Cloaked by Alex Flinn

I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don't believe me? I didn't believe it either. But you'll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got cloaked.

                                                                  -Chapters Canada

As soon as I started reading Cloaked, I knew that I would not like it. I immediately wanted to put it down and pick up one of the many other books that I have sitting waiting for me, and would most certainly be more worth my time. Unfortunately, once I start a book, I have to finish it.

Having read and watched Beastly, a book by the same author, and enjoyed both relatively, I really wasn't expecting to so loathe this particular novel. But I did. It was so predictable and really just immature. I didn't find the incorporation of the fairy tales at all interesting, just boring and annoying. I also really hated the main character. He just seemed so transparent and un-genuine. At first, I just pitied the poor dude, but then things kept changing. Sometimes he was pathetic. Sometimes he was clueless. Sometimes he acted like a stud. It was all just so confusing; I didn't like it at all.

I don't really know who to recommend this book to, and I almost feel like it should be categorized as a middle grade novel. The plot was so juvenile and predictable, I really can't think of anyone possibly enjoying it.

Spoiler Alert: Don't read past this point if you don't want to know specific book details!

I really don't want to spend much more of my life doing anything related to this book, but I really do need to vent more about it, if only for closure!

I am really so ticked at how much I hated this book. I almost feel cheated, since I really did like Beastly and was seemingly promised equal greatness in this book. The cover just seems to evoke an eerie fairy-tale narrative promises depth. Just like in Beastly. The Beauty and the Beast re-telling definitely worked there. But here, oh no. It was just so silly. I didn't find Johnny believable, with his dreams of designing shoes (really? shoes?). It just seemed all wrong for him. And then how clueless he was. Everything was so obvious the minute it happened which was just so annoying. I knew right when his father was mentioned that he would turn up later on. I knew the minute the Fox entered the story that he was the Dad. And with Meg. It was all too much. Just pushing the reader back and forth. There was too much going on. It was way too many annoyingly obvious twists going on at once. And the magic just seemed ridiculous. Such random things that weren't well thought out at all.

And the whole princess and prince were so obnoxious and tacky. I really just hated the whole thing. This book is sloppy, immature, and not really worth anyone's time. I'm actually being quite generous with my 2 rating. I really do love the cover though.

I'm a meanie, I know--Cheers & Enjoy♥

I Was a Teenage Popsicle by Bev Rosenbaum

Teenage girls always want to be cool. But frozen is another story. 

Floe Ryan was frozen-or 'vitrified'-at sixteen. She and her parents had a rare disease, so it was their only choice until a cure was found. Now she's been thawed and it's ten years in the future-but she's still a teenager. And her parents are still chilling out...

So now her little sister is her older sister, and she's making Floe suffer for every snotty thing she ever did. It's hard getting used to...not to mention a new school, new technology, and a zillion other new things that happened while she was napping in the freezer. Luckily, she has Taz, the hottie skater boy who was a popsicle too, so they get to reintegrate together. But now they're trying to close the Venice Beach Cryonics Center-with Floe's parents still in it! It's up to her to save the clinic and her parents-so she can finally have a somewhat normal life.                                                  -Fantastic Fiction

It seems like I always say this, but I have wanted to read this book for a while, which can only be explained by the fact that I have a very large ongoing booklist that dates back, like, 5 years or more. This was actually one of the books that I was most excited about, which is why it got purchased before the other ones on the list.

Let me say that it did not deliver. Whether or not this is the case just for me or not, I do not know. I have seen a handful of other reviews on the book which were all very positive, which makes me think that it is possibly my age contributing to my absolute loathing of the plot-line and cheesy clichés. (Ironically, though, I did really relate with the writing style, and found myself thinking many times that it seemed like something I would write or say, but the content was just crap... so... writing style = good, plot = crap).

Having said that, my reading style has been evolving at a pretty rapid pace lately, and I have been finding that I am not as interested in the cookie-cutter light, fun chick-lit reads that used to make me feel light and giddy way back when. That is why I am going to say that I hypothesize this book to be a good pick for the youngon's but really no one else. And that's all I'm really gonna say, as I refuse to let this book take up any more of my time that could be spent reading the next best book, with COMPLEX plot lines or really just mediocre plausibility.

Bitter, I know--Cheers & Enjoy♥