Two-Way Street - Lauren Barnholdt

Warning: This review contains profanity.

What.  The.  Fuck.  I'm not sure I've ever read a bigger piece of trash in my life.  How anyone could get away with writing this is utterly beyond me.  I actually had to take notes on everything that was wrong with this book, just so I didn't lose track.  Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

First, everyone, and I mean everyone, in this book is fucking psychotic.  All of them.  It's a completely unrealistic portrayal of high school/college students.  High school and college students do not spend all of their time fucking and drinking.  They don't.  I don't know how long ago Barnholdt was in high school and college, or what her social life was like when she was there, but for some reason I have a feeling she wishes this was what college and high school were like, not what they were actually like.  Is there sex and partying in high school and college?  Yeah, sure.  But people do not spend every night of the week attending multiple parties.  Especially when they're stellar students, like Courtney and Jordan supposedly are, because you actually can't be a stellar student and still have time to spend every night hooking up and drinking.  Trust me, I know.  And they all, even the adults, run around sharing secrets and blackmailing people.  What?  And let's not forget that not a single parent cares that their children, who are underage (Courtney is 17) are running around at all hours of the night with people they have never met before, and they encourage this behavior.

Then there are Courtney and Jordan themselves.  We are supposed to believe that they had a wonderful, beautiful relationship, that they never fought, and it's wonderful that they got back together.  Uhm, no.  Not at all.  Courtney, for starters, is psycho.  She believes her ex-boyfriend is a liar and a cheat, even when she knew he wasn't lying to her or cheating on her.  Her relationship with him revolves heavily around the use of Myspace, which is definitely not the way to have a successful, healthy relationship.  She also automatically assumes that every girl who isn't a virgin is a slut.  Myspace Girl is a slut because Jordan likes her.  Any girl who ever bats an eyelash at Jordan, even before Courtney liked him, is a slut.  But this logic does not apply to Jordan, even though he apparently hooks up with girls left and right.  Barnholdt apparently still lives in an age where only women can be sluts, and men who sleep around are to be congratulated for their actions because it makes them even more desirable.  And can I mention how Courtney thinks that girls who are desirable, but are honest and never cheat on their boyfriends are "the worst kind of girls"?  What the fuck is that about?  Apparently Courtney thinks that lying and cheating are desirable qualities in a girlfriend?!

Now let's talk about Jordan.  Jordan, as mentioned before, is the type of guy who hooks up with a different girl every night of the week.  He also deeply regrets not having the appropriate amount of time to gel his hair in the morning.  He likes his rap "hard and dirty" and thinks Courtney, who he is in love with, is dressed like a slut because she's wearing shorts and a tank top in Florida in the middle of the fucking summer.  Let me repeat that.  She's a slut because she's wearing shorts and a tank top in Florida, one of the hottest, most humid places in the country.  God forgive her for not wearing a full-length skirt and a bonnet to cover her hair!  He also thinks that, if a girl shows any interest in him at all after they hook up, she is automatically psychotic; heaven forbid that a woman expects a guy she's been intimate with to treat her like an actual human being and not like a disposable fuck toy!  We're apparently also supposed to think Jordan is edgy or something because he bought pot for a party once.  No.  That is not edgy, that's just stupid and a waste of money.  We're supposed to like him because he cries over his breakup with Courtney, but that was all because he was a complete idiot in the first place, so I don't pity him at all.  He broke up with her, after all, and for what was literally no reason.

Oh, and the "big secret" of the breakup is hardly a secret at all, and not nearly juicy enough to justify all of the sheer stupidity, slut-shaming, and overall misogyny of this book.  And the writing sucks.  How many times can you use "totally" in one sentence?  And at least learn to keep your character details straight, because Courtney is some kind of stellar student one moment, is in all AP classes, and the next she can't solve a single math problem on her own.

1 out of 5 stars, because at least it was short.

White Cat - Holly Black (Curse Workers #1)

So, I really liked Holly Black's faerie stories, and I was hoping White Cat would be along those lines.  You know, kind of dark, twisty, surreal, and glamorous all at the same time.  Well, this isn't quite like the faerie books were, but it's not bad, either.  The story is about Cassel Sharpe, the only non-gifted member of a family of curse workers.  Black integrates curse workers into our world as if they've always been there, as a semi-functioning part of society--only semi-functioning because curse work was been illegal since about the time of the Prohibition.  Consequently, everyone, worker or not, wears gloves of some variety to prevent the working of curses (laying a curse requires touching someone with your hand) and many people wear charms designed to prevent curses from taking effect.  Because working is illegal, anyone who wants to work (in the US, at least) typically ends up working for mafia-like families who organize crime networks of workers.  Cassel's family is involved with the Zacharov family, though since Cassel doesn't have working abilities, he himself is left out of everything to do with workers and instead tries to make himself as normal as possible at his boarding school.

Like I said, Cassel doesn't have working abilities, but he has a secret of his own: he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago, and his family helped cover it up.  Now, Cassel is having weird dreams of a white cat and is sleepwalking, leading to his suspension from his upper-class boarding school.  All he really wants to do is stop sleepwalking so he can go back, but while he's trying to figure out what's going on with him, this white cat (featured in his dreams) shows up in his life, and he begins to suspect that he has amnesia of a sort. Kind of a disappointing plot device, amnesia, but it worked.  There were a few things that were blatantly obvious from the very beginning, and I was actually embarrassed for Cassel that he didn't figure them out sooner.  But there were still a lot of great twists, which it's hard to talk about without revealing stuff, so just take my word that they were pretty good, though not nearly as enthralling in general as I found Tithe and its companions to be.  I was also hoping this would be along the lines of Tithe in that it could be read alone, but that's not really the case; where Valiant and Ironside were companion-books to Tithe, the Curse Workers books are actual sequels.

While the writing was good and the characterization was decent, one thing that did seem evident was a lack of consequences for the characters' actions.  Nothing seemed to have blowback except the curses themselves, and even that was relatively minor.  In the end, everything was just peachy keen, and no one really regretted...well, anything.  It seems like in a story where there were some morbid revelations, there should have been more consequences, at least on a psychological level.  Now, there was one kind-of consequence at the end, but I'm not really sure it can even be called that because it looks like it will be resolved in the other books.  All I'll say about that is:

Anyway, this was a pretty good book, but I feel like it could have been deeper and consequently better.  Overall, I did like it, but not as much as I was hoping to.

2.5-3 out of 5 stars.

How The Light Gets In - M. J. Hyland

Disclaimer: I have never read The Catcher in the Rye.  I never had to read it for school and I really have no inclination of my own to read it.  I did not pick this book up because it was supposed to be like Catcher in the Rye because, obviously, that meant nothing to me.  It just sounded mildly interesting while perusing the shelves of the used bookstore the boy and I like to frequent, so I bought it.

I have never encountered such a stupid, frustrating heroine in my entire life.  The writing quality was good, but the story revolved completely around Lou's stupid decisions, and since she's supposed to have such an enormously high IQ (though we never find out exactly what it is) it makes it all the worse.

So.  The story revolves around Louise Connor, aka Lou, who moves from Sydney, Australia to somewhere around Chicago in the USA to spend a year abroad.  She never wants to go back to her family because she hates them and thinks they're awful, even though they don't actually seem to be that bad.  Her parents are unemployed, only receiving some sort of governmental stipend, so the family is pretty poor, but they spend their time delivering Meals on Wheels to old people, and there were several anecdotes about how sweet her mother or father could be.  But Lou's real problem appears to be with her sisters.  They do sound like they were mean, but...  Lou didn't have to be involved with them.  She also constantly calls them "sluts," a perception that appears to stem from them being interested in sex (even though neither seem to have a string of guys; one of them has a fiance, the other a boyfriend, and between the two of them only one past boyfriend is mentioned), smoke, drink, and want to have babies.  Erm...what?  And what's even more "what" about it is that Lou acts exactly the same way, except she's apparently afraid of sex for some reason, even though she takes her shirt off and engages in various sexually-related acts throughout the story.  What what what?  She also hates people who are prettier than she is, calling them all "low-IQ witches" when she never even spoke to them to determine their intelligence level.  She's supposed to be quirky, I think, with her fascination for learning new words, singing, writing notes, and sleeping in spare bedrooms to cure her insomnia, but really she just comes across as your typical socially-inept character, with the bonus that she's supposed to be smart but is a total moron.

Also, everyone--and I mean everyone--in this book seems to be out to get her, or at least she thinks they are, when they all actually have perfectly good reasons for what they do.  Except James and Tom, who are just creepy individuals all around.  Oh, and did I mention that I'm not sure I trust Lou as a narrator?  She seems to be a compulsive liar and blatantly contradicts herself at several points.  I'm not sure if this was bad continuity or, what seems more likely, Hyland using Lou as an unreliable narrator.

Anyway, if you want to read a book about a complete moron who spends too much time trying to be "deep" and makes a lot of bad decisions, this would be a good book to read.  The other characters are pretty well done and the writing isn't half bad at all.  But Lou's sheer stupidity, contradictions, and lies made me pretty much hate her.

2 stars out of 5.