Review: Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando

Title: Roomies
Author: Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Little, Brown BFYR
Publication Date: December 24, 2013
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

It's time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl's summer -- and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they've never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

Everyone remembers their first roommate.  I even shared my first roommate horror story here as part of the Roomies promotional tour earlier this month. When I picked up Roomies, I was expecting something more along the lines of an epistolary novel, a collection of email exchanges between the new roommates.  And while there are many emails included in this novel, there is also a separate and distinctive narrative for each girl.

On the whole, I think I connected more with Lauren's character, but I loved what each girl brought to the novel.  Lauren is a quiet, shy girl who's finally getting the chance to live away from her large family. And now that the time is approaching, she's having a harder time leaving them behind than she expected. Elizabeth, who goes by EB, is the opposite of Lauren in nearly every way. She's outgoing and popular and she has no qualms about leaving behind her over-bearing mother.  These girls couldn't be more different on the outside.

But the summer before college is a tumultuous one, and these girls find that they have one thing in common above all else:  they've each embarked upon summer relationships that may or may not have a future.  Though they use their email exchanges to discuss everything under the sun, they also help each other out with their romantic entanglements, which helps build the bond they'll need as roommates.

I was worried about the romances in this book, particularly because it is the summer before college and that seems like a time more for ending things than beginning them.  But freshman year of college is a time of new beginnings, so despite how difficult these relationships might have been to maintain, I liked that they didn't turn into summer flings, that they were realistic and that all parties involved seemed optimistic about the future and what it held for them.  But I also liked that each girl's respective romance didn't take center stage.

That summer before college is full of possibility, full of options.  These girls spend the summer figuring out what they want and who they want in their lives, and on their way to figuring that out, they find that they want to be a part of each other's lives.  Things may not have started off great between them, and there were definitely snafus when it came to interpreting emails and moods, but ultimately, I would have loved to have either of these girls as my roommate.  I think the authors each did a great job of portraying such a transitional time period in a young person's life.

GIF it to me straight:

About the authors:

Sara Zarr is the acclaimed author of four novels for young adults: Story of a Girl (National Book Award Finalist), Sweethearts(Cybil Award Finalist), Once Was Lost (a Kirkus Best Book of 2009) and How to Save a Life. Her short fiction and essays have also appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain, and several anthologies. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband.

Find Sara:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Tara Altebrando is the author of The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life, Dreamland Social Club (Kirkus Reviews Best Books for Teens of 2011), The Pursuit of Happiness, and What Happens Here. She also has a middle-grade debut, The Battle of Darcy Lane (Running Press Kids, May 2014), releasing soon. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband and two young daughters, Ellie and Violet.

Find Tara:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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Labels: book trailers, contemporary, crossover, hachette, new adult, reviews, roomies, sara zarr, tara altebrando

{Promo} Roomies by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando: My Roomie Story + a Giveaway!

As part of a promotional tour for Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando, I've been asked to share my roomie story. Whether it be a sibling, at camp, at college or your first apartment, everyone has one, right? So, without further ado, here is my roommate horror story:

My best friend Holly* and I decided that after our first year of college, we'd get an apartment together off-campus but still within walking distance of our classes.  My mom warned me that this was potentially a bad idea, but I took her advice with a grain of salt because she'd never been particularly fond of Holly.  (This may or may not be because Holly introduced me to her boyfriend's best friend Alex*, whom I had been seeing for about a year by this point, and whom my mother also did not hold in high esteem.)

The apartment search was long and arduous because we both had ideas of what we wanted, and we were both Tauruses, so we were both stubborn and less than willing to compromise.  In the end, we scored an apartment that neither of us loved but that suited our needs.  The parking for this place was almost non-existent and the neighbors were less than friendly, but we finally had a place to call our own.

Though, to be fair, it always felt more like her place than ours.  She insisted on using all of this "vintage" furniture she'd bought over the summer at The Salvation Army, even though I had some furniture of my own to contribute to the place.  And she was an art major, so everything that was hung on the walls was either her own creation or something she liked, with no input from me.  Holly even had a sketch of her boyfriend she'd done in the nude hanging on the wall in her bedroom, and when I asked her to at least close her bedroom door so his wang wasn't staring me in the face every time I passed by, she told me that I should simply avert my eyes if it bothered me so much.  She thought I was a prude, but honestly...once you've seen something like that, you can never look that person in the face again, ya know?

Things started off well enough, but Holly was always more social than I was, and she had help covering all of her costs, so she didn't have to hold down a job on top of her studies like I did.  I knew this beforehand, and it hadn't bothered me because she was my best friend and I knew that she'd be happy for me if our roles had been reversed.  But because things were easier on her, she didn't have to take classes at the butt crack of dawn in order to get to work at a decent time just to get enough hours for the week so that she could afford to live there.  So, she had friends over all the time, at all ours of the day and night, with no regard or respect for me and what I had going on.

I know I should have asserted myself more in the beginning and we should have laid some ground rules from the get-go, but we'd been best friends for years, so I thought that stuff would work itself out. In the end it was these things and a lot of other little grievances over the course of a year that ended our stint as roommates and a friendship of more than seven years.  Mom was right about Holly.  And a year later, Alex and I parted ways, also not particularly amicably, so I guess Mom was right about him, too. Why do parents always get to say "I told you so"?

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Title: Roomies
Author: Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Little, Brown BFYR
Publication Date: December 24, 2013
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

It's time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl's summer -- and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they've never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

If you're curious about this novel but still not quite sure, check out the excerpt!  Also, if you want to meet the authors while they're out on tour, here's where you can find them:

• January 12, 2014 – New York, NY: McNally Jackson [venue link]
• January 15, 2014 – Salt Lake City, UT: The King's English [venue link]
• January 16, 2014 – Provo, UT: Provo Library [venue link]
• February 4, 2014 – San Francisco, CA: Books Inc, Opera Plaza [venue link] 
• February 5, 2014 – Petaluma, CA: Copperfield's Books [venue link]

Now that I've shared my roommate horror story, how about some of you share yours so I don't feel so bad, and then enter to win your own copy of Roomies!

Rules:

• This giveaway is sponsored by Little, Brown and is therefore open to the US only.
• One entry per household.
• Entries will be verified.  Any entry found to be falsified will result in disqualification of all entries for that participant.
• Winner will be notified via email.  Winner will then have 48 hours to respond before another winner will be selected.  Please check your SPAM folder!!!
• I am not responsible for lost packages.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Thanks for stopping by & happy reading!

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Labels: contemporary, crossover, giveaways, hachette, new adult, promotions, roomies, sara zarr, tara altebrando

{Audiobook} {Adult} Review: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Title: The Mad Scientist's Daughter
Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke
Narrator:  Kate Rudd
Series: n/a
Publisher: Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio
Publication Date: January 29, 2013
Source: purchased audio/received from publisher via Netgalley
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is the heartbreaking story of the journey from childhood to adulthood, with an intriguing science fictional twist.

There’s never been anyone - or anything - quite like Finn. He looks, and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task is to tutor Cat. When the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

**Some material in this novel may only be suitable for ages 17+ due to sexual content.**

What is it about this author's books that makes me impatient to click that button and request them, only to feel hesitant and lukewarm toward them when it comes time to actually read them?  Clarke had already proven to me with The Assassin's Curse that she's a gifted writer, and I'll be reading the sequel to that novel very soon.  So, tell me again, why I decided to put off reading The Mad Scientist's Daughter, only to be coerced and nagged into reading it by my good friend Em?!?  Because ultimately, I loved this novel.  It's like nothing I've read before, but it felt so familiar because of how genuine the story and characters were.

This novel is adult in nature...I can't stress that enough.  And I do so because when I requested it on Netgalley, I was under the impression that it was a young adult novel.  In all fairness, the first half of the novel does focus on a young Cat and her growing pains, but she does mature into a woman over the course of the book, and there are definitely some situations that might not be suitable for younger audiences.

This book served as a reminder of every bad decision I ever made along the way to adulthood...and then some.  They might not have been as monumental as Cat's mistakes -- not all of them, anyway -- but they led to the same type of emotional suffering Cat endured for much of this story.  And it IS a sad, lonely, painful story.  At one point, I remember asking Em why she was making me read this because my poor heart almost couldn't take it.  Talk about realistic.

I liked Cat's progression as a character, though there were definitely times I was ready to give up on her.  It wasn't just her bad decision-making skills but also her handling of the consequences and how that affected those she cared about.  Initially, I sympathized with her, then I blamed her for her selfishness, and then I went  back to sympathizing.  Cat was an oddly likeable character for me, despite her many flaws.

And then there's the matter of the android Finn, who I loved from the moment he was introduced, despite how unnatural and robotic he was in the beginning.  As the situation changed, he adapted, thanks to programming installed by Cat's father.  And despite the fact that he was Cat's emotional opposite, I still felt he was every bit as human as she was, regardless of how much wiring and circuitry inhabited his body.

I was trying to think of the best way to describe this impossible romance and the world it dwells in, and the one example that kept coming to mind was Blade Runner.  Not that the technology in TMSD is anything like that of the movie...there are androids and a mission to Mars, but people still drive cars and use slates, which sound pretty comparable to the iPad of today.  But it was the illicit love affair between a blade runner and a replicant that I was reminded of when I thought of the forbidden relationship between Cat and Finn.  I felt like this should have been squicky, but I just thought it was hot.  Finn was a man in nearly every way, after all.



I listened to the audio for The Mad Scientist's Daughter despite having the galley because I knew Em wasn't going to leave me alone about it.  But that was a great decision, anyway, because the narrator is the same as for The Fault in Our Stars and she was terrific...for both books.  Kate Rudd made Cat sound every bit the hapless, helpless daughter of a brilliant physicist.  Finn was made to sound just robotic enough not to be human, which worked well since some of the characters in the book didn't even realize he was an android until they'd been told as much.  Rudd is definitely working her way into the ranks of my favorite audiobook narrators.

If you liked The Assassin's Curse, I definitely suggest giving this one a try because the writing is just as good, though the story is entirely different.  Cassandra Rose Clarke is definitely going on my auto-buy author list.  And not just because she's a Texas author, though that doesn't hurt.  =)


Rating:  

About the author:

Cassandra Rose Clarke is a speculative fiction writer living amongst the beige stucco and overgrown pecan trees of Houston, Texas. She graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in English, and in 2008 she completed her master’s degree in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin. Both of these degrees have served her surprisingly well.

During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

Find Cassandra:

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Tumblr

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Labels: adult, angry robot, audiobooks, cassandra rose clarke, crossover, reviews, sci-fi, the mad scientist's daughter, tx authors