Review: The Here and Now

Title: The Here and Now
Author: Ann Brashares
Genre: ya, sci-fi, romance
Published: 8 April 2014
Pages: 242
Rating: 3 / 10
Challenges: NetGalley Reading Challenge
Full Disclosure: I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.

This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth.

But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.

From Ann Brashares, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, The Here and Now is thrilling, exhilarating, haunting, and heartbreaking—and a must-read novel of the year. (from GoodReads)

My Review: This is a really difficult review to write. I actually finished the book over a month ago, but I kept putting off writing the review because I really, really didn't like it. I was so excited when I was approved for Anne Brashare's new book on NetGalley! I loved the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, so I expected to enjoy this story as well. Here's the thing, though: Prenna is really boring and dumb. Reading everything through her eyes was incredibly frustrating, because I wanted to shake her and point out all the clues that she was missing. I was also not a big fan of the romance. Ethan is a "nice guy," and while Prenna swooned over him from day one, I found him seriously suspect. By the end of the book, I felt as though I had read a story about Ethan's journey rather than Prenna's. Is it possible for a male character to be both a Mary Sue AND a Manic Pixie Dream Girl? The only thing I really enjoyed was the paradoxical implications inherent in time travel, and I really didn't feel like that was explored enough.

That said, I'm positive this book would be a big hit with my students. Between the pseudo-science, the dystopian future, and the romance it pretty much hits every YA trope on the BINGO card. The ending also leaves the story up to serialization, but I think it works better as a stand-alone.

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Review: Diverse Energies

Title: Diverse Energies
Editors: Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti
Genre: short story, dystopia, sci-fi, romance, YA
Published: 20 November 2013
Pages: 368
Rating: 6 / 10
Challenges: NetGalley, Lucky No. 14

Synopsis: "In a world gone wrong, heroes and villains are not always easy to distinguish and every individual has the ability to contribute something powerful.

In this stunning collection of original and rediscovered stories of tragedy and hope, the stars are a diverse group of students, street kids, good girls, kidnappers, and child laborers pitted against their environments, their governments, differing cultures, and sometimes one another as they seek answers in their dystopian worlds. Take a journey through time from a nuclear nightmare of the past to society’s far future beyond Earth with these eleven stories by masters of speculative fiction. Includes stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ursula K. Le Guin, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Daniel H. Wilson, and more." (from GoodReads)

My Review: I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but I requested this one from NetGalley because I like some of the authors mentioned and I love supporting books about diverse characters. The stories are all interesting, but there are definitely some that I enjoyed more than others. My favorites were "Uncertainty Principle" by K. Tempest Bradford (a girl discovers that she's the only person who can detect temporal anomalies), "Gods of the Dimming Light" by Greg van Eekhout (a modernization of Ragnarok - especially cool because I read it the day before Ragnarok was thought to occur!), and "Blue Skies" by Cindy Pon (not your typical kidnapping story). The others weren't bad, but these were the three that I found the most interesting and wish I had gotten more story for.

This collection is great because of the much-needed diversity it features. However, the downside is that so much of it is bleak. The worlds these authors have created are beautiful and fascinating, but also really terrible if I were to actually live in them. I would love to see a collection of stories (or novels) about these characters when they're happy and living normal lives.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic review copy from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

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