Waiting on Wednesday (3)

In My Mailbox (IMM) is hosted by Breaking the Spine

Waiting On Wednesday is a meme that spotlights upcoming releases 

that we're anticipating.

The full credit of this choice should be given to Vickie @ ComaCalm as I saw this book on her WOW post last week and I honestly have had difficulty not thinking about it! As you may know, I'm interested in anything mental-health related and so this one sounds as though it's right up my street! I've been hunting for a place to pre-order it but I haven't found anywhere so far (fair enough, seeing as it's not released for more than a year, boo-hoo!), I'm just so eager to get my hands on a copy of this! 

The Program by Suzanne Young

Expected publication: April 30th 2013

From Goodreads:

Sloane knows better than to cry in front of anyone. 

With suicide now an international epidemic, one outburst could land her in The Program, the only proven course of treatment. Sloane’s parents have already lost one child; Sloane knows they’ll do anything to keep her alive. She also knows that everyone who’s been through The Program returns as a blank slate. Because their depression is gone—but so are their memories.Under constant surveillance at home and at school, Sloane puts on a brave face and keeps her feelings buried as deep as she can. The only person Sloane can be herself with is James. He’s promised to keep them both safe and out of treatment, and Sloane knows their love is strong enough to withstand anything. But despite the promises they made to each other, it’s getting harder to hide the truth. They are both growing weaker. Depression is setting in. And The Program is coming for them.

I think that this sounds amazing! What do you think and what are you waiting on?

Gingerbread

Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
Paperback, 176 pages


Published March 8th 2011 by Simon Pulse
(First published March 1st 2011)


My shelves: books-i-own, contemporary, read-in-2012, realistic-fiction, young-adult
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Description via Goodreads

"I will be as wild as I wanna be."After getting tossed from her posh boarding school, wild, willful, and coffee addicted Cyd Charisse returns to San Francisco to live with her parents. But there's no way Cyd can survive in her parents' pristine house. Lucky for Cyd she's got Gingerbread, her childhood rag doll and confidante, and her new surfer boyfriend.
When Cyd's rebelliousness gets out of hand, her parents ship her off to New York City to spend the summer with "Frank real-dad," her biological father. Trading in her parents for New York City grunge and getting to know her bio-dad and step-sibs is what Cyd has been waiting for her whole life. But summer in the city is not what Cyd expects — and she's far from the daughter or sister that anyone could have imagined.

My Review

I didn't really know what I expected of this book and upon finishing it, I'm still not quite certain of how I found it. I can appreciate Cohn's message and the potential of Cyd as a character but I don't think that the execution of these things were handled as well as they could've been. I thought that writing style was one of the biggest issues for me as I found it slowed me down - I wasn't used to the dialect which felt very superficial.


Cyd Charisse is our protagonist and she has traits that both annoy me and that I can admire. I felt as though there was a bit too much effort to make Cyd appear to be an outspoken and outlandish girl, which bothered me. Initially, she comes across as rather obnoxious, whiny and petulant. It is clear that Cyd is a difficult character and only as I read more of the book did I adjust to her personality and become more understanding of her. As I progressed throughout the story, I began to realise that a lot of what Cyd had gone through did contribute to her sometimes harsh thoughts and actions. 


I admire that there was a big message that we shouldn't judge people by our first perceptions, but there was also a lot of other lessons that Cyd could have potentially learned, but I don't feel that she completely realised this. Cohn tries to tackle a lot of subjects in this short novel and I think that she would've been more successful by trying to discuss fewer things, but in more depth. 


I really liked Cyd's friendship that she had with Gingerbread, an old doll that she had since her last meeting with her biological father. It may sound strange for a teenager, but it helped me as a reader to connect more with her and her sentiments. Both Cyd's romantic and familial relationships were intriguing. Though some of the characters felt unnecessary, such as Leila the housemaid, and some were very stereotypical, such as Nancy, her mother. Shrimp, Cyd's boyfriend, seemed like an interesting character and I can see that he could be developed well in the next novel in this trilogy, but the romance between them both became a little obsessive and tedious.


This isn't a book that I'd particularly recommend, but it isn't something that was disastrously bad.I'm not eager to read the next instalment of the Cyd Charisse series and I feel as though I may have liked it slightly more as a younger teen.