Okay, I think this should catch me up. I missed "Twisted" by Sara Shepherd a few weeks ago. The 9th PLL book finds the girls friends again after Ali tried to kill them, and they take a spring break trip to Jamaica. While there, they meet a girl who reminds them of Ali, and a horrible thing happens that separates them again for fear of spilling their dark secret. A year later, things are going along seemingly perfectly for all four girls, until they start getting texts from A, who knows what they did in Jamaica. Whoops. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy these books, but they really are addicting.
"Artemis Fowl: Opal Deception" by Eoin Colfer is the fourth book in the series and finds the inhabitants of Underworld needing Artemis's help with the dangerous Opal, who has escaped and started a goblin rebellion.
"Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern was very beautifully written and utterly charming. I was actually enchanted by the world she spun, a world of mystery and magic that cannot be easily explained. Celia and Marco are pawns in a game much bigger than themselves, fated to duel their unique brand of magic at a circus created just to showcase their talents. Celia and Marco reach the point where they refuse to play the game as it was intended to be played any longer and they find a way to pass the delicate balancing act onto someone else so they can be together. It was an all around lovely book, and I think I'm going to buy the hardcover, something I so rarely do anymore once I've read a book. But this is one I want to own.
"Maine" by J. Courtney Sullivan told the story of a family with issues like any other, who have a summer home in Maine they visit every year but no longer together. The three children: Patrick, Kathleen, and Clare, divvy it up so they don't have to put up with each other. The story is told from four points of view: their mother, Alice, the owner of the house, Kathleen, Patrick's wife Ann Marie, and Kathleen's daughter Maggie. What Sullivan did beautifully was paint the story from each perspective: when you're in Alice's mind, you like her, you feel sorry for this seemingly sweet, sad little old lady who has nothing in the world except her faith in the Catholic Church to keep her going since her children and grandchildren rarely pay her any mind. Then when you read from Kathleen's perspective, you realize Alice isn't really all that benign but you can't help but think she's not quite as bad as Kathleen thinks she is, either. You feel like you'd hate Ann Marie's goody two shoe-edness, but when you read from Ann Marie's section you find you like her, she's trying so hard to please everyone and is not perfect, not really. Sullivan did a nice job showing how people are more than one dimensional, which really isn't as easy to do as it seems.
And finally, Carolly Erickson's "The Favored Queen". She paints a highly fictionalized but fun account of Jane Seymour. Jane is usually portrayed as very pious and plain and perhaps a big dull, but Erickson re-imagines her as having had a broken engagement, an affair with a married man, and having a part in Anne Boleyn's downfall, which made Jane much more interesting. It was quick read.
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