More Books

Hey everyone,

I've been reading a lot again instead of writing as much as I should (even though I have a feeling I'll be starting again soon), and I've stumbled on a few authors in the YA fantasy/romance genre I feel I can recommend.  So if you're someone who asks me which books they should read (meaning, if you're my sister Lindsay) this post is for you!

Bree Despain - The Dark Divine (series)
Kind of typical, but with a few interesting twists that I won't give away.  The reason I'm recommending this series is because the female protagonist didn't get on my nerves (my main problem with this genre) and, as most of my readers that I'm aware of are LDS, these books are very clean.  Bonus: the female lead is also religious, so she faces a lot of moral quandaries that are glossed over or ignored in other YA books.  And she has a family who remains present throughout, so not only is she dealing with the normal, "Oh, I'm in LOVE!" stuff, but family issues as well.  When it comes to family, most YA fantasy/romance books use an easy way out by saying the main character is an orphan/only only child/in the foster system/their parents are kidnapped/they are kidnapped/they have a broken home and hate their parents/they go to an enchanted boarding school, etc.  I like that she kept it in, and that the relationships felt real.  It did incredible things for fleshing out her protagonist.

Alex Flinn - Beastly and A Kiss in Time
I have to admit, I read (well, listened to, it was an audiobook) Beastly because my mom and I saw the movie and I was curious.  The book is better than the movie.  In fact, as I was listening to it/playing Angry Birds, I kept thinking to myself, "Why did they change that?  Why didn't they include that?!" over and over again.  Let's just say the movie was a shiny, high school version of a dark, much more interesting book with an action-packed ending (as opposed to, SPOILER: Oh, no, I came outside and the whole SCHOOL can see my UGLY! wekisstheend).  The entire book was told from the perspective of the Beast, which is way more emotionally fraught than Beauty's story and probably what made it so fascinating to me.  All in all, a good read, or listen.  The movie, which was fine when I saw it, is now kind of a let-down, because they could have made it so much better.  There was some cheesiness, but over all, good.
I read A Kiss in Time because I liked Beastly.  I read them both in one day.  Now, I don't know if Kiss is as deep as Beastly, but it was fun and entertaining and I still enjoyed it a lot.  It's more of a romantic comedy.
Alex Flinn also has several other books out, but they're not in this genre, so I haven't gotten to them yet.  Currently I'm very narrow-minded.

Let me know if you've read anything good lately!