Review: Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe by Shelley Coriel

*book jacket photo courtesy of Goodreads*

Title:  Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe  

Author:  Shelley Coriel

Genre:  Young Adult Realistic Fiction

Publisher:  ABRAMS

Imprint:  Amulet Books

Format:  NetGalley Digital Galley

Release Date:  May 1, 2012

Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe until her best friend shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her BFs and struggling with her beloved Gram’s mental deterioration, lonely Chloe ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life (Summary via NetGalley).

I adore Chloe Camden! She is loud, brash, tells jokes, loves shoes, wears her heart on her sleeve, and never stops talking. Chloe is precariously balancing everything in her life and you just know that eventually it will crumble. She really cares about the people around her—her parents, her friends, her fellow students at the radio station (even though they don’t really like her), her former best friends, and especially her Grams. Chloe desperately tries to keep all the people in her world happy, and that doesn’t always work out.

In a nutshell, I am in love with this book. It is probably one of the best YA realistic fiction books of the year, right alongside Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters. It’s funny, it’s heartfelt and it’s entertaining. Coriel manages to create characters the reader can really care about, not to mention one character I found incredibly vile and I couldn’t stand. But a good writer creates characters we love or we hate, and Coriel does manage to do that. Chloe is an obviously dynamic character that changes as the book progresses. In fact, most of the characters grow and change as the book progresses. Character-driven books are among my favorites, and Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe is definitely that. This book gives the reader an opportunity to laugh, to cry and to just enjoy reading. What a joy it is to read a book that makes you appreciate reading.

I will be recommending Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe to everyone. I will be putting it on my favorite books of 2012 as well. It is so good; it just needs to be read, by as many people as possible. Add this book to your to-be-read pile, no matter how big it is.

Feature and Follow Friday #38

Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Rachel at Parajunkee's View and Alison at Alison Can Read.  It is a great way for bloggers to make new friends and find new blogs to follow. Go to either blog, follow ALL the instructions and then add your link to the list. It's just that easy.

This week's question:

If you could "unread" a book, which one would it be? Is it because you want to start over and experience it again for the first time? Or because it was just THAT bad?

I'm sure there are a lot of books I would like to "unread" but I have blocked them from my memory because they were that bad. The one that comes to mind that I have recently read that I wish I could unread is New Girl by Paige Harbison. It was by far the worst book I've read in ages and it still ranks as the worst book I've read in 2012. I finished it and wished I hadn't, it was that awful. Yuck!

Since I picked a book to unread because I hated it, I'll pick one that I loved. I would love to unread the Mortal Instruments series. I love this series so much.  I remember when I first read City of Bones; it was like stepping into a new and fascinating world, one I never wanted to leave. I loved that book so much, I can't even begin to describe it.  I would love to have that feeling again.

Leave a link in the comment section to your Feature and Follow Friday and I will stop by and check it out. Have a great weekend!

Feature and Follow Friday #37

Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Rachel at Parajunkee’s View and Alison at Alison Can Read. It is a great way for bloggers to make new friends and find new blogs to follow. Go to either blog, follow ALL the instructions and then add your link to the list. It’s just that easy!

This week’s question:


Happy Father's Day! Who is your favorite dad character in a book and why?


I have several fathers that I like. Here they are in no particular order:


Even though he is not actually her real father, I love Luke from the Mortal Instruments series! He cares deeply for Clary, even though she is not his daughter. He does his best to protect her, her mother and her friends, he doesn't take any crap from anyone and he makes an awesome werewolf! Luke is a great father to Clary, something she really needs.


I also like Charlie and Carlisle from the Twilight series. Again, they are protective of their children and will go to any length in order to protect them.


And finally, Stephanie Plum's dad, Frank, from the Janet Evanovich series. He is so funny, without trying. I love his relationship with Grandma Mazur and how frustrated he gets with his crazy family. He makes a great straight man. 


Who are your favorite dads from books? Leave a comment and I will stop by and take a look!

Teaser Tuesday June 12

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

·         Grab your current read

·         Open to a random page

·         Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

·         BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

·         Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

My teaser this week is from:

"You know that curiosity killed the cat isn't just a saying, right? Alex whispered to Charlie. "It's a warning that we should leave when something's wrong." Kindle location 16%--quote subject to change before publication.


What are you reading this week? Leave a link to your Tuesday Teaser in the comment section and I will stop by and take a look.

Feature and Follow Friday #36

This week, Feature and Follow Friday, hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read, is celebrating it's 100th week! Congratulations! In honor of their 100th week, they are hosting a Giveaway Hop to celebrate! Here is the list of participating blogs, good luck!

Teaser Tuesday June 4

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

·         Grab your current read

·         Open to a random page

·         Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

·         BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

·         Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

My teaser this week is from:

"There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing young girls in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners--and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased." page 34-35


The other day, I saw the trailer for the movie version of this and I realized, I have never read it. So, I borrowed it from my daughter and am taking the plunge. So, what are you reading? Leave a link in the comment box and I will stop by and check it out!

Review: The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher

*book cover photo courtesy of Goodreads*

Title:  The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls  

Author:  Julie Schumacher

Genre:  Young Adult Realistic Fiction

Publisher:  Random House Children’s Books

Imprint:  Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Format:  NetGalley Digitial Galley

Release Date:  May 8, 2012

I’m Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn’t want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer with my knee in a brace. CeeCee’s parents forced her to join after canceling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of “The Unbearable Book Club,” CeeCee, Jill, Wallis and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren’t friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I’ll turn in when I go back to school (Summary courtesy NetGalley).

The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls is written in the form of a creative essay for an A.P. English class. Adrienne Haus is summarizing the reading list and therefore her summer, for her teacher.  Each chapter begins with the definition of a literary term, but not the type of definition you would expect. Instead the definitions are snarky and witty, for example: “subplot—This is sort of like the plot’s younger brother, the one who tags along behind the big kids who are hogging all the toys and having most of the fun. But mostly it means a less important plot” (location 720, subject to change). These were actually my favorite part of the book.

I thought that a book about forcing four girls with nothing in common into a book club for the summer would be really fun to read. It started off great; at first I felt a connection to Adrienne because she had no father, loved to read and really had only one friend (who was gone for the summer). Unfortunately, a few chapters in, that connection was gone. I thought the premise of the book was interesting and I felt it had a lot of potential. But the book really ended up fizzling for me and I found myself struggling to get through it.

I didn’t think that the characters connected in the way the author wanted us to believe. CeeCee, your quintessential popular girl, latched onto Adrienne immediately. But CeeCee opting to spend time with Adrienne outside of the book club seemed very unrealistic. They have absolutely nothing in common aside from their forced participation in the book club. And Adrienne accepting CeeCee friendship also seemed farfetched. I’m not sure anyone would put up with a “friend” who rifles through her stuff and frequently insults her. As a matter of fact, none of the girls really seemed to get along. Jill doesn’t trust CeeCee and Wallis doesn’t trust anyone. The mothers even seemed to dislike each other. I just couldn’t connect with the characters as the book progressed because the characters couldn’t connect.

The synopsis of the book suggests that a great deal of it takes place at the pool. Ummm, yeah, not so much. In reality, I think that the girls were at the pool maybe three or four times. And one of those times was the climax of the story. I felt like the pool was supposed to have some kind of great significance to the story, but because so little time was actually spent there, it was lost on me. Adrienne spent more time at home than she did at the pool. 

While I appreciate the use of imagery in a story, sometimes an author can go overboard. Schumacher really loves her metaphors and similes, so much so that she uses anywhere from three to four per paragraph. It really got old after awhile. Sometimes it’s ok to describe something without comparing it to something else. Or leave it out entirely. I really didn’t need to know that the scouring pad was “like a slimy, silver wig for fish” used to scrub the “islands of burned rice” (location 1887, subject to change). I don’t think the reader should notice the imagery; it should be so seamlessly interwoven into the story that its use doesn’t affect the reader at all. I might have been more appreciative of the imagery if it had not been extremely overused. I started to feel as if the author was trying to write the “next great literary masterpiece” in young adult form. She was just trying too hard. 

I can’t say I enjoyed The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls. It was readable, but certainly not something I would read again or recommend, especially to my pickier readers. It’s just not interesting enough.

My grade for The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher: