The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ~ 5 stars!

     The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi is a real treasure of a book. This is the story of Charlotte Doyle, a proper, ladylike girl of thirteen who is sailing the Atlantic to be reunited with her family in America after several years of schooling in England. The voyage does not go as planned, because the crew of the ship she has boarded, the Seahawk, plans to mutiny against the cruel Captain Jaggery. Charlotte must decide who she sides with, the unwashed, uncivilized men of the crew, some of whom have become her friends, or the gentlemanly Captain Jaggery, who seems to praise her for her ladylike behavior. In the end, the girl who boarded the ship in England will be nothing like the girl who gets off in America.

     Because the crew will mutiny, and Charlotte will be forced to choose a side. And though she has been basking in the warm glow of Captain Jaggery's favor, he will turn on her in an instant if it suits him. Charlotte has to learn who her real friends are: is it the wrinkled old black man Zachariah, or the well-dressed and refined Captain Jaggery? And once she's made her choice, will she be brave enough and strong enough to stick with it - even if it means hanging?

     The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is a book that represents a lot of things to me. It's a real transformation story, with Charlotte becoming a very different person. She goes from the proper lady to a girl who has climbed the rigging of a ship in a hurricane to cut free the sails. The Charlotte who boarded the Seahawk would never have been able to do that. Another thing I liked about The True Confessions is that Avi really did his research. He really figured out how a ship is put together, what the things are called, and what would be necessary during a voyage and during a storm. And then he presented it in a very gradual unfolding, so that I always knew enough but never got a load of disconnected sailing ship information dumped in my lap. That's how that sort of thing should be done, and it really made this book stand out among the list of other books where everything takes place aboard a ship at sea. 

     The other thing I love is the characters. Characters say a lot about a book, and The True Confessions has so many good ones. To be honest, the cast of characters is fairly small - just the crew, the captain, and Charlotte, and then a handful of family and servants who crop up in the last chapter or so after she reaches land. But no more than a dozen are important and present for 90% of the book, and those dozen were very good. I wanted to know more about Zachariah from the first time he tried to befriend Charlotte. I also despise Captain Jaggery with a deep and profound loathing, and I have my particular favorites among the crew. Mostly Fisk...I really love Fisk. 

     But the character who was the absolute best was Charlotte herself. She narrates the entire story, and I really like her voice, which has the right blend of humor and reality. But the thing about her I want to highlight is the way Avi handled that pivotal moment when Charlotte turns from her upbringing to join the crew.That's a pretty drastic choice, but the way the story flows, there's been plenty of soul-searching, regret, remorse, and plenty of tears as well. It's not a snap decision. When you begin the book, making that choice seems completely out of character for Charlotte, but by the time it happens, it fits. Charlotte has changed, but it happened so gradually and fit so well with everything that was happening that you never notice it. And when Charlotte makes that choice there's the right amount of reluctance and just plain guts behind her actions. It was superbly done.

     It should be fairly obvious now that this book is one I highly recommend. It's not a girly book, though it's about a girl, and there's adventure and action, but also powerful character moments going on. There's something for everyone, and to my opinion, it's a book that's very easy to read and easy to love. This is another book I think everyone should read, particularly if you enjoy books about sailing and being at sea and pirates.

     I actually have a personal story to go with this book. The True Confessions was something I read and liked when I was 12 and 13, but I haven't read it in two years, and I actually thought I had outgrown the story. In a moment of boredom the other day I picked it up, and was surprised. This book is so good, I couldn't believe I hadn't read it in so long! It's definitely reminded me I need to go back and reread books I liked when I was 13. Some of them are probably books I will still love.

Link to author website: http://www.avi-writer.com/books/books/true.html

Boston Jane ~ 4.5 stars

     Boston Jane: An Adventure, by Jennifer L. Holm, is a historical fiction story which revolves around the realities of frontier life in 1854 and the inexperience of a young woman fresh from the civilized city of Philadelphia.

     Jane Peck is not what anyone would call a 'proper lady.' As a girl she was a complete tomboy and too fond of eating cherry pies. As a young woman of sixteen, though she has learned everything that Miss Hepplewhite's Young Ladies Academy can teach, she still seems incapable of becoming one of those women who hold an esteemed place in Society. But what she doesn't at first see is that the very things that prevent her from becoming a 'proper lady' are the things that enable her to survive and endure the challenges that the Northwest Territory hold for her. Without her strong, irrepressible nature and the stubborn will to succeed that she got from her father, she'd never have decided to travel to the untamed frontier of Shoalwater Bay to marry a man she has admired since childhood.

     These happy plans doesn't go as expected. When she reaches Shoalwater Bay where her fiance was supposed to be waiting for her, he has gone far away to work for the Governor of the territory, and has already married to a Chinook Indian woman. Friendless, without family or money, and with no way to get back home, Jane must find a way to survive in the primitive settlement. Everything she learned at Miss Hepplewhite's proves utterly useless as she rubs shoulders with the smoking, drinking, tobacco-spitting frontiersmen of the settlement and the Chinook Indians living nearby. But as she mends clothing, bakes pies,and begins make a place for herself at Shoalwater Bay, Jane discovers that what it takes to be a lady is not fine embroidery and fine clothing, but a stout heart and a refusal to give up.

     Boston Jane is a book that I enjoyed very, very much when I first read it about two or three years ago. Jane was a girl who I liked from the first page. She had an ironic view of life, and bold, forthright attitude. She was funny, she was brave, she didn't hesitate to screech at the frontier men when they starting getting on her nerves. And although she ended up in some of the most ridiculous situations, she somehow manages to make the best of everything that happens, including a smallpox epidemic that kills many of the native Indians. Jane isn't a dainty lady, she's far from perfect, and she's not always grateful for what she does have. It was those things that made me like her so much. She was just like me, except she could bake pies much better than I can.

     I liked many of the other characters in Boston Jane: An Adventure, and they all added to the distinct flavor of the book. Mr. Russell, the dirtiest, most flea-bitten man on the settlement, seems to have a low opinion of Jane, but beneath his gruff and grubby exterior is a heart of gold. Other new friends are Mr. Swan, an eccentric gentleman, and Handsome Jim, a Chinook Indian. Besides these, she also forms an unlikely friendship with a sailor called Jehu Schudder which may eventually bloom into something more. All these characters and more are found in Boston Jane, a collection of people with varied personalities that together this an entertaining, memorable read.

     And did I mention that this is actually a trilogy? So after Boston Jane: An Adventure,  there are two more books of Jane, Jehu, Mr. Swan, and Mr. Russell, along with new characters and new adventures/dilemmas for Jane to face. What's not to like? Be sure to check these both out of you like the first book.

Boston Jane: Wilderness Days

Boston Jane: The Claim

     By the way, my pet peeve about these books? They changed the cover art. My copies have interesting covers of Jane doing something she does in the book, and they're very inviting covers. Here you just get a girl in a dress standing. Pretty, but not very interesting, at least in my opinion. But that's just my pet peeve. The books are still good, regardless of what covers they have, and I highly suggest you read them. 

Link to author website: http://www.jenniferholm.com/p/novels.html

Beyonders trilogy ~ 3 stars

     The Beyonders trilogy, by Brandon Mull, is a story of action, adventure, and courage set in a fantastical world pulled straight from the imagination of the author of the wonderful Fablehaven series. It's one of those books where a kid from our world travels to another place and finds himself the answer to prophecy. That's what Jason is: the answer to a prophecy, the hero who could save the world of Lyrian or destroy it. But he's also just an ordinary, baseball-loving teenager and at heart he's just like every one else.

     Jason comes from the Beyond - that would be our world - and his sudden arrival in a place nothing like Earth couldn't be more startling to him. Lyrian is a place like no other - you won't find another book with a world like Lyrian, and around every corner you're discovering something new about it. It's populated by humans, yes, but there are strange races living there, too, races created years ago by wizards. The food is exotic and varied, and the places Jason adventures to are as diverse as a swampy jungle full of huge frogs to the Tavern-Go-Round, a spinning tavern. All these things provide the backdrop for the story Brandon Mull has prepared.

     Jason, together with Rachel, another teen who has traveled from our world to Lyrian, are set on a quest by the Blind King to find the syllables to a magical world that can destroy the evil, tyrannical wizard Maldor, who seeks to conquer and control the entire world of Lyrian and everyone and everything in it. This quest will be dangerous enough, but no less dangerous than confronting Maldor in his fortress and speaking the word that will save Lyrian. And because of the nature of this series, I can't tell you what happens beyond that. You'll have to read them to find out.

     Now, with this fairly glowing description, maybe you're wondering why I'm only giving this series 3 stars. Here's why.

     In Lyrian, Brandon Mull created an amazingly detailed, intricate, unique world, filled with things and creatures I'd never heard of before, including wizard-born races that you will not find the like of in any fantasy novel you've ever read. Usually that's a good thing. I like to find unique worlds in books, but in Beyonders there was just too much for me to handle. I got lost in all the imagery - and not in a good way. There was so much going on in the background that I had a difficult time following the thread of the story with all these strange names of creatures and things popping up every few pages.

     Secondly, I had problems with the cast of characters in the Beyonders. As far as creating unique characters, Brandon Mull did well, especially with his wizard-born races to draw from. I do have a certain attachment to Ferrin the displacer, and I dare you to read the whole trilogy and hate him. Jason and Rachel were also great people, and the Blind King was...blind, of course, but pretty awesome. The problem for me was that there were other people who would join Jason and Rachel as they set off on each new quest, not so much in the first book, but definitely in the other two. And there were SO MANY of them, each with such a special skill-set that whenever they ran into trouble - and they did - there was always someone perfectly equipped to save their necks.

     Now, having a large cast of characters meant that Brandon Mull could regularly kill a few to remind Jason and Rachel to keep moving, but I find that creating characters and adding them to the story for a bit-part before killing them as a casual reminder isn't a mark of good writing. So between the jack-of-all-trades aspect of Jason and Rachel's ever-growing group of questers and their frequent, sudden deaths just to prove a point, I found the story lacking something. I couldn't get genuinely attached to the characters when I knew they'd be dead in 150 pages or so, only to be replaced by someone just as good or better. 

     Those are my reasons for rating the Beyonders the way I do. Despite having a brilliantly imagined world and a story premise that I loved, technicalities in how the author executed the story just didn't live up to my standards. However, there are lots and lots of people who had loved these books to an insane degree. I've read the reviews on Amazon, and there are fans out there as diehard as any fans of Harry Potter. So if you did like Fablehaven, I think the Beyonders might be worth looking into. It just didn't work for me.

     To sum up my somewhat extended review, let me just say that the first book of this trilogy has already been reviewed on Under Cover Agents by Mountain Gal, my blogging buddy. Check out her review HERE, and hopefully between us we can give a less biased assessment of these books.

Link to author website: http://brandonmull.com/site/beyonders-books