This book was epic fantastic. Call me crazy, but I liked it way better than that old dystopian standby 1984.

So of course the world has gone to crap, government is gone and N-Corp runs it’s half of the world. One of only two companies that own the world. With no competition they are the only people to work for and the only people to buy from. Everyone lives on credit and N-Corp is very strict when you become unprofitable.

May Fields is one of the few well off in this new world. Her father is the CEO of the company and she is well on her way to becoming one of the few people who live debt free. But May isn’t like everyone else and the secret she has kept is about to push her to the edge.

The world was perfect, realistic and believable. From start to finish I was pulled into it. Like all well created worlds, it was scary because of how familiar it was. It took almost no imagination to see our world becoming this world.

May is one of my new all time favorite characters. She is wonderfully flawed and damaged. She makes bad choices, deals with the consequences, and does whatever she can to redeem herself. I loved the bits that gave a look into her life growing up in this world and the challenges she faced even though she was well off compared to others.

Overall story? Awesome, awesome, awesome. On its own it was a great dystopia, but to have it be a dystopia with a lesbian main character just made it even better for me. It also gave May a gigantic reason for all the choices she made. Because N-Corp doesn’t agree with her being gay, she is willing to do anything and everything to live in a world where she can be who she is and find true love.

So very good because so many parts of the story could easily be true in a few years. A must read for dystopian fans and GayYA fans alike!

Perhaps you’ve noticed my love affair with Jennifer McMahon? When you read three books by someone in a week, it becomes obvious that you are a little obsessed. Then comes the fall, the moment you realize that you have read all their books and the there is no more to read. Ironically, that’s sorta what this book was like. Hard, fast love followed by the realization that your love story isn’t forever.

Maggie has become a outcast by her own free will. After a car accident that killed her mom, she isn’t into the friends and life she had before. Instead, she befriends the strange new girl, Dahlia. Their odd friendship quickly grows into something more as Maggie realizes her feelings run deeper.

This is the typical figuring out your into chicks story, but done in a very non-typical way. It keeps to McMahon’s usual dreamlike feel, but lacks the sinister undertones of her other books. It also isn’t quite as good as the other books, but it’s still loads better than most books.

Maggie’s feelings for Dahlia grow slowly through the first part of the book and as a lesbian, it all seems way familiar. Maybe all of us have a thing for the bad girl? Maybe it’s just that the bad girls in high school were better at giving off the feeling that *maybe* they could be into girls as well. Either way, I was smack dab back in my teenage brain reading this book.

The relationship between the girls is shorter than I would have liked, but again that puts you right in Maggie’s head because it’s shorter than she would like too. This book lacks most of the tragedy and heartache that fill way too many coming out books, and I appreciated that.

Aside from the main girls, the supporting cast in an interesting mix of damaged people who seem to breath full lives because of how damaged they are. The small period of time you visit in this book is a mess,but you believe every minute of it.

Great book, definitely more YA than not. Very worth a read.

I wasn’t expecting much from this book, but it was great! A lot of YA books like this can read like a bad episode of 90210. If Cumyn keeps this up I’ll put him on my list of must read YA books, like those from John Green.

Stan’s life changed five years ago when his dad walked out on them. Now it’s about to change again over Janine, a spiky haired girl with a tattoo who people say is a lesbian. But if she is, why is she paying attention to him? All this confusion is compounded when his dad reappears at the front door with a four-year-old half-brother in tow.

Stan’s narration of this brief period of his life is spot on. His confusion over Janine and the stupid things he does while trying to figure her out are both painful and humorous because they are so true. Their relationship moves hard and fast like so many relationships do at that time and Cumyn pulls no punches in describing it.

When it comes to the family drama, it plays out like a bad soap opera, but one that is happening to you and making you shake your head wondering how on earth this could be happening to you. I don’t think anyone could help but be reminded about some strange time in their own family when they read this book.

Overall a great read, honest, funny, and touching.

So, this is my love letter to Ilsa J Bick.

I was just talking to a friend the other day about how much I enjoy finding an author and loving a book they write. I love it even more when I read another book by them and it’s also awesome. When these books are very, very different, I fall head over heels. This, is what happened here.

Drowning Instinct is the third book I have read by Bick and the books have little in common aside from how amazing and beautiful and hard to put down they are.

Jenna Lord is a girl with a dark past. The abuse, loss, and fear has led her to cut, but we meet her when she is moving to a new school and hopefully starting a new life free from cutting. Of course that isn’t quite the case. Her family is still a mess and the new school isn’t any easier than the last one.

The story is told by Jenna into a tape recorder for a detective, so it’s very clearly only her view of the puzzle that is her life. That’s what makes this book so painful and wonderful to read. Each event she recounts is told with as much emotion as she cares to share and the secrets she doesn’t know or doesn’t want to admit are danced around. As she’s falling in love, your tasting the rush of it with her. When she’s hinting at the abuse she suffered as a child you want to push her to reveal more, but of course she won’t.

The book reads like a compelling memoir, making it easy to believe you are hearing the confessions of a real girl. Because of this, you can’t help but hope it will have a happy ending even though the book cover tells you that won’t be the case. Up until the last moment you are hoping that things will work out. Instead, you are left with almost as many questions as you started with. In some books I find this annoying, but it worked here. Reading it was like living a memory; you know there is more to the story just beyond your reach.

Like all her other books, this is a must read.