Reviews that Made Me Want the Book: March 7

Today I bring you the third installment of my recurring "reviews that made me want to read the book" feature (you can find previous installments here). The idea is to highlight books that particularly catch my eye from other people's reviews and book commentary. This will help me to keep track of the books, and will also allow me to give credit to the bloggers who help me to discover great books.

Amanda from A Patchwork of Books made me want to read the first book in James Dashner's The 13th Reality series (The Journal of Curious Letters, Shadow Mountain Press) by saying: "It's got everything: action, adventure, riddles, reality hopping...you name it, it's in there. A perfect mixture of science fiction and fantasy for those kids that have that love of a bit of magic and a bit of weirdness all in one."

Laura Salas got me interested in reading Bonny Becker's new picture book, A Visitor for Bear (Candlewick) by giving out some updated information about the book (rather than a full review). Laura said: "Bonny recently learned that A Visitor for Bear was going to be featured on the picture book wall at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide", and gave some background about how this came about. I was thrilled to hear this because I very much enjoyed Bonny's first book, Holbrook: A Lizard's Tale, and I'm pleased to see her new book getting so much attention.

Ms. Yingling's reviews often catch my eye. I think it's a combination of how prolific she is in writing reviews, and the fact that she and I are clearly kindred spirits in our reading interests. This week, she's intrigued me by writing about Stefan Petrucha's Time Tripper Quartet (Razorbill), starting with Yestermorrow. Like me, Ms. Yingling enjoys time travel books. She says of this series: "What I really liked, however, was the dark, teenage tone, the swiftly moving plots, the quirky characters, and the mind-bending aspects of time travel. These were a great portrayal of a darker side of that thought, which is what I have come to expect from Razorbill."

Stacy Dillon from Booktopia inspired me to add Madapple, by Christina Meldrum (Knopf) to my list, saying "...Aslaug is soon intertwined in a family saga filled with twists, turns and untruths. She has survived so much already, can she survive this? Christina Meldrum has written a devastating, gut-wrenching, compelling and thoughtful story." And I just like the name Aslaug.