Waiting on Wednesday: In Too Deep by Amanda Grace/Mandy Hubbard

Waiting on Wednesday recognizes that we as bookies pine for books. This post is about what I am impatiently waiting for right now. It was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

I seem to be feeling a bit edgier than usual, hence my WOW pick of In Too Deep by Amanda Grace/Mandy Hubbard. It's February 8th release date is fast approaching. Take a peak inside this dark & startling world.

I never meant for anyone to get hurt. All I wanted to do that night was make a play for Carter Davis. His heartless rejection was mortifying, but people got the wrong idea when they saw me leaving his bedroom, crying. That’s how rumors of rape started.

Now girls at school are pouring out their sympathy to me. Guys too. But not everyone’s on my side. The school has become a war zone and the threats are getting scary. What began as poetic justice has morphed into something bigger-forcing me to make a terrible choice.

From Goodreads

Wow... I'm rather speechless at the implications this book raises. I can understand onlookers' honest mistake of what might have taken place, but the fact that the main character doesn't immediately correct them shocks me. This dilemma reminds me of Testify where the main character doesn't actually see a crime, but agrees to testify to it anyway to protect her friend. If you get a chance, both of these seem to on the edgier side of YA & definitely worth a look.

What are you waiting on this week?

Waiting on Wednesday: In Too Deep by Amanda Grace/Mandy Hubbard

Want to Go Private? by Sarah Darer Littman

Abby has always been the smart, well-behaved girl. Very reliable & dependable for anything really. Moving up to high school is just another step towards accomplishing all that she has worked so hard for in school. But, it's different. The good things aren't the same & the bad things are just more prominent. With a best friend turning into a social butterfly, Abby turns to a teen website for chatting & socializing. That's where she meets Luke.

Luke is charismatic, cute, supportive & everything Abby wants; but he is far from what she needs. Despite dating Billy, her lab partner, Abby is drawn to Luke's presence & needs him in her life. She doesn't think anything of telling him very personal details & even accepts gifts from him. It's all fun & games until Abby starts spending so much time with him online that she begins to neglect her studies & her real life. After a particularly nasty fight with her parents Luke suggests a weekend getaway to "teach them a lesson." Abby falls for it & begins a nightmare that she will never live down.

Want to Go Private? was a haunting tale that mirrors real life so much it scares me. Abby is a brilliant young woman who is at one of the most vulnerable stages in life. Feeling isolated & lacking self-esteem, she turns to the one person who knows how to make her feel better. Luke is a prime example of the scariest type of urban predator. He preys on vulnerable girls & uses their own issues against them, to hurt them. The storyline between these two characters was so authentic, I felt like I myself at 14 could have been wooed by his abilities.

This book is a bit more graphic than I was expecting simply because I wasn't 100% sure how far the author would expose the characters. Sarah Littman goes all in, sparing no detail to get across just how awful things turned out for Abby. The author also shows how things can be turned around & start to look up. While this is a difficult subject matter, the book was filled with hope & the message that we need to be just as careful electronically as we are in person.

An amazing read that I couldn't put down, Want to Go Private? is as striking & authentic as Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. If the subject matter doesn't bother you & you want to read something gripping, then this is your book.

ARC graciously provided by Around the World Tours.

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Want to Go Private? by Sarah Darer Littman

So Shelly by Ty Roth

Gordon & Keats would never have been acquaintances, let alone friends, if it weren't for Shelly. So when she turns up dead in an apparent sailing accident, the two boys are thrust upon one another to piece together the story of her life & her demise.

After stealing her ashes from the wake at the their high school, the boys embark on an adventure to fulfill her final wishes. Together they share their memories of her: from Gordon & Shelly's childhood skinny dipping to Keats & Shelly's encounter at the Planned Parenthood, & what Shelly was really all about.

Needless to say none of this can be done without copious amounts of self-reflection & analyzing how their actions affected Shelly. Only, there are some people who don't want to see the boys complete Shelly's mission. Time is running out for them to solve her jigsaw puzzle of an existence & fulfill her final wishes.

I wish I could say that I liked this book. Honestly I would compare it more to a car accident: you're horrified, but you can't seem to look away. I know that this book was supposed to be a play on the lives of the famous Romantic (as in Romanticism, not necessary hearts & flowers love) poets John Keats, Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) & an amalgamation of husband & wife pair Percy & Mary Shelley, but it was just weird. Had the characters been a little older, around college-age, I think I would have been more okay with most of the extreme sexual content (pedophile nanny, incest, rape, statutory rape, etc) & overall plot. While I know this was not supposed to be exactly "realistic fiction", I found it so unbelievable I was baffled. Not to mention the fact that, while I believe the author to be using common-to-the-era vocabulary for the characters, there were words even I didn't know that I had to look up. While that can be an occasionally cool thing, this happened about every 6 or 7 pages.

Now, with all that said, I do have to say the characters were very well built. By the end of the book I felt like I really had a firm grasp on who they were & what they were doing with themselves. It was a coming-of-age tale the really allowed the reader to follow the growth & development of the characters. Each of them were well-shaped & behaved as one would expect of their character.

While I think this is an interesting way to spin the lives of historical figures into modern times, this one's execution just didn't work for me. I look forward to hearing other people's thoughts on this novel.

So Shelly by Ty Roth

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Alice wants to be released. Alice wants to eat a real meal. Alice’s name is not really Alice.

In this all too real and vivid story, we find that Alice is a 15 year old, half-starved girl who was abducted from a school field trip at the tender age of 10. Having been held hostage and repeatedly abused by a man named Ray for the last 5 years, Alice is always looking for a way out, but she still believes that Ray will kill her family if she runs.

Now that she is getting too big for Ray’s tastes he has charged her with the obtainment and training of a new girl. In her search for the new girl, Alice meets some people who know that something is off and they try to help her. Fortunately for Alice, they do.

A disturbing read, this book is not for the faint of heart. Alice is often sexually abused by Ray and while the author utilizes a lot of allusion and suggestive details, it is very easy to imagine. In a way, the book is along the same lines of a car crash. You want to stop and look away, but you can’t seem to do so. Absolutely captivating, this book is on par, if not better, than Love You, Hate You, Miss You. Check out my review of that here.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott