This week’s book that I’m super excited about is a book some bloggers may have already heard about, but I wanted to feature it here because holy hell this sounds SO GOOD! What set me over the edge was that Booklist compared The Queen of Palmyra to The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, both of which I loooved.

The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (April 27, 2010)

“It’s the story of Florence Forrest, a young girl growing up in 1960s Mississippi with an absent, alcoholic mother and a violent, unpredictable father. Florence’s only refuge is her grandmother’s house, where she spends her time in the company of Zenie, her grandparents’ longtime maid. Zenie, who is black, views Florence, who is white, as just another chore, but Zenie’s vibrant niece, Eva, takes Florence under her wing. The two grow ever closer, willfully oblivious at first to the way race divides their town. But those with darker intentions will not let them remain oblivious forever . . .”

In trying to find a nice middle ground between depressing and heavy (their words) and light and fluffy (my words), Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen was picked for my real life book club. Interestingly enough, even though this is the kind of book people prefer (lighter and happier), only 4 of us (including me) showed up for the book club meeting to discuss this book.

Garden Spells is about the Waverly family and the secrets they keep to themselves, magical secrets. For one, the family house that Claire lives in has a tree that grows apples year ’round, though it’s not just any apple tree, it’s a magical apple tree.

Sisters Claire and Sydney, Claire being the responsible one who’s stayed in the family house to take care of things, and Sydney, the flighty one who left town at her first opportunity. Sydney is now back in town (as sisters in books are wont to do) and staying with Claire, and no matter that years have passed, there is still friction between these two.

Let the strangeness begin.

Claire, a caterer, has a knack for knowing what plants will bring out what quality in people. Sydney is basically bitter that she’s received no special gift when every other female in their line has received a gift. Even their older cousin, Evanelle, has a gift: she knows what people will be needing before they need it. Evanelle must deliver these things to others, herself not knowing why they might need what she’s moved to give them.

Can I just whisper in your ear that Evanelle was hands-down the best character in the book?

And while I loved this book, I have to admit that it’s not very deep and the book club discussion was uninspired. I saw a parallel between Garden Spells and my much loved Time of My Life, and was telling the group how I saw similarities in the book, but how TOML was much deeper and more profound than GS.

This is the perfect time to point out that my ratings of books are never meant to be compared to each other. Each rating is a stand-alone rating, in that each book is only compared to itself. If I was to compare Garden Spells with Time of My Life, GS would be rated pretty low, as TOML digs deep where GS just skims the surface. But since books are only compared to themselves, which is to say, are they the best they can be?, each book is rated on its own merits.

With that said, Garden Spells was an absolutely fun read that I’ll be adding to my permanent book collection, and I’ll also be seeking out the author’s other works.

Rating: 90 out of 100

Other reviews:

Educating Petunia

Reading Matters (check out this review just to see the UK cover!)

Books on the Brain

At Home With Books

Angieville

Bookfoolery and Babble

Medieval Bookworm

(there’s lots more reviews, but you get the idea)

Book source: I bought this book myself.

And one more thing? If you click on one of the Garden Spells links and buy something from Amazon, I’ll make a commission! Mwahahahaha!! Maybe with the pennies I make I’ll be able to call someone who cares.

You can thank the FTC for this disclosure!

Hoo boy, do I have a lot to tell you about this book! Let me give you a little back story before I tell you about The Opposite of Me.

First, I’ve known Sarah Pekkanen since about February 2009 when she introduced herself on my blog. I checked out her site and  signed up for her newsletter. When I got her first newsletter, I was hooked. I was like, I’m TOTALLY into this author, and I can’t believe her book doesn’t come out for another 13 months! So we chat every once in a while, and I love her more every time she sends out a newsletter (about once a month), and then the next thing I know I’ve got a copy of The Opposite of Me in my hot little hands! And I can hardly contain myself and I can’t wait to crack it open. And then I go to hospital because dang if my side isn’t KILLING ME, and next thing I know I’m being admitted for appendicitis and lucky for me I brought the book I was reading AND The Opposite of Me, because you never know when you’ll need an extra book, right? So I basically read The Opposite of Me in one sitting, because I had nothing to do other than hope my urinary tract started working right.

The Opposite of Me is about Lindsey and Alex, fraternal twins who are completely different. Alex is beautiful, and to make up for the fact that she’s not as beautiful as Alex, Lindsey works long and hard to become successful. Just when success is within her grasp and she’s about to be named the creative vice president of an advertising agency, a poor choice leads to her getting fired and running away to her parents’ home so she can try to salvage what she’s spent so long building. Lindsey is forced to confront her family’s history and take a look at why she is where she is.

Pekkanen has taken a dynamic that I’m utterly fascinated with, despite the fact that it doesn’t pertain to me at all: the dynamics of sisters. Also, the family dynamic and how roles are assigned and taken on is developed well. I found myself thinking of my own family dynamic and how I ended up being “the smart one”.

When I started reading The Opposite of Me, I couldn’t help but see that Pekkanen has a fantastic voice, whether she’s writing you an email, a newsletter, or a novel. She’s very funny and wry.

I hate predictable story lines and tidy stories. My heart was sinking as I read The Opposite of Me, and wondered if Pekkanen would let me down for the first time by doing the very thing I hate: being predictable. I was pleased when I realized that things weren’t as predictable or tidy as I thought they might become (though it does have its fair share of tidiness).

As I mentioned, Pekkanen has a great sense of humor in her writing. She can take an ordinary situation and make you giggle at the humor in it, humor that you didn’t see before, but which is now blatantly obvious.

I predict that The Opposite of Me will be wildly popular, and Pekkanen is undoubtedly an author to keep your eye on.

Rating: 90 out of 100

Sarah Pekkanen’s website.

So, I’ve been meaning to start this feature, but, well, *insert excuse here*.

One thing that I think about as I’m walking to and from the bus is which I would rather do in some weird scenario. Some scenarios I make up myself, some I get from The Book of Questions.

I may not do this every week, but let’s say I’ll do this *most* Wednesdays.

I was going to start this series off with a book related question, but then I realized that I wouldn’t be honoring the ONE QUESTION that I think about at least once a week. And that question is this:

Would you rather let out a purple cloud when you farted, or have a terrible stink that lasted for one minute when you farted?

I go back and forth on this, but I think a purple cloud would be FUN. I could hide when need be, but otherwise I could entertain myself at home.

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Soo…which would you rather?

Okay, so I’ve been dying to read The Knife of Never Letting Go ever since Raych was all, “I loved this book so. hard. I wanted to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant and/or put a ring on it.” (?’Cuz if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it/ Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!)

(HA! Betcha didn’t know you’d be getting an a capella interlude when you clicked on this post, now did ya?)

So I’ve been slaving away at other books, all so I could get to THIS BOOK. And it’s all about how everyone can hear each other’s thoughts (Noise), and animals can talk (the dog’s hilarious), and Todd is going to become a man soon, and that’s when he really becomes part of the community in the town he lives in (that, by the way, is cut off from everything and is on some planet that has two moons). So Todd’s whiling away his time when all of a sudden he has to RUN and KEEP RUNNING and he doesn’t know why but part of it has to do with this girl he found WHO HAS NO NOISE and WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON (except Todd doesn’t say eff).

I was loving on this book a lot, maybe not enough to put a ring on it, but enough to want to shove it in my friends’ hands and say, Do not talk to me until you’ve read this book. I loved the writing, I loved the dialect, and I loved the story.

Then.

Then I got to this ONE PART that I had to cut off from my consciousness and pretend like this ONE PART never happened. And to pretend like this ONE PART didn’t happen, I had to pretend like I hadn’t read the book. I couldn’t deal with this one part. It made me cry myself to sleep and it made me very sad. Not depressed, but sad for days. And I would even put the scene here in my blog (whited out so you’d have to make an effort to be spoiled) but I can’t even transcribe that part for you, it was that upsetting to me.

So while the book was good — great, even — I can’t rate the book. This part made the book unbearable for me. And maybe the book really is that good because it has elicited such a reaction from me that I had to basically forget about the book…*shrugs* I dunno. I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Lastly? I’ll be reading the second book, The Ask and the Answer, because I am nothing if I am not a glutton for punishment (I hear sad things happen there too, but I *think* they happen to people, which I can deal with on a rational level).

Patrick Ness’s website.

Other reviews:

books i done read

things mean a lot

Becky’s Book Reviews

Presenting Lenore

Stephanie’s Confessions of a Book-a-holic

(Yes, there are more reviews, but how many more people need to say YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK before you go and read the effing book?)

Book source: I bought this book myself.

And one more thing? If you click on one of The Knife of Never Letting Go links and buy something from Powell’s, I’ll make a commission! Huzzah!

You can thank the FTC for this disclosure!