches back and forth between the 1980s and the 1940s, telling the story of Henry and how he met a girl named Keiko when they were very young as well as the events that separated them for 40 years. It's a Romeo and Juliet story of sorts set during the second world war. Henry is Chinese and Keiko is Japanese. But really, they're both American.
It's truly sad to see what happened here in the states during WWII. We like to point to the atrocities that happened in Europe, and while I'm not suggesting the USA was near as horrific as Germany, it's easy to forget that our hands weren't exactly squeaky clean either.
This was a good book. I can't think of a reason I couldn't fully invest in the story other than it felt repetitive and I don't think I got enough time to bond with some of the characters in the 1940s and that left me a bit apathetic to the 12 year old puppy love.

The Heart of Betrayal - Mary E. Pearson - 470 pgs
49) Readers Choice

It was not my intention to read this book this year. When I read the first book in the series earlier this year I said it would be on the bottom of my 50 book to-read list. It was more opportunity than desire that led me to picking it up, but as I read these two previous books above, I began to feel something I hadn't in a long time. I needed a cheesy fantasy. Nothing life changing or hard to comprehend, nothing with a deeper meaning or a important moral, just a light reading book that could hold the attention of a teen with ADHD (which, I suppose, is how I felt). The book came to my library and I just snatched it up. I already knew the characters, I already had the base story down, so this is essentially exactly what I was looking for.
It isn't a deep book. It's very predictable YA fantasy. The stakes are life and death (yet I still feel this book could have been 200 pages shorter and been better for it). The love interest is as interesting as a lamp post (and could have completely been taken out of the book without changing the story). It's not going to make you have deep thoughts of any sort. But. If this is the kind of thing that floats your boat, it was pretty good. I liked it more than the first one, the story is building (VERY slowly) to mean something.
I know I change my mind a lot. I also know that my reading tastes have changed a sizable amount in the last year alone. Thank you for bearing with me even though in this blog alone I have contradicted myself no less than three times. This book might have once been everything I loved in a book. So if you're in Jr. High or High School or any age and you like fantasy/action YA novels, this series might just be for you.

Read on,

Jamie