I am so excited to have author Cody Kennedy visiting my blog today! It has been a long month of touring for him with his book, Slaying Isidore's Dragons, and this is one of the last tour stops—see all the other stops here, every one is FULL of useful information and facts. Especially the first one, the kick-off of this book tour, is near and dear to my heart. Don't miss it.

 

Go here:

 

Cody Kennedy talks about authoring.

 

 

***CAUTION: RED SHEETS EVERYWHERE!!!***

The amazing thing about water drops is that they always take the path of least resistance. For humans it's exactly the opposite.



Bryan is a water drop, but Scott is not. Bryan has to learn how to fight against the flow. How to make the tough choice because it's the right way to go. And to understand that he needs the strength the red sheet gives to him. To be the change he wants to see in the world.



Oh yeah, it was totally crazy. One day Bryan gets up and decides he craves a red sheet, he NEEDS a red sheet. He needs to fly like Superman (and he even tries to) and he has the unexplainable compulsion of rescuing small furry animals from the trees, or the ridiculous temptation of gathering coupons for his neighbor, or the call for being nice and polite to everybody, even if they answer in a bad way and he is late for class. It was SO funny reading it in his unmistakeable shocked state at these changes in himself I had to stop and laugh several times because they were genuine moments.



I want to compare it to Lady Gaga. She writes songs that are deceptively superficial. But they talk about issues that are quite profound if you stop a minute or two and think about them. The red sheet could seem a stupid idea, but it's not the object, but the concept, that is important. Everything that is represented in it.



A friend of mine told me that during the period when she had to walk on crunches and she needed the most for the doors to be opened people shut them on her face. It is said that ours is the most solidary generation but I believe that's complete crap. I have mates who would pay more attention to the dirty kids in Haiti than to the person next to them who is shouting "HELP ME, PLEASE" with their eyes. This selective deafness is kind of frustrating, you have to be DYING if you want to attract some kind of attention. Minor misfortunes are always forgotten when you find a greater one. But there will always be somebody who is in a worse situation and so on you will forget the one with the "lesser" wound. We can't let that to happen. NGOs are great and all of that, ok. But I think it's not necessary to travel that far to make your good. You can do your bit with the people around you. Believe me, a smile from a unknown person can cheer me up in a bad day. That's why I try to smile to everybody (you can perfectly assume I'm cute or I'm stealing drugs from the pharmacy), I guess there are a lot of people having a bad day around me. And here it is when I remember that sentence: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Now replace the word "country" for whatever term you find fitting.



Scott here is ignored in his suffering, and with the following pages you realize that the role Bryan played in that making is bigger and bigger with each passing revelation. It's very hard to see how good people act when they are afraid and behave against their own beliefs and values. But it's harder to forgive them.



This book touches the typical young adult themes in a high school: bullying, finding one's identity, true friendship, honesty, family and love. And above it all, how to follow the hard path, how to be true to yourself, because that person is the one with whom you are going to sleep at night. But what is not typical at all is how convincing it was, and how innovator. It was from the bully's POV. But you won't see one guy who pursues another, you will see one guy who knows he had been one but can't remember why he did it and how. And that one day he wants a red sheet more than nothing in the WORLD, just to save it.



Don't worry, it all makes sense in the end. It's not that you get all the scientific answers about why Bryan has memory loss or that weird thing about the red sheet. I interpreted it all as something symbolic. As a A Christmas Carol-kind of moral. To sum it up, this is a damn good m/m book in the YA genre.



Lots of sentences in this review were not mine. Quoting is one of my hobbies :P .

 

 

Into This River I Drown - Tj Klune: I still do not have sufficient words to describe what this book did to me. It's a story of love and loss, of bone-wrenching grief, of pain and suffering, but also of hope and survival. it gutted me, and I've never cried as much reading a book as I did with this one. I beg you to read it.

 

Omorphi - C. Kennedy: There be trigger warnings for somewhat detailed accounts of abuse, but if you can deal, this book paints a picture of such pure love, determination and a bond so strong, it took my breath away. Tears flowed freely, but I also rejoiced in the perseverance and hope C. Kennedy painted with his words. 

 

Capture & Surrender - L.A. Witt/Aleksandr Voinov: From the Market Garden Series. I expected a somewhat gritty romance, with bunches of kinky sex, but was hit out of left field with a book about pain and loss, grief and resignation. And love. With snarky, witty humor, the author duo painted a picture of a man past his prime who finds exactly what he didn't know he needed. 

 

Salvage - Con Riley: You probably see a theme emerging here by now. Yes, I read a bunch of sad books that made me cry, but even here, there is so much love to be found. Love between a father and son, both stubborn and blinded by past mistakes; love between a man who has lost and is clinging to what is left, yet slowly reaching out, and a man who is lost himself, fighting to keep what's left of his family together. Love between a brother and his sister, and crushing guilt that keeps him from letting her go. It was perfection in written words, and the images Con Riley painted with her words were so utterly brilliant that I was left in awe upon the book's ending. 

 

Slide - Garrett Leigh: The sobfest continued with this book about two men who are good for each other, but also make huge mistakes and wrong assumptions. It's about a man's journey to find the truth about himself, and struggling against fear and depression. It's about a love so fragile that it can't help but fail when it's needed most, and yet a love so strong that it finds its way out of the darkness into the light. 

 

When You Were Pixels - J.A.G.: Set in a futuristic city of towers and sewers, new author Julio-Alexi Genao slew me with his short (and free) story about Antho, who first sees and then rescues an assassin come to the tower for reasons unknown. The writing this wordsmith put onto the page is so good, it made me weep. Each sentence is carefully crafted, each paragraph, each sequence of events so brilliantly put together that you can't help but be awed by the emotions they evoke. And yes, I cried all the tears at the end.

 

Nor Iron Bars A Cage - Kaje Harper: A fantastic fantasy story written for free by this fabulous author, it takes you deep inside the mind of a man who's lived in fear for years, but who, with the help of an amazing friend and eventual lover, slowly comes out of his shell to find strength he didn't know he had. At the climax of the story, I feared for them both because by that point I knew that neither would be happy without the other ever again. Beautiful imagery painted with brilliant words by an author I hadn't read before but who's made me a big fan of her work. 

 

Sex & Violence - Carrie Mesrobian: Almost brutal in its depiction of a young man nearly destroyed by violence, this book painted a realistic and unapologetic picture of teenagers and their sexual exploits, and yet also produced a slew of excellent points culminating in my declaring this book required High School reading. 

 

Exotic Music of the Belly Dancer - Brian Sweany:  The opening paragraph had me in stitches, and I expected a book about the sexual exploits of a teenager in the 80s (hello, memories), but what I got instead was a carefully crafted book with an ending that I never saw coming. It was wonderfully irreverent in some cases, perfectly realistic in others, and it kept me glued to the pages until the end. I cannot wait for this author's next book. 

 

The S-Word - Chelsea Pitcher: Reviews varied with this book, but it made my top list because of the message it sent. Again, this book should probably be required High School reading. It's thought-provoking, and while the writing may be a little choppy, it fits perfectly with the mindset of the protagonist and totally worked for me.

 

 

So there you have it. What were your top books of 2013?

 

Huh. That certainly backed up the warnings and hints Michael has received that Christy is in many ways like a child because he never had any normal socialising and conditioning, and so his emotional growth became stunted. He pretty much behaved like a frustrated, tired, recalcitrant four year old who does not want to share his toy, not an eighteen-year old kid. Great bit of following up on characteristics by the author - not just telling me it is so, but really showing me that it is so.

Although the plot seems a tad over the top on external threat-factors, the MCs are blessedly free of TSTL syndrome, and are consistently seeking help from parents and authorities when they should.