MADreads for Teens

Bảo Nguyen and Linh Mai work across the street from each other at their parents' competing Vietnamese restaurants. Like Romeo and Juliet, Bảo and Linh are forbidden from talking to each other because their families are at war. War means gossip and rumors, sometimes harmless, sometimes not, and avoidance at all costs. The "phở* wars" and "bánh xèo** battles" between the two restaurants are delicious and painful to witness. Each new special or menu item takes the competition to another level.

Mhaire McFalrane's has now become an auto-read author for me - and I can tell you that in recent years my list of such authors has become shorter and shorter. What McFarlane does so well in each of her women's fiction/chick lit/romance/fiction novels is to dive into the depths of the emotionally fraught relationships we have with one another and how complicated love (whether it's for family, friends or a significant other) can be.

After his caper novel on the moon, Weir is revisiting the idea of a lone human in space. Here the human is Ryland Grace who wakes up on a ship in space and has no memories of how or why he is there. Bit by bit (very small bits at first) he begins to put the pieces together and as he does so the reader is taken back into his recent past to see what brought him here; alone on a space ship, far from earth, with only a couple of dead crew mates as companions.

When he wakes up at the beginning of the book the hero doesn't have a clue as to who he is or where he is. All he knows is that he's hooked up to a lot of tubes and a computer voice is asking him what 2 + 2 is. When he's finally able to answer that question, the computer allows him to progress in his recovery. As he gets stronger physically, he begins to have flashes of memories (including his name, Ryland Grace). Oh and he discovers there are two people long dead in the beds next to his and that he's in a ship in space. Ryland is all alone and millions of miles away from home.