Starry Nights

Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney
4/5 stars
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2013
226 pages
YA Fantastical Contemporary

Source: Received an e-ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I must give credit to Heather from The Flyleaf Review (review linked below) for her beautifully enthusiastic review of this book, which totally prepped me for the book by sharing about her art history background, something I do not possess. While I like looking at paintings, I do not have that passion for them that others have and can use the additional knowledge and love.

Julien loves art and realizes how fortunate he is to be able to roam the halls of the Musee d'Orsay after hours due to his mother's position there. In turn she appreciates his keen eyesight that catches possible sun damage before anyone else. His knowledge is uncanny and his talents are even rarer as he realizes that he can bring paintings to life, including the enchanting young woman in a recently rediscovered Renoir painting. Unfortunately he also starts seeing paintings around the world start to break down and he must race against time and his own desires to restore the art for the world's enjoyment.

Honestly the premise for this book is a bit weird-I mean, paintings coming to life? But Julien's love of the artwork is so real and compelling that it is easy to follow again. I mean, if I stopped to think about it, I'd find it quite bizarre but while reading, I was just swept away. Are most teenagers that interested in art (even French ones)? Probably not but I did like how he has this unique passion and the means and determination to follow it. Julien learns some pretty interesting things about himself over the course of this book that will definitely shape his future.

However the two parts that stay with me most don't really have anything to do with him. For example, my favorite parts were definitely Julien's interactions with a young ballet dancer-he can hear music coming from her, signs of her future career. As a musician, it is probably not surprising that those sections resonated so strongly with me especially because the referenced music is incredibly famous. My other lingering impression from this book is that Renoir is kind of a jerk-a sexist elitist jerk and I don't like him much. He does not come off well for sure and the parts that annoyed me the most are confirmed in the author's note as being true.

Unfortunately there is a romance and not just between Julien and art in general. No it is with that girl in the painting, Clio. Clio has been stuck there for years and that seems to have worn away her personality as in she didn't have much of one. I understand that she's beautiful but I need a bit more to get on board a train of human and painted creation, you know? So the romance is where this book really lost its luster for me as well as how the chapters leading up to the ending sort of dragged. This would also be an instance of a book where I did not want a traditional happy ever after and the path that this book took was too far away from what I wanted and expected to happen, leaving me dissatisfied about that.

Overall: Though my rating is on the positive side, I do find this book a bit slow and was very unhappy with the way the romance was handled. Still if you enjoy lightly magical stories and have an appreciation for art, this may be something you'd enjoy.

Cover: I feel like the cover is a bit cheesy (why yes it *is* set in Paris) but I've heard lovely things about the book in print so I'd like the chance to glimpse that for myself.

Other Opinions:
A Reader of Fictions
Alexa Loves Books
In Bed with Books
Into the Hall of Books
Jen Ryland/YA Romantics
The Flyleaf Review

The Rivals

The Rivals by Daisy Whitney
4/5 stars
Little, Brown and Company, 2012
344 pages
YA Contemporary

Source: Library

The Mockingbirds was one of my favorite reads so I was interested in reading the next installment. One of the issues I had (actually my only issue) was that the students undertook their own vigilante justice because they don't think the administration will do anything. I was horrified that the faculty and staff were not notified and neither were the police nor her parents when Alex was date raped (seriously, she never talks about/to her parents...I can't imagine not talking to my mom every day...is the boarding school setting really sufficient to erase the parental units?) Excitingly this book does tackle that issue.

It is now Alex's senior year and she has become the leader of The Mockingbirds but her first case is going to test the group. Unlike previous crimes which had a clear perpetrator and victim, a cheating scandal is brewing. Who is plotting this? Who would be considered the victims? And how are they going to gather evidence to shut this down?

Alex does reach out to the administration early on and receives the very clear message that they want their students to be successful. But no action is taken. Although I find it difficult to believe that these adults would be so blase, at least they were represented.  As for the vigilante aspect, Alex's attempts to explore the cheating ring draw her in deep and have her questioning that very thing. There are no easy answers, no black and white answers in the real world.

To add to all of that drama, Alex is trying to get in to Julliard and is having struggles with her boyfriend as a love triangle seems to pop up. As I ended up liking the other guy more (he has beautiful hands), this wasn't my favorite aspect. It also seemed to be a bit much on top of all the drama around the cheating. Additionally the love triangle just falters at the end; if it's going to play a role, I wanted it to play a bigger one (I might never be satisfied on this issue-if there had been more, I probably would have complained that it was dragged out for too long.)

Overall: A challenging sequel that delves deeper into the moral implications of vigilantism and justice, among others while deepening the characterizations of main character Alex and her friends.

Cover: My mom thinks the boy looks like Harry; I thought Louis but either way we both think he looks like a boy from One Direction, which is quite frankly a weird direction (haha) to take this cover. Females are the most important characters so why isn't a girl on the cover?

The Mockingbirds

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney

Little, Brown and Company, 2010

332 pages

YA; Contemporary

4.5/5 stars

Contemps Challenge

Source: From my sister

Summary: Alex wakes up naked in a bed with no memory of how she got there and a naked boy next to her. Her life at her beloved boarding school is shattered. Feeling she has no recourse through the school's administration or the police, she turns to the Mockingbirds, the hand of justice at the school.

Thoughts: I really loved this book.  Alex was a very sympathetic character; she loves piano and Beethoven and is a pretty good student.  She likes to have fun with her friends and her favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip just like me.  She did make some very stupid mistakes that led to the date rape and I was appalled by her behavior after, in that she didn't want to go to the police (see later paragraph).  But overall I liked her and it was easy to be on her side.  I liked seeing her friends and later a love interest who supported her implicitly even if they weren't as vividly drawn as Alex.

The part of the book that probably has most intrigued potential reader is the club the Mockingbirds.  The rules and regulations of the Mockingbirds captivated me.  The machinations within the club seemed very well-designed to avoid corruption, to preserve a system of checks and balances, and to implement justice to the aggrieved. Of course the name comes from To Kill a Mockingbird with the beloved character Atticus Finch's sense of right and wrong inspiring its founding.

The only part I didn't really like was because I was very uncomfortable with their system of justice: not including the school or police concerned me-I would have liked to see the students reaching out and trying to incorporate them in the process.  I have trouble believing that the school wants date-rape and such to occur there and Alex's insistence that the police not know about a crime really bothered me.

The author's note revealed that Daisy Whitney was date-raped herself.  I'm amazed at her strength in standing up for herself after it happened and to promote awareness through her writing.

Overall: A powerful read-highly recommended.

Cover: Nice cover although I've seen better.