Why I wouldn't want telepathic powers like the kids in "Don't Even Think About It" by Sarah Mlynowski

Sarah Mlynowski has a new book out! I haven't read it yet, but I will very soon. It's called Don't Even Think About It, and it sounds like a lot of fun. Here is a summary, provided by the publisher:

We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.

Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming.

Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same. So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.

To celebrate the release of Don't Even Think About It, I have been asked, along with a bunch of other bloggers, what I would do if I suddenly had telepathic powers. And I can tell you in no uncertain terms, I would hate it.

How difficult would it be just to figure out who was thinking what? If there are a bunch of people around you, the noise must be deafening. All I can think of is Mel Gibson's character in What Women Want, and he could only hear half the population. Or I think about the Noise in The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, which is full of violence and sex. No thank you.

Also, I'm not even sure I want to know what others are thinking. I don't want to risk hearing something terrible from someone I like, or whom I though was a good person. I think I would be sad a lot.

That said, it would be useful to know what, say, my husband was thinking at certain times (maybe not all the time), or any other person I'm speaking to and trying to figure out how to approach a subject.

It would also be really useful during job interviews, and I would totally use it then.

All in all, I can't say telepathy is really something I'd like to have, in its purest form. Speaking to someone in my head and being able to choose what they hear would be great, and being able to turn it on and off would be awesome, but I don't think that's the way it works.

Telekinesis, on the other hand... that is something I could totally get behind.

What would you do if you found you had telepathic powers? (And stay tuned for a giveaway for a signed copy of Don't Even Think About It, which I'll post later this week!)

Disclosure: This post is part of a blog promotion for Sarah Mlynowski's new book, Don't Even Think About It, sponsored by public relations firm Deb Shapiro & Company.

Blog Tour: "Erebos" by Ursula Pozanski

Title: Erebos
Author: Ursula Poznanski
Publisher: Annick Press, 2012 (previously released in Germany)
Translator: Judith Pattinson

Nick can't figure out why his friends are acting so strange lately. People are missing basketball, skipping school, and it all seems to be because of some disc making the rounds. He soon figures out it's a game, and gets the chance to play himself when a girl in his class passes it on to him. But there are rules to this game: you have to play alone, you can't talk about it in the real world to anyone, and if you die in the game, that's it, it's over. Soon Nick is sucked into this world, which feels so real to him that he finds it hard to believe it's just a game. And then it starts to cross into his real life. Strange tasks are assigned to him, and as a reward he gains levels in the game. But how far is he willing to go? What is the purpose of the game? And can it be stopped?

When I started reading Erebos, I was actually very pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting such a great thriller; from the description, it sounded a little bit sci-fi and not entirely enthralling for me, but I was very wrong. I felt sucked into the game Erebos myself as Nick began navigating his way through the computer-generated world. I felt breathless many times throughout the story, not believing the lengths some players went to continue the game, to stop themselves from being blacklisted. It was hard for me to stop reading.

One really nice touch in the writing was the switch from past tense to present when Nick was playing as his game alias, Sarius. It brought an immediacy to the text that wasn't there when we were just following Nick during his school days or at home.

It was scary to imagine how something like a computer game can brainwash so many people into bending to its will. When only bits and pieces are given out to each person and they complete tasks not knowing what the consequences will be, it can lead to disaster. The thought of a game knowing so much about each individual to play it is very sobering.

I definitely recommend this book to teens and tweens who like action-packed stories that take place in everyday surroundings. Gamers will appreciate it, as will non-gamers. Luckily, Annick Press has been so kind as to provide a copy for me to give away to one lucky reader! Just leave a comment with a way to contact you (e-mail would be best). By commenting with an entry, you agree to the following:

You must be 13 years or older.
You must live in the US or Canada.
Only one entry per person.

This contest will end at 11:59 EST on April 7, 2012.

Check out the rest of the stops on the Erebos blog tour from earlier this week!

March 25: YA Bookshelf, www.yabookshelf.com

March 26: Bookosaur, www.thebookosaur.com

March 27: GreenBeanTeenQueen, www.greenbeanteenqueen.com

March 28: The Pen Stroke, http://ideogun.wordpress.com

March 29: I Read Banned Books, www.jenbigheart.com

March 30: Between the Covers, www.betweenthecoversblog.net

Disclosure: I got this e-book through NetGalley after being told of it by the publisher in preparation for this blog tour.

Blog Tour: "War and Watermelon" by Rich Wallace

Thanks for joining me today at Tahleen's Mixed-Up Files for the blog tour of Rich Wallace's War and Watermelon!

Title: War and Watermelon
Author: Rich Wallace
Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 2011

It's the tail end of the summer of 1969, right after the moon landing and before Woodstock, during the Vietnam War and while the Mets started getting hot on their way to the World Series. Twelve-year-old Brody is growing up in New Jersey at this time, anticipating the jump from elementary school to junior high, playing on the football team, and trying to figure out girls—while also trying to come to terms with the bigger issues of the time. Joining his older brother Ryan at Woodstock starts him thinking about peace, love and rock and roll, and how his brother might not always be there—especially once he turns 18.

I enjoyed this story. I mean, once Woodstock was mentioned, I was all over it—I have this great fascination with that insane and incredible concert (I own one of the two CD sets of the concert's recording). There were a lot of music references, including periodic top tens listed by Brody, and very brief descriptions of Joan Baez during Brody's experience at Woodstock.

The setting is so important in this book. We see not only New Jersey during 1969, but also the attitudes of the time—racism is slipped into the dialogue like a whisper, and opinions about the Vietnam War are often vocalized by Brody's father in response to Ryan.

I did have a few minor quibbles with this book. I loved all the music references because of my love for the music of the time, but I wish there was some sort of appendix or something in the back with a little bit of info on all the musicians mentioned. A lot of kids probably won't know who Joan Baez is, or what the songs mentioned sound like (I know I didn't recognize all of them and was too lazy to look them up at the time). I also got pretty bored with the long descriptions of Brody's football games; they seemed unnecessary. I did, however, like the football game in which Brody's female classmate played touch football and did a nice job at beating the other team.

This book would make a really nice companion to a school unit about America in the late '60s. There are themes that are for more mature audiences (there are a lot of references to marijuana and partial nudity), but the language is simple and easy to understand. It's a great way to give younger teens a look at what life was probably like for their parents. I'd recommend it to lovers of the '60s, music lovers, or sports fans looking for a good read.

Spooky Halloween Blog Tour for "The Night Wanderer" by Drew Hayden Taylor

Title: The Night Wanderer
Author: Drew Hayden Taylor
Publisher: Annick Press, 2007
How I got it: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review.

Tiffany Hunter is dealing with a lot. She lives in Otter Lake, an Anishinabe (Ojibwa) reservation in central Ontario with her dad and grandmother. She's doing poorly in school, she fights with her dad constantly, and to make matters even more difficult she is trying to navigate a new relationship with a white boyfriend. Demons and ghost stories are the last thing on her mind—but they're the center of everything for Pierre L’Errant, the new boarder Tiffany's father has just taken into their home. Though from Europe, he is clearly Native, and mentions he is of Anishinabe ancestry. But who is he really, and where did he come from? Why has he come to Otter Lake, of all places? In The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor gives us a new and refreshing twist on the centuries-old legend of the vampire.

The more I thought about this book, the more I liked it. At its heart, it is about home and family. Tiffany struggles with this, as she is constantly battling with her father over pretty much anything, though especially about her boyfriend Tony. There are a lot of underlying issues with this, as Tiffany's mother left her father, Keith, for a white man about a year earlier. Keith is still trying to recover, and unfortunately he isn't getting very far. He doesn't know how to handle his daughter, so he lets out his anger and pain on her—and she returns it full force. Stuck in the middle of this is Granny Ruth, Keith's mother. She's feisty, but is trying to deal with all of this pain and anger and not-talking-about-the-real-issue on her own, until Pierre enters the picture.

Pierre is a character we can sympathize with, though we're not sure we can trust him. His motives aren't clear until the very end. But what is clear is his attachment to his homeland, the place where he was born centuries before, when he made the decision to leave it and everything he knew for adventure and the unknown. He is not the tortured vampire struggling with what he is at his very essence, though there are hints that he has thought about it. He knows what he is and accepts it, which is truly a nice change from the brooding bad-boy vampire so popular in today's teen fiction.

Taylor works Anishinabe (more commonly known as Ojibwa) culture and language into Pierre's and Tiffany's intersecting stories—both in the modern and more ancient culture and teen experiences. Tiffany is trying to sort out what it means to be a part of her native community, often trying to escape it, though sometimes feeling guilty for not knowing more than she does (for example, she can't speak the language, like her grandmother). Usually I am hesitant to read fiction about certain cultures, especially Native American ones, for fear of misrepresentation of the people and the history. But because Taylor is Ojibwa himself, I trusted his descriptions and allowed myself to enjoy the story, knowing it is authentic. He also manages to include an interracial relationship and its resulting difficulties, such as racism and Tiffany's discomfort at being the only Native teen in a group of white ones.

Another thing I loved are the sometimes surprising little dashes of humor Taylor throws into his prose every so often. I found myself sporting a quick grin at many little details he includes, like this sentence in the middle of a suspenseful scene: "From deep in the bush, a hunter older than James, his house, and the mayonnaise at the back of his refrigerator all put together watched him closely" (79). But despite this comic relief, there are a few chapter that got my heart pounding—many strange and unnatural things are seen on the Otter Lake Reservation after Pierre arrives.

My only complaints lie with the characterization of Tiffany. For a while I felt like she was too flat of a character—I wasn't really getting where she was coming from, and she just seemed a bit off through the beginning. It took me a while to get into the book because it was mostly about Tiffany at first. However, once Taylor started writing about Pierre and other characters, I could see his talent better. I found out afterward that this was originally written as a play, and I thought that might have had something to do with it.

These days, everyone is sick of vampires and their sparkles and forbidden love interests in virginal white girls. But with his fresh interpretation and the addition of family drama and the importance of home, Taylor has given us a reason to enjoy vampire novels again.

This is the last stop on the Spooky Halloween Blog Tour, but be sure to check out the previous stops:

October 25: Teresa's Reading Corner
October 26: A Girl Reads a Book and YA Book Shelf
October 27: Chick Loves Lit
October 28: Word of Mouse Books
October 29: Me!

Until Halloween, The Night Wanderer ebook will be available for only $3.29 (regular price: $9.99) at Kobobooks.com! It's also available as a physical book at Amazon.com.



Or if you'd like to win a physical copy of The Night Wanderer for yourself, fill out the form below. This giveaway will end on November 1 at noon EST. Only one entry per person, please! I will delete people who enter more than once. If you're not sure you entered already, just shoot me an e-mail or tweet at me and I'll let you know.