Holding Up the Stars

This is book 3/60 read in 2017.

Libby Strout was once known for being the Fattest Teenager in America.  After suffering the humiliation of having to be cut out of her own house, and losing a lot of weight, she is ready to face the world, and her peers, again.  She has no (well, just a little) fear as she enters high school for the firs time.

Jack Masseline is your typical bad boy.  He has to keep up a tough facade to hide his painful secret.  He can't recognize faces.  Even his family, his own brothers, are strangers to him once he looks away and looks back.  But so far he's kept everyone from finding out.

Now that Libby and Jack are in the same school together their paths cross in part because of a horrible game called "Fat Girl Rodeo."

While Libby thinks that Jack is just like everyone else, Jack can't help being drawn to her.  There is something about Libby Strout that he can't put his finger on, something that makes her different.  And he doesn't mean her size.

The book Holding Up the Stars could have set itself up to be a cookie cutter "teen drama."  When you got into a YA story about an empowered fat girl, and the schools bad boy it usually follows the same path.  Girl falls for boy.  Boy dates girl as a bet.  Boy falls for girl.  Girl finds out she was part of a bet.  Girl hates boy.  Etc, etc, etc.

Rest assured that Holding up the Universe doesn't follow that overdone storyline.

We see the story unfold through Libby's eyes AND through Jacks.  We see Libby's strength and her insecurities. We get to see past the bad boy facade of Jack and find out how terrified he is most of the time, forever surrounded by strangers.  I usually hate books broken up into Multiple points of view.  Especially when its multiple points of view AND flashbacks.

I really enjoyed this novel though and could hardly put it down once I started reading it.  Jennifer Niven did a wonderful job bringing to live two vastly different characters and showing how their lives intertwine perfectly.

This is a novel I needed to read when I was the fat girl in school.  While it's not the moral of the story Libby is a shining example that it is possible to be fat, and to love yourself and enjoy your life all at the same time.

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Holding up the Universe is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardcover and Paperback.

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I received a copy of this novel free from Blogging for Books, but all thoughts and opinions on it are my own.
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Dark Energy by Robison Wells

Warning: This review may contain MILD spoilers for the novel Dark Matter.

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A spaceship has crashed in the Midwest.  It fell first on Iowa, then skidded tow hundred and fifty miles north into Minnesota.  Thousands of human lives were ended.  Now the world is waiting for whatever is in the ship to come out.

This is why Alice had to move from Miami, Florida.  Her dad is the director of special projects for NASA.  He has to go to the site of the crash and Alice has to go to The Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented.

While she's trying to decide whether she falls into the Gifted or Talented portion of the school, the crash landed visitors finally make an appearance, and suddenly everything changes.

They call themselves the Guides, and they look very Human.

While the leader of the thousands housed inside the giant spaceship are talking with Government leaders, two of the younger aliens also end up at the Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented.

One of them becomes first roommates, then friends, with the young alien woman.

Then things get even stranger....

This novel had a couple of twists I didn't expect, and a couple of plot points that you could see coming from a mile away.  And some things that made you roll your eyes because they were a little TOO good to be true, even in a fictional novel.

I would recommend this one to anyone who enjoys YA Earthbound Sci-Fi.

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Dark Energy is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardback and Paperback.