Oh God, my heart.

Damico built and destroyed a playground of a world in three books, and she populated it with tangible characters and impossible humor and new depths of sadness that only served to increase each other. Her characters confront what it means to be a good person, what loyalty really means, and how to survive -- and what is worth surviving for. A breathtaking trilogy.

I listened to the audiobook and I don't know if it was the background-noise-voice of the narrator or Shubin's text itself, but I had the hardest time paying attention to this. I just finished Bill Nye's book on evolution and kept comparing this to that -- and Shubin's just fell flat for me. Some of the facts he shared were interesting and ones I hadn't known, but overall the book lacked the joie de vivre I like in my science books.

This book is all about lies. Are they good, or are they inherently bad? Is it okay to lie if you are doing it for someone else's benefit, and wrong if it is for your own? What if you are in danger?

Maybe you aren't lying enough.

Rachel witnesses something from her vantage point on the 8:04 train to London and becomes embroiled in a mystery that she has no place to be solving. What follows is an agonizing thriller that takes place in the corners of a drunken blacked out mind and in the sinister smiles of potential criminals. Read this, but make sure you have time to read it in one sitting.

One day there were no more healthy babies -- only Blocks, humans born with the ability to breathe and blink but unable to feed themselves or move or communicate. Dietzel's book follows one old lady as she cares for these Blocks as she has done for her whole adult life, and his alternately musing and frightening novel covers the topics of religion, loss, purpose, life, and hope. Too much was lacking in the way of science (where did the food come from, why were they taking care of the Blocks in the first place, etc) so I wouldn't recommend it to scifi fans, but I would recommend it to someone looking for a creepy story that makes you question your definition of life.

Cassel Sharp is not a worker. He can't make you luckier, he can't make you happy, and he can't mess with your memories. But the rest of his family can--just not legally.

White Cat takes place in an AU where curse workers exist: rare people who have one type of work they can perform, like give you luck or happiness or even kill you, but to do so is illegal. Enter the crime families, Cassel's brothers, his mother, his friends from school, and Cassel himself -- a smart-mouthed clever teenager whose head is a delight to be inside as he begins to understand his place in the world he lives in and struggles to out-con the conmen.

It's a wild, inventive ride, and I highly recommend the Jesse Eisenberg-narrated audiobook.

Lily is a mermaid, going to high school on land because she found out her mother was a human and she wanted to experience that life. She visits home frequently and has a crush on the star of the swim team, and the hate version of a crush on the boy next door.

It's a set up for a simperingly sweet story, but unfortunately Lily is a vapid, idiotic, and mean girl, and Childs lets her hate the boy next door for so long with no reason (this book is all tell and no show) that it takes a long time to see why he is worth liking, and the book ends before you see why he even likes her.

It doesn't help that the mermaid politics are not explained in any kind of detail, and you're expected to believe that Lily is supposed to get married and take the throne in two months when she's spent the last three years on land as a human and not being trained in any way to be an effective monarch.

Gave it two stars only because I loved Quince.

This is a "boy book," full of gross humor and things that 25 year old women generally aren't amused by. I didn't like Captain Underpants or I Funny, so I did not like this book either. I'm fine with that.

What killed me is that I love poetry, and I love Shel Silverstein, and the first poem was an ode to him, so I was excited. But this book is full of lackluster poetry that rhymes like a fourth grader being graded on his completion of the assignment was forced to write it. I liked the art, and I love the idea of bringing poetry to new audiences. But this isn't the first one I'd hand a child.

I picked up this book because I've always loved Weeki Wachee and a book about a teenage girl who becomes a mermaid there seemed like such a treat. I was so disappointed to realize that it was a book about depressing grown up problems (deadbeat dad, emotionally absent jealous mom, equally miserable stand in mother figure, sexual exploitation, impossible to like characters) and was never going to conjure in its pages the magic I've always felt at Weeki Wachee.

But this is forgivable--not all depressing books are bad. Unfortunately, this one was. It was disjointed, failed to elicit an emotional response, and felt sluggish from start to finish. The main character did not grow, there was no climax or twist--only a slow, plodding path from beginning to end.