Still At Your Door by Emma Eden Ramos Blog Tour + Review

Still at Your Door: A Fictional Memoir by Emma Eden Ramos
Genre: YA/Contemporary
Publisher: Writers AMuse Me Publishing
Published: February 22nd, 2014

 Sabrina “Bri” Gibbons has only a few short minutes to pack her things and help her sisters pack theirs before running with their mother to the bus that will whisk them away from Butler, Pennsylvania, an abusive relationship, and a secret that none of them wish to acknowledge. She was not prepared, though, for her mother to drop them on the streets of New York with the promise that she would be right back. Haunted by the sight of her mother running back to the cab, Bri, with Missy and Grace in tow, settles in with their grandparents. Thoughts of her present and her future collide with memories of her past, her dead father, and her mother’s bizarre episodes. She watches her sisters struggle with school and acceptance, all the while knowing the lack of any sense of security will make it impossible for them to carry on as ‘normal’ children. She finally lets her guard down enough to allow someone else in and sees a faint glimmer that her dreams might be attainable. Disaster strikes again, this time targeting her sister. Is it possible for Bri to find that balance between her dreams and her family’s realities?

AMAZON . B&N. GOODREADS 

Review: I am not someone that reads a lot of memoirs. While last year I went through a bit of a phase where I liked to read non fiction, it did not last too long, and most of them were about educational things that would help me improve things at work, or just add addition things to what I was doing in my classroom. I think I have only read a couple of memoirs total, actually, which might be kind of sad. Still, I liked the idea of this book being a memoir, but a fictional one. I am a fiction lover through and through, and I really love how this one had a combination of the two. Of course, it focused on a lot of real life things, things that some people deal with every day, and that did make it a bit hard for me to read. I guess it hits close to home because a lot of my students at work at dealing with some similar things, and I can see how rough it is on a young person. 

At the beginning of the story, we are introduced to three sisters, Sabrina, Missy, and Grace. It is clear that the girls are already used to rough situations. Sabrina and Missy have lost their biological father, and Grace's father is not a good guy at all. The story starts in a very expressive, beautifully written way in which Bri and Missy are at an ocean, and Missy is expressing how she believes life would be much easier in the water. I loved the imagery of it all. Then they are back to the future, where their mother is waking them up and taking them on a trip to see their grandparents in New York City. Little do they know that their mother intends to leave them there and return home to Pennsylvania. 

From that point forward, the girls struggle through a lot of things. They did not go to school regularly before the move, so poor eight-year-old Grace does not even know how to read when they begin attending school in New York. Missy ends up dealing with the wrong crowd after enjoying the feeling of being accepted, and has to deal with the ordeal of sexual assault and abuse at the age of fifteen by a peer at school. Despite all of the negative, Sabrina seems to finally figure out who she is. She decides to join the theater crowd where she meets some great people, along with Cameron (eeep). 

This book is a wonderful view of how difficult life can be, and how people can rise through some of the darkest of times. It was so easy to read, so easy to fall into the situation and to feel for the characters as they struggled so much. The book does not necessarily have a happy ending, but I believe that goes well with the idea of it being a fictional memoir. Life is not always full of happily ever afters, and sometimes we have to take the hand that is dealt to us and find a way to move on. 

Rating: 4.0/5.0

About the Author:

Emma Eden Ramos is a writer and student from New York City. Her middle grade novella, The Realm of the Lost, was recently published by MuseItUp Publishing. Her short stories have appeared in Stories for Children Magazine, The Storyteller Tymes, BlazeVOX Journal, and other journals. Ramos’ novelette, Where the Children Play, is included in Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for LGBT Teens, edited by Eric Nguyen. Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems (Heavy Hands Ink, 2011), Ramos’ first poetry chapbook, was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Literary Award in Poetry. Emma studies psychology at Marymount Manhattan College. When she isn’t writing or studying, Emma can usually be found drinking green tea and reading on her kindle.

Website: http://emmaedenramos.weebly.com

Twitter: emmaedenramos

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5132239.Emma_Eden_Ramos

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Emma-Eden-Ramos-Author/271172469591291

Review - The Book Thief

The Book Thief 

by Markus Zusak 

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction  
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Release Date: Mar. 14, 2006
Edition: Paperback
Page Count: 552
Source: My bookshelf

Goodreads Synopsis: It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time



Review: If I'm being honest, this book sat on my bookshelf (both my physical and my TBR) for quite some time. And by that I mean, several years. This book was released and BIG when I was in high school. When I saw it at the bookstore I loved the synopsis and purchased it, and on the bookshelf it went. It was nothing against the book, of course. In high school reading was not at the top of my list because I was tired of being forced to read books for class. In college, my books stayed at home because apparently I had enough other stuff to shove in the car and drive three hours with. It was not until recently that it was being talked about again; I guess that happens before a movie comes out. I knew I had the book, and I decided to finally pick it up and read it. Boy, am I mad at myself for waiting so long to read this one. It was amazing. So devastating, but beautifully written. I fell in love with it quite quickly. 

The narration was what captured me from the beginning. If you have read the book, or have heard anything about it, then you know that the book is actually narrated by death. This was amazing to me. So original and revealing. I think that it certainly did a lot to add to the story. Death had you scared constantly for the character, then he would say something like "but it was not my time to take them...not yet," and it would have you reading on and even more worried. That is the mark of a good author and narrator though, right? That they make you want to keep reading; that you have to keep reading. 

Let me also take a moment to discuss my love for historical fiction. I do not read it much because I think that it is a difficult genre to get right, and I have read some books that have been really poorly done. I do enjoy history, and I know quite a bit about the Holocaust period as I did a lot of research into it, horrified that it had actually happened. I believe that Zusak did a wonderful job of bringing in the correct history, and giving the readers an idea of just how bad it had been. Zusak did a lot of things very well in this book. 

Now, onto the characters, shall we? Liesel was amazing. She fell in love with books and stole them, after all, a girl after my own heart! (I swear I don't steal books, but I would have done the same in her position. You get where I'm coming from!). She was an amazing young character, someone who went through so much herself, but still wanted to stand up for others when they were being treated unfairly. That is not something that you will find in a lot of people to begin with, so it is even more shocking when it is a child. Of course, she had a wonderful supporting cast with Hans Hubermann being so loving and teaching her how to read, Rosa Hubermann loving her in a completely different way, and Rudy always tagging along and begging for kisses. I fell in love with all of the characters, which is a serious mark of a very good book. 
 
The ending. Oh the ending. I will not give any spoilers, as I always try very hard not to do that. I cried like a baby though. Sobbed would probably be a better term for it. I suppose I expected as much with knowing the time period and the history of what happened then, but it was still incredibly difficult. Despite the sad ending, I believe that this is a book that everyone should read. Not only does it give the look into history, but so many other moral issues that are so important to our world today, and probably always will be. Yup, this was a great one, and I highly recommend it. 

Rating: 5.0/5.0