J.J. Howard

Author of Sit, Stay, Love J.J. Howard returns with another story of puppy love . . . now with two pugs!
Ana Ramos may not have a dog of her own, but she does get to walk her neighbor's adorable pug, Osito. One day, at the park, Osito befriends another pug, Pancake, whose owner just happens to be a cute new boy named Calvin. When Calvin assumes that Osito belongs to Ana, she doesn't correct him. No big deal, right? Ana doesn't realize the trouble she has unleashed until Calvin shows up at her school. Calvin suggests setting up play dates for the two pugs, and Ana can't bring herself to admit that Osito isn't hers. In fact, her fibs keep multiplying! Will Ana fess up and figure out how she feels about Calvin before her white lies catch up to her?… (mehr)

For some odd reason, I thought that this was going to be a magical story kinda like The Night Circus but maybe with some paranormal element. So this book wasn't what I expected at all. Lexi joins an actual normal circus (as normal as a circus can be anyhow). There are elephants, trapeze artists and fire-eaters. I loved the characters. They were all so unique and full of life. I loved watching Lexi turn the oddball charcters in the circus into her family and, in all honesty, hoped she would stay with the circus forever. I also enjoyed the role that music played in the novel. I wonder if there's a playlist that I can look up/download and listen to.… (mehr)

Lexi considers herself a New Yorker to the core. She’s a music fan and loves spending time with her best (and only) friends Eli and Bailey; that is, until her best friends started dating each other and she realizes that she wants to be the one dating Eli. To complicate matters, Lexi’s dad dies in an accident, leaving all of his money to Lexi’s missing mother whose last location was Europa Circus. Lexi is left to fend for herself and heads off in search of her mother - and unintentionally ends up joining the circus.

For me, Lexi has two big strikes against her. First, she is the kind of heroine that believes she’s invisible and doesn’t realize the affect she has on people. The type who isolates herself from the general population at school because she thinks they wouldn’t accept her—in other words, she's a bit of a snob who thinks that everyone else is a snob because she doesn’t want to take the time to know them.

The next was that, as soon as she’s removed from her New York City prep school and placed into Europa, two of the hottest guys suddenly fall for her, and now she doesn’t know what to do with the sudden attention. There was a bit of a love quadrangle which was both extremely puzzling and resolved itself a little too quickly and cleanly.

Generally I’m not a fan of characters like this, but Lexi has a way of making you chuckle, so I was able to look past these flaw and enjoy her narrative.

The story wraps up neatly - too neatly really - and was pretty predictable. There might have been room for deep relational connections and soul searching, but the plot stayed fully on the light side. However, it was refreshing that, even though it was light, Lexi grew as a person. That Time I Joined the Circus is a really light read, I’d recommend it for a quick beach read or a road-trip read.
… (mehr)

After her father is killed in an accident, Lexi finds out that not only is she broke and homeless, but she can’t continue her last year of high school without a guardian. Lexi hasn’t seen her mother since she ran out on her at the age of eight. Almost a decade later, she still hates the woman who left her, but without any other options, Lexi sets out to find her. Her mother is supposed to be somewhere in Florida traveling with a circus. Unfortunately, she hasn’t worked there for over six months and nobody knows where she’s run off to this time. With no where else to go and with no money for food, Lexi joins Circus Europa.

The circus actually fascinates me for some reason. I haven’t been to one in YEARS which is why I love reading books that revolve around them. And there aren’t that many which makes them extra special. That Time I Joined the Circus is adorable. This is a cute, entertaining read, but it also has depth. It has love and self-discovery, but it also deals with some heavier topics like death, loss, and betrayal.

Lexi is a lot like I was during my senior year. She is kind of in a slump and spends all her time at home listening to music or reading. She only has two close friends who are dating which makes it that much harder to make plans since she is the constant third wheel. As horrible as the situation is, I feel like it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Being evicted and penniless forces her to go out and do something. Those four months she spends at the circus completely change her and she comes out so much stronger and confident because of them.

The story is not completely chronological, it bounces around quite a bit from the present to the past and then back. But it wasn’t at all confusing because the date is clearly printed at the beginning of each chapter. I did have a problem with this constant jumping back and forth thing though. I felt like the relationship development lacked a little because of the constant shift. One moment the ring leaders daughter, Lina, is giving Lexi the evil-eye, then we get a ‘flashback’ of Lexi’s life in NY, and then we’re back at the circus and all of a sudden Lexi & Lina are going shopping together and becoming roommates. We never get to see this shift in their friendship, it just kind of happens. This constant back and forth also made the romances in the book problematic for me. I never connected with any of the guys because we never really get to fully know them. First she’s making out with Jamie, then she’s falling in love with Nick, and then Eli pops up and she likes him again. It was just kind of all over the place. I would have liked to see more of Nick because I felt he was the most interesting and the one she truly cared about. I never got the feeling that she actually had any romantic feelings for Eli, it just felt like she went back to him because...well, why not?

Other than the last paragraph, this is a really great debut and I can’t wait to see what else J. J. Howard has in store for us!… (mehr)