S.A.S.S. 9

The maybe-a-bit-too-appropriately-named Marina is travelling from Stowe, Vermont down to the Caribbean for a two-month marine biology program. Her main worry though is her future with the boyfriend who's not too happy about being left behind.

Thankfully, this book manages to blend a lot of marine biology into its boy drama. Marina finally decides she and her boyfriend are going in different directions and breaks it off, although part of her inspiration is the hot Aussie student in her focus group.

While I do wish there was more local history and cultural info, it was still quite a good read and Marina gets to do things no one else in this series has when she teaches dolphins and swims with a whale shark.

Next stop: Skiing in Finland.

S.A.S.S. 8

I did not have the highest expectations for this book, as the premise seemed to be that she went on the Swedish study abroad program because she wanted to spend time with her boyfriend, who was the foreign exchange student from Sweden in her high school. That quickly becomes beside the point when the asshole dumps her via email, saying it's not a good time for him to have a girlfriend.

Calista spends a lot of the book immersed in Swedish culture and loving learning the language. I know basically nothing about Sweden that isn't related to Christina, so I learned a lot. My only wish was for a pronunciation guide! These books love using the languages of the countries they're in, but don't tell you how to say 99.9% of the words. 

So culture-wise, this one was great. Study-wise, it was pretty good. Calista did a Viking project that was interesting. Romance-wise, it was also good, because she spends most of the trip realizing that she doesn't make good dating choices, going mostly for guys that other people think she should date or athletic ones her dad would like. There's a lot of self-reflection and not much actual romance, and the guy she does finally pick is awesome, so what little there is is enjoyable.

I also liked how being apart helped her and her twin sister repair their distant relationship.

Not one of my big favorites, but a lot more solid than several.

Next stop: the Caribbean. I'm already 1/3 through this one and it's good.

HAUNTED NIGHTS

If you're in the mood for a good horror anthology, this is it. I zipped through it in two days. Would have been less if I hadn't had to work. Considering I've been poking through a Tanith Lee vampire anthology for like a month now, speed-reading is clearly the sign of a good anthology.

All the stories are either Halloween-themed or similar holidays. Not one is bad, although some are better than others. The standouts were:
"A Small Taste of the Old Country" by Jonathan Maberry
"Sisters" by Brian Evenson
"All Through the Night" by Elise Forier Edie
"A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds" by Eric J. Guignard
"The Turn" by Paul Kane
"Lost in the Dark" by John Langan

S.A.S.S. 7

Sigh. This one's another mixed feelings book. I want to like Nori, the lead character, because she has moments of amusing sass, but she spends almost the entire book trying to be something she's not. She's spent her whole life trying to be what her parents wanted, only to feel abandoned by them both because they're separating. (And not communicating it to her very well.) She's been forced by them to be more American, so she has no connection to her Japanese side, despite her parents being directly from Japan. It's something that's been othered for her. She feels different because of it, instead of being encouraged by her parents to celebrate it, which is something I think she should have addressed with them in the book, but never does.

So she's in for some culture shock when she's off to Japan for study abroad. Then she meets a hot German guy and when he thinks she's one of the school's Japanese students, she lets him, even getting help from one of the actual Japanese students, another attractive boy who she doesn't think actually likes her and sees her more as a rescue project.

There's also a bitchy, boy-crazy, Japanese girl, a blonde roommate that turns out to be a lot more deep than Nori thought, and an amusing redheaded Australian girl that I liked a lot.

The highlight of the book is Nori's stay-with-an-actual-Japanese-family week. She's off to Kyoto to live with her great aunt and uncle for the week, and it's got the best sightseeing scenes and characterization, despite the Mr. Miyagi-esque moments with her great uncle.

She comes back ready to apologize to those that need apologies and come clean with the German guy, who does not take things well, because he's been an asshole all along. I was amused when he won the scholarship prize at the end, only to have it taken away because he plagiarized. Nori's not-so-simple-after-all blonde roommate wins it.

It's a decent book, but I wish there was more to it than another post-divorce angst fest and more boy drama. They could have fleshed out the other parts better. Nori's parents were practically invisible and the friend characters all fell short of ones in previous books.

Next stop: Sweden.

One of Us Is Lying

I learned about this from my friend Ryan and then bought it, because the Breakfast Club meets a murder mystery sounded pretty good.

It was decent. The writing is fast-paced and the characters were mostly enjoyable. The problem is I immediately knew who the killer was. The only thing I didn't know was the accomplice.

I'm going to say if you like YA fiction and the idea of this book, grab it from the library. Don't buy it. I'm passing mine on to Ryan, since he told me about it. I don't regret reading it by a long shot, but I'll never read it again.

S.A.S.S. 6

Mixed feelings on this one. The sightseeing was enjoyable and the program work itself, spending the summer building a school for local orphans, was new and good, but the characters and their drama fell flat. A shame considering this is the same author I just praised for the previous German book.

So Cat is off to Mexico. Most of the book is focused on her poor reaction to her parents' divorce and her mother's remarriage. Her father is some sort of international businessman, so he was an absentee dad, and then when her parents got divorced, her mother remarried and she was forced to relocate, Cat decided to basically hate everything and sabotage her own life. She tried to fail her classes, but being a good student, the best she could manage to fail was by getting Cs. She gave up her passion: diving. She didn't try to make friends or get to know her new stepfather. She was basically a spoiled brat and this behavior I've read in other books but from far younger characters. She's too old to be pulling this bullshit.

So off she goes to Mexico, planning on spending the summer girl-bonding with her best friend from her former home in Arizona. Only said best friend turns up with a boyfriend she never told Cat about. I would have confronted her with this immediately, but Cat's kind of a pussyCat. And the reasoning behind it is sheer petty bullshit. Sabrina, the Arizona friend, got mad at Cat for being all into her own problems and not asking about Sabrina's life, so she hid a giant part of her life from Cat. Fucking petty bitch. Sabrina is the worst friend character I've read so far. Eco-obsessed girl who becomes a total pushover around the new boyfriend. Fucking weak bitch.

Cat has about two chapters of bumping heads with her host family's revolutionary daughter, but she turns out to be cool, because we can't have problems with both her AND Sabrina, now can we?

The other side characters are a pair of twins with almost no personality. Pete, the male twin, is a scrawny nerd who hits on anything with boobs, and Rachel, the girl twin...is the girl twin. Seriously, she has no character.

Aidan, the romantic interest, is the best character in the whole thing, because he points out all the shit Cat is doing wrong in her life and she finally stops being afraid of dating, afraid of romance, and gets the fuck over her living situation because she realizes she has it pretty good compared to the orphans she's building a school for.

So Cat's working out her own issues and then she sees Brian, Sabrina's boyfriend, being a cheating asshat, but of course, Sabrina doesn't believe her and drama drama boring drama until she seems him in action herself. At least at the end, Cat realizes she's got to move on with her own life and her friendship with Sabrina is never going to be the same. I see her sticking with Aidan, who's not that far away from her new Boston home in his home of NYC. Stick with him, girl, he's not stupid.

In summary, lackluster or just plain annoying characters drag down a decent Mexico S.A.S.S. set up.

Next stop: Japan with the idiot Japanese-American who thinks she can impress the German guy by pretending to be from Japan when she actually knows as little as he does. This one is already painful.

S.A.S.S. 5

Ah, finally, I can give another good review of one of these! I had high hopes for this one, because I'm mostly German and I've actually been to Munich, unlike any of the other places in this series.

Siena is a new agey girl from California, which I thought might be a problem, but she's not a preachy vegan or anything like that. She wears flowy clothes, follows her horoscope, likes yoga, feng shui and the pagan origins of things. All simple things that don't get much of a focus, just a few throwaway lines every now and then. Siena's father died when she was young, so it's just been her and her mom running the family bakery. I connected with her, despite the new agey thing, because she's close with her mom and has a German family background. Her father had a Carpe Diem list that got almost completed except for one thing: travel to Germany and meet the man that helped him and his parents flee East Berlin. So Siena's off to Germany to connect with her German side and track down the man her father never got to meet.

The book is a good blend of the things I love about S.A.S.S.

There's plenty of study, but it's not overwhelming. Siena's got a film project that's the main thing she's working on.

There's a bit of romance, but the RAs are forbidden to date the students, so it's more does he like me or not romance angst until nearer the end.

There's a mean girl who gets her comeuppance. Always fun.

And there are German sites, food, discos and travelling. They visit Heidelberg, which was my first stop in Germany so many years ago, and Rothenburg, although I was mad they didn't describe it at all. Rothenburg was one of my favorites.

Siena is a fun character and her enthusiasm for life is fabulous. The two friends she makes there are also great: country-loving, jock-boyfriend-having Meg from Texas and fashion-loving, secret poet, deadpan, future med student Chen.

Siena ends up meeting her second cousin and tracks down the man who helped her father and grandparents, so the book has some emotional moments that are written nicely.

It's the best example of this series so far, along with Cece's China book.

Suzanne Nelson wrote the next one, too, so hopefully it's as good, although it's not Germany, so I doubt it will be. We're going to Mexico.