The problem: there’s not that many good, current ones out there!

There are, admittedly, about half a million current YA series.  For some reason, the YA genre lends itself a little better to series.  It seems like most of these series right now are about paranormal stuff and vampires and… blah.  Spare me.  I did read Twilight, but there wasn’t any real love there and I can’t really handle the vampire/werewolf/yadda yadda thing as a whole so I just pass.

Here are the YA ones that I’ve read and enjoyed:

Harry Potter, of course.  I resisted the pull for a really long time but finally read them last year and fell in absolute love.  I’ve been thinking of doing a re-read of these because I straight devoured them the first time though and would like to go back for some savoring.

The Hunger Games series was pretty incredible.  I love a good dystopian novel any day, but a dystopian series? Yum.

The Gemma Doyle series is full of stuff that I’d never liked, but somehow I loved it.  It came to me highly recommended and I’m glad that I picked it up.  Good stuff.

And that’s pretty much it as far as more current series go.  There are a handful of classic ones that I loved growing up, but that’s another post entirely.

There have only been three adult series that I’ve found that I’ve liked very much.

I read The Dark Tower series last year with a couple of friends.  There are seven books and they are seriously incredible.  As a big Stephen King nerd, I was so impressed with how many of his books he tied into the series.  It kind of made everything come together.  The characters were incredible and so memorable and I was totally enamored the whole time.  Seriously great reading.

The Kingkiller Series is still being written.  The first one, The Name of the Wind, blew me away and I’ve been recommending the heck out of it and buying it as gifts and giving it away on my blog pretty much non-stop for over a year.  The next one comes out early next year and it’s going to be a big day for me.

I’m still not done with the Millennium series.  I’ve read the first two and thought that they were pretty great.  I’m waiting until the last one comes out in paperback before I get it, but I’ve heard that it’s great and I can’t wait to give it a go!

And that’s it. Sad, right? I’m not really very much into fantasy and it seems like all the big series are fantasy.   I’d love to get all wrapped up in a new series, but nothing is really calling my name right now.  Do you know of any great series that aren’t fantasy that I might enjoy?

The Animorphs Series, by Katherine Alice Applegate

I see these all the time at the thrift store and every single time I have to pick them up and flip through the pages… mostly because they have the little “flipbook” thing by the page numbers that show the main character turning into whatever animal they were turning into during that book. So funny.

I don’t remember the main characters, or even really what their goal was.  I have a vague memory that it had to do with time travel, aliens, and other perfectly wonderful things.  There was also this core group of kids who had the power to morph into animals and were BFFs. What else could you ask for?

I’m pretty sure that this series was aimed more at boys, but I had already devoured all the girl stuff so I remember reading these and just loving them. I’m pretty sure that the series hadn’t ended yet when I quit reading them, because I don’t remember any big amazing ending.  Anyway, incredible stuff.  Probably total garbage, but I loved it.

As a side note, my whole life when anyone asks the incredibly clever “icebreaker” question of which animal I’d be if I were an animal, I always think of this series.

Let me entertain you for a second with some amazing covers:

Ahhhh. I love it.

To participate in Flashback Friday, head over here for more info and the fun little picture. After you’ve posted your flashback, head back over here and comment with a link to your blog so everyone can check it out!

The Book: Mister Monday: The Keys to the Kingdom #1, by Garth Nix

The Story: The main character of this book, Arthur, suffers a should-be fatal asthma attack and is visited by some creepy dudes who babble off some crazy stuff and then give him a book and a “key” that looks like the minute hand to a clock.  He ends up in the hospital and recovers quickly.

On his way home, he sees this new “house” in his development that is huge and crazy and no one else can see it.  Of course, the book that he was given by the creepy dudes shows him how to get in. When he gets “visited” at school by some more creepy guys who start a fire and plague in his town, Arthur figures that he should head to that new crazy house and try to figure out what is going on.

So, he goes and it turns out to be this whole wild city. He finds out that by having that minute hand, he has a lot of power within the city.  To stop all the bad stuff that is happening, he’s told that he has to get the hour hand that matches the minute hand he has.  A fun little quest begins.

What I Thought: Let me preface this by saying that I was buying some Hunger Games/Catching Fire goodies at the bookstore and the guy who was checking me out asked me if I liked that “type” of book, by which I kind of took to mean dystopian books- which I love.  Of course I said yes.  He said that the best series being written like this right now was the Keys to the Kingdom series. I immediately went home and requested it from the library, knowing almost nothing about it.

Maybe it was that I was expecting something like Hunger Games/Catching Fire, which I thought was incredible.   I cannot even comprehend where the comparison came from.  I’m not entirely sure, now, what he meant by “that type of book.” Maybe just YA fantasy? Which I’m not into at all. So maybe it was just that my expectations were just off.

This was not great.  I would be struggling to call it good. I guess that the premise has promise, but the follow through was cringe-worthy.  The writing was clunky and the dialogue was all the way unbelievable. I realize that it was science fiction, but the world just seemed so… fake. Even the “real” part of the world.  All of it.  The “rules” that existed seemed arbitrary and I never found myself in suspense at all. It was just silly.

I kind of kept thinking that it was going to come to life at some point and that something amazing was going to happen. No such luck.

Conclusion: Meh.  There are so many better YA books out there right now.  I wouldn’t waste my time on this.  I will not be continuing on with this series. And if you’re a bookstore worker or librarian, don’t compare mediocre books to great ones.  It’s not fair to the mediocre ones.

The Books: The Jessica Darling Series, by Megan McCaferty

The Story: Jessica Darling is a snarky, brainy, opinionated high school junior when we meet her in the first book.  She is devastated and lonely because her best friend, Hope has just moved away and she’s flying solo.  She is a virgin and, while she plans to stay that way for awhile, has her mind in the gutter a good majority of the time.  During this first book, Jessica does a favor for one of the druggies in class, Marcus Flutie.  He is kind of a ‘bad boy’ and Jessica is at first repulsed, and then totally in love with him.

The next four books, while (mostly) written from Jessica’s point of view, tend to revolve around Marcus.  I don’t want to give anything at all away, but suffice to say that their relationship is rocky at best and Jessica’s journals capture this.

The books capture just that essence of moving from one phase of life to the next.  We see her parents go from treating her like a kid to treating her more like an adult, with one unfortunate, much-too-personal encounter.  We watch her friends grow up, get married, get pregnant (not always in that order) and grow apart and back together.  We kind of just see her come into her own, messing up and fumbling all the while.

What I Thought: First off, I think it’s nearly impossible to write a summary of a whole series without giving anything away. Hopefully I succeeded.  I have re-read it a few times and think that we’re spoiler free.

So. What did I think? These books came to me highly, highly recommended.  I had read the first book when I was in high school, but honestly forgot all about the series until a group of my friends went crazy for them.  I have been reading heavy, tough stuff lately, so last time I went to the library I picked up the series.

So glad I did.

The first two I really loved.  I think that I would have been friends with Jessica Darling in high school.  I loved how she was so cynical and jaded.  That was just exactly me, but I could have never dreamed of being able to relay it so well.  Her take on things cracked me up and I was surprised when I loved the second one even more than the first.

The third and forth books were not super great for me.  This is when Jessica was in college and her relationship with Marcus was weirder and rockier than ever.  She kind of made strange friends and, for me, turned into a much more bland, much less snarky person.  I missed the “guts” in these two. They just seemed kind of empty.  They were still light, fun reads, but I have to admit that I found myself skimming sometimes.  Marcus is obsessed over but not seen too much in these two books, and to be honest, the obsessive whining was starting to get on my nerves…

And then we get to the fifth book. I was blown away.  Again, I really don’t want to spoil anything but… wow.  I think what I loved most of all was that in the first four books, Marcus was a main idea but we never really got to know him as a character.  This book was not written as a diary, but from a third person point of view.  We finally got inside Marcus’ head, and I have to admit, I got myself a literary crush. I finally felt like I got to know him and see what Jessica sees in him. At last.

I think that this series is perfect for girls that are in that age range or just past.  I am just past so I thought it was great to look back and remember what it was like to go though all those crazy changes.  For girls in high school and college and just after, I feel like these books would be a revelation.  Jessica Darling just seems so real, so her struggles and victories and friends and family are absolutely relatable.  I could pick out the Hope in my life, the Bridget in my life, the Len in my life, the Dexy in my life, and I really think that that is what made these books so good.

I thought that the author was clever in how she used letters, essays, diary entries, poems, and then later standard narrative to put together a fairly seamless series. This can be a risky way to write and Megan McCafferty rose to the challenge and actually managed it quite well.

Conclusion: Read these.  They are good, light, fun reads but they have real guts, real heart.  I don’t know what else to say.  Don’t be a book snob.  Read them. If you’re not convinced yet, know that there are some steamy, sweaty sex scenes. See? I knew you’d give in.