I didn't really like "Ice Cream Girls" by Dorothy Koomson, and after I accidentally spilled a bowl of soup on it and ruined it, I liked it even less. What a klutz I am! Thirty some years of checking out library books (LOTS of library books) and I've never once lost or ruined one. I guess there's a first time for everything. So I had to pay for it. Anyway, the story: Poppy is being released from prison after serving nearly 20 years for killing her boyfriend. She knows she really didn't do it though, it was Serena, her co-defendant, who was also dating the much older and abusive Marcus. The girls were teenagers when Marcus seduced them and started abusing them, pitting them against each other. Serena didn't go to prison, though, instead she's married a wonderful man and has two great kids and Poppy is jealous of the wonderful life she has that she doesn't deserve. She's on a mission to make Serena confess. There's only one small problem: Serena says she didn't kill him, either. So who did? So who cares? Not me. Marcus was a creepy jerk pedophile. I'm not wasting too many tears for him.
"Kings of Cool" by Don Winslow is the prequel to "Savages", which I haven't read but I did see the film and liked it, so I decided to read the books. I started with this one, which tells the story of Chon and Ben, who have a lucrative marijuana growing business in Laguna Beach. Interspersed with their story in 2005 is the story of the previous generation: their parents, and how the drug business really took hold in the area. It was interesting and exciting and of course I love reading about familiar areas.
"Dark Lord" by Jamie Thompson was a cute kid's book about how a dark lord from another time and place is banished to Earth by his nemesis. Found in a parking lot, the paramedics and social workers decide to call him "Dirk Lloyd" (mishearing "Dark Lord" when they ask him what his name is). Since there's nothing physically wrong with him they find him a nice foster home and send him off to live with the Purejoies. They have a son, Christopher, who is the same age as Dirk, and slowly he acclimates himself to being stuck in a boy's body, making friends at school (or underlings and lickspittles, as he thinks of them) and trying to conjure up enough magic to return to his own time and place.
I'm not sure how I feel about "Dwarf" by Tiffanie DiDonato. She was born a dwarf, but was never told that, not until high school. Growing up, she just thought she was short. Her mother refused to let her think she was different or handicapped. Determined to have a normal life, Tiffanie decides to have a potentially dangerous bone lengthening surgery as a teen. Most doctors will only do about three or four inches, but Tiffanie talked hers into 14 total, bringing her height up to 4'10", which, while on the short side, is still tall enough to live a normal life. She's happy, married and a mom, living the life she always dreamed of, I just can't help feeling that if she'd been introduced to and a part of the Little People community as a child she might have realized being a little person isn't so awful. I just hope she doesn't end up having awful complications later in life from gaining so much height.
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