This is Life-Dan Rhodes

This is Life
Dan Rhodes

Canongate UK (288 p)
October 10, 2012
ISBN 978 0 85786 245 7

From Rhodes (Little Hands Clapping, 2012) comes a comic tale full of surprisingly apt observations about life and love.

Aurelie Renard is an art student in Paris preparing for her final project. She  comes up with a convoluted plan to throw a stone into a crowd and then follow the stranger that the stone hits around for a whole week. The stone in fact hits a baby, whose mother promptly hands him over to Aurelie. tells her to 'keep him alive for a week' and walks off. Meanwhile, the artist Le Machine will be presenting his seminal work- Life in an old pornographic theater.  At first, it seems that the production is another ridiculous manifestation of modern art, but we ultimately find that the motivations behind Life are deeper than we ever imagined. Rhodes maintains excellent comedic timing while plumbing the depths of the the character's experience on their Parisian adventure.

Heartfelt, funny, with characters that you will fall in love with.

Frozen-Kate Watterson

Frozen 

By Kate Watterson

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages

• Publisher: Tor Books (December 24, 2012)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 0765369605
• Read it or not: Trashy thriller, not necessary

From the publishers website: 

In Kate Watterson's thrilling suspense novel Frozen, Bryce Grantham wants a quiet vacation at his family’s cabin. On his first night in town, he meets a lovely girl at a bar and gives her a ride home. The next day, he finds her cell phone in his car. When he tries to return it, Bryce discovers that the young woman has vanished, leaving behind only a bloody shoe. 

Suddenly Bryce Grantham is the primary suspect in a murder investigation.

Detective Ellie MacIntosch has a serial killer on her hands, but without a body, she has few leads and the stalled investigation has her on edge. Bryce Grantham seems to be the perfect suspect.

Eighteen months have gone by without a clue, and yet Grantham starts reporting stumbling across the bodies of the missing women with unbelievable frequency. The evidence against him is almost irrefutable…but Ellie’s gut tells her the case is not so cut and dry.

Before Ellie compromises the investigation, her career, and possibly her life in order to prove Bryce’s innocence, she must determine whether he is a manipulative, cold-blooded killer…or the victim of a madman playing a sickening game.

No spoiler review:

An entertaining, formulaic predictable thriller. Easy subway read. 

The Sweetest Dark- Shana Abé

The Sweetest Dark

By: Shana Abé

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (April 9, 2013) Forthcoming
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345531701

From the publisher's website:

“With every fiber of my being, I yearned to be normal. To glide through my days at Iverson without incident. But I’d have to face the fact that my life was about to unfold in a very, very different way than I’d ever envisioned. Normal would become forever out of reach.” 

Lora Jones has always known that she’s different. On the outside, she appears to be an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl. Yet Lora’s been keeping a heartful of secrets: She hears songs that no one else can hear, dreams vividly of smoke and flight, and lives with a mysterious voice inside her that insists she’s far more than what she seems.
 
England, 1915. Raised in an orphanage in a rough corner of London, Lora quickly learns to hide her unique abilities and avoid attention. Then, much to her surprise, she is selected as the new charity student at Iverson, an elite boarding school on England’s southern coast. Iverson’s eerie, gothic castle is like nothing Lora has ever seen. And the two boys she meets there will open her eyes and forever change her destiny.
 
Jesse is the school’s groundskeeper—a beautiful boy who recognizes Lora for who and what she truly is. Armand is a darkly handsome and arrogant aristocrat who harbors a few closely guarded secrets of his own. Both hold the answers to her past. One is the key to her future. And both will aim to win her heart. As danger descends upon Iverson, Lora must harness the powers she’s only just begun to understand, or else lose everything she dearly loves.

Spoiler free:

There are books that you begin reading and you cannot put down. Books where you know that the characters will stay with you long after you have finished the last page. Books so beautiful you want to share them with the world. This is one of those books. Written for young adults it will appeal to the fantasy lover in all of us. The writing is absolutely spellbinding. 

 The fantastical element is interwoven with the historical in a seamless tapestry.  The main character Lora is character who refuses to bow beneath societal pressure or her traumatic history. She becomes who she is meant to Be.