Zero Tolerance, by Claudia Mills

When seventh-grader Sierra accidentally brings her mother's lunch to school, she's in for a surprise when her mother's paring knife falls out of the bag.  She's also in big trouble!  Her school has a zero tolerance policy regarding weapons and drugs.  Her friends urge her to simply hide the knife, but Sierra's always been rule-abiding, so she turns it in immediately and tries to explain her mistake.  Her principal, however, makes a big deal about applying the rules fairly and feels obliged to carry out the mandatory punishment for such an offense:  expulsion.  Sierra, a perfect student and a class leader, has never been in trouble before, but over the next two weeks as she awaits her sentencing while in mandatory in-school suspension, her eyes are opened to the world of being on the other side of the law.

Mills remains one of my favorite writers of traditional middle readers.  The particular subject is topical and handled well, with little sensationalism.  Mills articulates the way that rigid and unimaginative authority undermines discipline in the long run, and avoids making out any one person as a good guy or a bad guy. This would make a nice book for a group discussion, but is equally enjoyable to read on one's own.

Faces of the Dead, by Suzanne Weyn

People have often noted the physical similarities between Marie-Therese, daughter of the King of France, and her chambermaid Ernestine.  And the two girls have taken advantage of their appearance from time to time to switch roles.  It's all been in fun until the Revolution comes and Marie-Therese finds herself on the outside, while Ernestine plays her role with the condemned royal family.

Out on the streets, Marie-Therese befriends a young man named Henri. He is helping the future Madame Tussaud, Anna Marie Grosholtz, collect dead bodies to make wax death masks.  Grosholtz, however, is really learning voodoo spells from Rose de Beauharnais (a.k.a. the future Josephine Bonaparte) to help reanimate the spirits of guillotined nobles in wax bodies.  Through all of this, Marie-Therese mostly alternates between swooning and trying to reunite with her family (and then eventually escaping again). 

The whole story is, in sum, quite ridiculous!  The body double business has been done often enough before and might have made a fine story on its own.  But combined with the voodoo stuff it just gets silly.  The writing style seems forced and the characters are quite annoying.  Marie-Therese is the proverbial house cat: unable to decide if she wants to be inside with her family or out free on the streets, she sneaks in and out several times.  The boyfriend is entirely too modern to be believable.  Every other character is disposable and forgotten.  What a silly mess!


[Disclaimer:  I received a copy of this book as an unsolicited ARC.  I received no compensation for my review and consideration.]

Bombay Blues, by Tanuja Desai Hidier

Dimple Lala (introduced to us in Born Confused) is now studying at NYU and has become well-integrated into New York's club scene.  Her boyfriend Karsh is a DJ who specializes in Banghra mash-ups.  As the story begins, Dimple and her parents are going back to Mumbai to see family, celebrate an anniversary and a wedding, and generally soak up some hometown vibe.  Karsh is also going to be there as he's landed a breakthrough gig.

Things don't quite work out as planned, but the entire point of the book is to show that, in a city as big and as diverse as Mumbai, closed doors are always paired with open ones.  And for every opportunity that doesn't quite pan out, others appear.  Karsh's job doesn't work out but he goes in search of godhead instead.  Dimple finds herself pursuing other interests as well.  And even the family plans get thrown asunder.

All of this is told in Hidier's breathless and evocative prose, mixing New York club slang with hybrid English-Hindi in an argot that is quite unique (and which begged a glossary for the clueless suburban reader!).  The style is lyrical and colorful, but maddening difficult to crack.  The jargon meant that I found the book pretty slow going in the beginning.  The end grew difficult for another reason as Didier's narrative starts to crumble (a dubious stylistic decision driven more by artistic coolness than a desire to tell a story).

Didier obviously enjoys the city of Mumbai and lavishes a huge amount of text on describing her observations (probably an outgrowth of journaling there for a year in preparing this book).  Sometimes this works (for example, when she draws out a nice mini-essay on the semiotics of the new Bandra-Worli Sea Link) but mostly it seems like so much digression.  The story frequently takes a backseat to Hidier's love affair with Mumbai.  I longed for more of a story, some pruning of her descriptions, and a shortened book (at 550 pages, someone should have been doing more editing!).


[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book by soliciting the publisher for an advance review copy, which I'll be donating to my local public library. This did not affect the opinion expressed here.  The book is scheduled for release on August 26th.]

Year of Mistaken Discoveries, by Eileen Cook

Avery and Nora had been friends since first grade, where they discovered that they were both adopted.  Over the years, however, they had drifted apart.  When Nora kills herself, Avery tries to find meaning in her grief by searching for her own birth mother.  To help with the search, she enlists the help of Nora's friend Brody.  In the process of the search, she gets more than she counted on.

Pleasant enough of a read, but lacking much of a spark.  The story wants to be many things:  a soul searcher, a romance, a coming-to-grips-with-grief novel, and a story about adoption.  However, it doesn't really pan out.  Avery is part of the problem.  She's supposed to be very popular, but she acts like an outsider.  She's supposed to have grown apart from Nora, but she talks about her dead former friend like they were still BFFs (while tuning out her alleged friends).  It doesn't help that Avery doesn't really know what she wants from life and hardly gloms on to anything by the end either.  Even the romance is without spark.

Breaking Butterflies, by M. Anjelais

When they were seven, Sphinxie's mother and her best friend made a blood oath to be friends forever, become (respectively) an advertising executive and a fashion designer, get married and have one child each (a girl and a boy), and to see that girl and boy get married.  Most of their plans came true.  They stayed friends, realized their career goals, had a girl and a boy, and their children became close friends.  But the rest veered off plan.

From the start, the children were very different from each other.  The boy (Cadence) was exceptional in all ways (beautiful, talented, and charismatic), but the girl (Sphinxie) was timid, plain, and unremarkable.  Everyone, particularly Sphinxie, loved Cadence.  But then a shocking incident occurred where Cadence brutally attacked Sphinxie and the two children became estranged for many years. 

Now sixteen, Sphinxie learns that Cadence is dying, and develops an obsessive desire to make amends.  It's a terrifying prospect as she fears her former friend, made the more so when Sphinxie discovers that Cadence's mesmerizing power over her (and his underlying sadistic cruelty) remains intact (and in fact has grown far worse).  Can she maintain her own sanity as she struggles to resist his madness?

A very creepy psychological thriller of a sociopath and a well-meaning young woman who thinks she can handle him.  At a few points, the pace flagged and sometimes it felt like the author had stretched credulity to get them to stay together, but most of the time the pace is brisk and the story shocking and irresistible.

Angelais's voice is lively and original.  It's an extreme credit to her as a writer that she makes this difficult tale work as well as it does.  Odd character names aside, these are interesting characters with strong and memorable personalities.


[Disclosure:  I solicited this book from the publisher for the purpose of writing this review.  No other compensation was received and the book will be donated to my local public library.  The book is scheduled for release on August 24th.]

Maybe One Day, by Melissa Kantor

When Zoe and her BFF Olivia get kicked out of their ballet school, Zoe is heartbroken but at least assumes that it is the worst day of their lives (and that things will only get better from here!).  But when Olivia is diagnosed with leukemia, Zoe discovers that there are indeed far worse things that can happen!  Over the next year, while Olivia struggles with the disease, Zoe tries to be a good friend.  It isn't always easy and the two of them have their ups and down.

Death and dying stories are naturals for poignant tear jerking, so you pretty much know what to expect in a story like this.  Even the cover of the book screams out "Wind Beneath My Wings" so you'll get a chance to bawl over something in this book.  All of which make me a bit heartless to say that I'm not so sure about the novel.  The narrative is jumpy and poorly pieced together.  The girls were interesting enough and sympathetic.  I learned a bit about leukemia as well.  However, Kantor as the narrator didn't have much of an attention span.  She would introduce a plot development, but then jump ahead a few months when she got bored and quickly recap (oh yeah, the big deal I spent ten pages on?  it all worked out months ago!).  That felt like cheating the reader to me.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters

In 1918, after her father is arrested for treason for discouraging men from enlisting, Mary is sent to live with her aunt in San Diego.  It's a dangerous time:  the country is at war and the world is being ravaged by the deadly Spanish Flu.  Mary's beau Stephen has shipped off to the Europe.  When he returns dead, Mary develops the idea that she can communicate with him.  The stronger that link becomes, the more she grows obsessed with the belief that something horrible happened to him that she must now try to set to rights.

A complex and interesting novel that combines historical fiction and the paranormal.  It actually reminded me a bit of that old Kevin Bacon film (Fade To Black) in the way that the dead reach out to the receptive living to fix injustice (although one could cite Ghost as well, I suppose!).  In that vein, the story works well as a truly creepy thriller.

But there's the more interesting historical part.  Fascinating details about the impact of WWI on the home front, the rebirth of spiritualism, as well as the flu pandemic fill out this story and fix it (at least partly) in reality.  Period photographs (some of them quite freaky) give the book a great design.  I enjoyed its originality and creativity.

When Audrey Met Alice, by Rebecca Behrens

Being the daughter of the President of the United States is tough!  You're never allowed to go out without a security detail.  People at school are only friends with you because of who you are.  Your mother (POTUS) and father (the "First Gentleman") are far too busy to spend time with you.  You can't even sneak a boy into the house without setting off the Secret Service!  First Daughter Audrey has pretty much had it with life in the White House!

But when Audrey stumbles across the long-hidden secret diary of Alice Roosevelt (daughter of TR), she discovers that presidential children have always had it rough.  Inspired by Alice's spunk and daring, Audrey tries to claim a bit of glory of her own (or at least some independence).  The results are catastrophic, getting her into far more trouble.

Basically, it's harmless fun for younger readers.  Not quite as enticing as Meg Cabot's All-American Girl, but a little more rooted in reality and historical fact.  Behrens imagines a far more liberal presidency than I can picture within my lifetime, but the real story of Alice is fascinating reading and will excite younger intellectual curiosity.  As for her contemporary counterpart, one wishes that Audrey didn't make so many bad choices or that the book didn't go for such a spectacularly happy ending, but that's how middle grade readers tend to go.  Entertaining and educational fun!

This Song Will Save Your Life, by Leila Sales

Elise is very driven and successful at most things she tries, except for the one thing that matters the most to her: having friends.  She's tried everything, but somehow she always ends up the outcast.  One night, during an evening constitutional, she runs across a late-night dance club and stumbles on to the world of DJ'ing.  As with everything else she's applied herself to, she finds that she excels at it and also discovers that being a good DJ can be a gateway to many other things: friends, admiration, and even romance.  However, just as quickly as she rises to the top, she falls down.  But not before she learns a few lessons about the true ingredients of success.

It's another of these YA books that imagines that the greatest dance music came from the 80s and 90s (and ignores the music that young people actually listen to these days), but if we push that bit of silliness aside, the book itself is actually pretty good.  Elise is a great character.  Not at all afraid to go after exactly what she wants, her risk-taking behavior will take your breath away, but that fearlessness and straight-outspokenness goes a long long way to making her a winning heroine.  And I appreciated the fact that both the good and bad guys in this story ended up believable ambivalent in the end.  I even forgave the cheery and rosy ending because I so much wanted Elisa to triumph in the end.

A totally satisfying adventure in self-discovery.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton

Largely devoted to tracing several generations of the Roux-Lavender family and the people who crossed paths with them, Strange and Beautiful Sorrows is an extraordinary fable.   It begins by telling us how Ava was born an otherwise normal girl except for the wings on her back, while her twin brother Henry was born mute, and then the story goes back three generations.  Starting with the family's departure from the Old Country, Walton weaves in glorious detail the near entire back story to Ava and Henry's existence.

Ostensibly a story about the "price" of love, I never really felt that the novel made whatever point it wanted to make.  But I also didn't care. The writing is clearly from the school of "magical realism" and was reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Like that novel, Walton has created a richly detailed cultural landscape that is a joy to dive into.  The complicated web of relationships between the dozens of vivid and memorable characters and the events that occur to them makes this a pleasure to read.

The Bridge from Me to You, by Lisa Schroeder

When Lauren's mother throws her out of her home, Lauren doesn't have a lot of choice about where to go.  Only her aunt and uncle are willing to take her in.  And so she arrives at their house in the small town of Willow OR, with a handful of secrets about why she had to leave and why her mother doesn't want her around.

Colby is a talented player on Willow's football team.  That fact alone should disqualify him as a potential romantic interest since Lauren can't stand the game, but they hit it off nearly immediately and have great chemistry.  Part of the reason for this is that he harbors a secret of his own:  he doesn't actually like the game.  Rather than play, he'd rather study bridges.  But a football scholarship might still be best way for him to get to study civil engineering in college.

The romance that develops between the two of them is pretty smooth sailing and doesn't really drive the drama of the story.  Instead, Schroeder throws in some health scares with their families to keep the narrative going.

It's charming and, while the plot is hardly original, Schroeder utilizes an interesting structural device:  Colby's story is told in chapters of prose, while Lauren's are told in verse.  This makes her seem even more angsty than normal for a teen and also carries a serious drawback -- she gets largely shortchanged in character development.  The density of Colby's chapters mean that we end up knowing a lot more about Colby than Lauren.  I'm not sure I'd recommend this particular literary approach.


[Note:  I received a free copy of this book in return for my consideration and review.  While an inattentive flight attendant managed to spill water on the book, I'm hoping it will still be of use to my local public library to where I will donate it now that I have finished with it.]

The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Many years in the future, in the land that was once the eastern Brazilian state of Bahia, the city of Palmares Tres now stands.  Built as a pyramid, it is a strictly hierarchical city-state, ruled on its top tenth tier by a queen and her assembly of "aunties." It is mostly a matriarchy, but the queen is chosen (and periodically reaffirmed) by the "Summer King" -- a young man who is elected, ritually sacrificed, and makes his selection of queen as he bleeds to death.

June Costa is a young artist with a penchant for guerrilla art.  She sneaks into forbidden spaces and erects installations to shock and surprise people.  When the new Summer King Enki is chosen, she discovers that he too is an artist.  They meet and together they create the most impressive art of her career.  But there is much more to the relationship and June regrets her growing closeness to Enki when she is reminded that he must soon die.

Set in a culture that imagines what Brazil will be like many centuries in the future, where race and ethnicity are fluid, and sexual relations even more so (the book features the most interesting love triangle between June, Enki, and Enki's boyfriend Gil - who is also June's best friend), this is a complex piece of science fiction.  There's dystopia, nanotechnology, body modification, and romance, all of which is set to a samba beat and that strange melancholy of saudade.  In sum, a brilliant piece of storytelling and one of the more original sci-fi works to come out lately.  I'm a sucker for unusual settings for science fiction and love any chance to move beyond the USA-as-the-model-of-the-future approach of the mainstream.  Johnson's book captures the true potential of a view of the future based on a dynamic alternative.

Heartbeat, by Elizabeth Scott

Emma had always liked her stepfather and was looking forward to being an older sister to the baby that her mother was carrying.  But that changed on the day that her mother died and Emma's stepfather unilaterally made the decision to keep her alive on life support until the fetus could be delivered.  In Emma's mind, it is unbelievably selfish that he would keep Mom going as some sort of baby factory.  And while he tries to explain his decision, Emma refuses to accept it.

Caleb is a troubled rich kid.  First, he had a drug problem and then several brushes with the law involving damage to his family's property.  Emma, as a clean-cut valedictorian, should not want to have anything to do with him.  But, as it turns out, he's struggling with loss as well (the death of his younger sister, for which his parents hold him accountable).  And, as they share something in common, they are drawn to each other.

It's a bit slow going.  Emma's standoff with her stepdad is well-established early on.  After that, there really isn't any place to take that storyline.  So, we get little tiffs and skirmishes repeated ad nauseum with little gained in the process (yes, they are not communicating -- I get it, now move on).  As for "bad boy" Caleb, it just seemed a bit too convenient and easy (why is Emma the only one to notice that he's actually a kind and sensitive kid?).  The ending was good, but the story leading up to it seemed predictable and routine.

Reality Boy, by A. S. King

Gerald Faust has an anger management problem.  It's understandable if you knew the years of abuse he suffered from his older sister.  Never mind that whole experience with his family being featured on a reality TV show when he was five (he was the kid who kept defecating in public places).  Now 17 years old, Gerald can't shake his nickname (the "crapper") or the baggage of that TV experience.  His family's continued denial of the abuse that occurred doesn't help either.  However, he's trying to change and, with some inspiration from a similarly messed-up young woman, Gerald's going to find a way to face reality for a change.

A complex, rather depressing, and ultimately addictive story of bad breaks and breaking with the past.  There is a lot of unresolved stuff in this story and not a lot of happy ending, but the baggage that Gerald is carrying is significant and it isn't a story where a truly happy ending would have felt plausible.  Gerald is a tough guy and a tough character to like, but he's remarkably level-headed and charismatic.

King has a lot to say about the reality entertainment phenomenon and she says it well.  However, this is ultimately not a social critique, but really a domestic tragedy.  King's point that the television cameras oversimplified (and ultimately missed) the real story is her way of condemning the faux search for authenticity that the genre lives on.

September Girls, by Bennett Madison

After six months of caring for his depressed father (after his Mom walked out on them) Sam has pretty much had it.  So, when Dad suggests that they just leave (even though school isn't quite over) and go to the beach, Sam is ready for a new adventure.  But he isn't quite prepared for what he finds.

The little beach town to which they come to stay is inhabited by two types of young women -- the normal type (girls) who show no particular interest in Sam (and don't particularly interest Sam either) and the Girls.  The Girls are fashionably dressed, all look like super-models, smoke French Gaulois cigarettes, and are mostly named after perfumes or cosmetics.  They are exotic and otherworldly and, in some sort of satire of male fantasy, profoundly interested in having sex with Sam and his older brother.  But there's a lot more to these young women's mystery.

Now, as it happens, I read this book during a bad travel day (late and cancelled flights, running through airports, etc.) so that probably affected my impression of the book, but it simply failed to engage me.  I get the way that Madison was using the otherworldly Girls of the island as a way to express adolescent male mystification about females.  I even think it is rather clever.  However, the story is so abstract and so unwilling to lock itself down (random events keep popping up to disrupt the storyline) that it is a very hard read.  I found myself reading and re-reading pages over in order to capture some obscure but very important plot point.  It was simply too hard to read to be enjoyable.

And We Stay, by Jenny Hubbard

After witnessing her boyfriend shooting himself in their school library, Emily Beam is sent to a private boarding school in Amherst.  There, she wallows in the poetry of local native Emily Dickinson and tries to cope with her feelings of guilt and loss.  The story, told through third-person narration and Emily's own verse, attempts to meld together the process of grief and the psyche of Dickinson's writings.

An ambitious, but ultimately impersonal look at grief.  It is all beautifully written, but the exercise is largely heartless as we never are allowed in to Emily's heart and mind.  That she is sad and writes moody navel-gazing poetry we have no doubt, but she is otherwise a very closed book.  And the other characters, from the equally repressed roommate KT to the kleptomaniac Amber, don't really add much to our understanding or to the story.  It's a pretty work, but distant and non-illuminating.  And very much like her earlier work Paper Covers Rock (see my 11/27/2011 review).

Lights On the Nile, by Donna Jo Napoli

Kepi is a young girl living in Ancient Egypt.  One day, while exploring along the banks of the Nile, her pet baboon is stolen from her.  Pursuing the thieves takes her far from home and, before she even realizes what is happening, she finds herself kidnapped and sent down the Nile towards the capital city of Ineb Hedj.  This in itself is not an unhappy happenstance as Kepi has long wanted to go there and petition the pharaoh on behalf of her crippled father.  The story is interspersed with frequent references to the pantheon of Egyptian gods and Kepi provides an excellent portrait of religious reverence.

In her books, Napoli combines decent historical detail with a quirky irreverence for standard plotting.  I'm not a fan of the strange way she ended this book, but I mostly enjoyed the story up to that point.  It's a colorful tale with a gentle informational approach.  Grownups might worry about the terribly dangerous situations that Kepi lands herself in, but children probably enjoy the adventure.  It isn't Napoli's best book (I prefer her book about Mona Lisa The Smile to this day), but this one is good.

Over You, by Amy Reed

After a big screw up at home in Seattle, Sadie gets shipped out by her father to live with her mom on a commune in the middle of Nebraska.  Her best friend Max tags along because that's what Max always does.  Since they were little, Max takes care of Sadie and keeps her out of trouble.  But in this summer on the farm, Max begins to realize that she has choices of her own to make and that her future may involve breaking free of her best friend.

A deceptively simple book full of big literary experiments.  Some of these are quite successful (Reed skillfully explores the logistics of a dependent friendship), others are less so (frequent interludes riffing on Greek mythology stick out like a pretentious sore thumb and only in a few cases add value to the plot).  The most striking literary device though is Reed's decision to write the first half of the book in second person. This, as any writer can tell you, is one of the most challenging voices to master.  It's very immediate and even a bit exhausting as the text risks becoming accusatory.  In this case, it works very well and pulls us into the story from the start.  It also very nicely conveys the obsessive nature of the two girls' friendship.  That said, her decision to switch later on to first person narration is a welcome relief.  The storyline is modest, but the writing is truly stand out.

The Impossible Knife of Memory, by Laurie Halse Anderson

The injuries that Hayley's father received in the war are only partly physical.  Rather, it is the psychic traumas, the ones that can't be easily seen, that hit him the deepest.  And while Hayley desperately wants her father to get better, she wants him to stay even more.  He may have trouble holding down a job, making ends meet, or even keeping his sanity, but as long as she has him, it is enough.  Or, rather, it has to be.

It comes at a terrible cost.  After five years of caring for her PTSD-suffering father, Hayley's own life is coming loose at the seams.  While intelligent, she barely functional in school, alienated from her peers, and struggling to maintain any social connections.

Anderson wrote one of my all-time favorite YA books (Speak) and a number of less-notable other novels since then.  This one nearly breaks the recent streak.  I found the story deep and insightful.  It sensitively explored what combat does, not only to soldiers, but also to their families.  In fact, it nearly stands out as being in the same caliber of Speak, except for one (in my mind) fatal decision: a very weak story.

On its face, this book shares a lot in common with Speak.  Both books are about people who have suffered terrible traumas and their attempts to heal.  The difference is that while Melinda was the central character in Speak, Hayley's father is simply the instigator of the drama of this story.  And, while Melinda's search to regain self-worth drove that earlier novel's story forward, here, Hayley's father's problems serve mostly to drag Hayley down.  The Impossible Knife of Memory is about pain and suffering, but more than anything it is about co-dependency.  Drama is what drives any storyline, but when the drama is based on character stubbornness and refusal to accept help, my patience with the story and the characters frays.  I get that the dad is proud and I get that this arrogance rubs off on his daughter, but at some point I care less and less what happens to them.  There is tragedy here, but it is so easily resolved (in the last ten pages when the characters just suddenly start accepting help after 380 pages of refusing to do what they are told) that one wonders what the point was.

The Time of the Fireflies, by Kimberley Griffiths Little

One evening, in her home above her parent's antique shop in a small bayou town in Louisiana, Larissa answers a phone call on one of the antique phones from the shop - a phone which isn't hooked up.  A mysterious voice tells her frantically that she must "trust the fireflies" and that it's "a matter of life or death." The message and the medium make little sense to Larissa but soon she is embroiled in a mystery involving ancient curses and betrayals, time travel, and family tragedies.

This wonderful and complex story plays well as a decent supernatural mystery novel, and includes some nice gentle (and subtle) lessons about forgiveness and familial reconciliation that are appropriate for a middle reader.  There are a few rough spots in the narration (and the resolution is a bit from out in left field), but overall this is a satisfying story and engrossing read.  Little avoids the types of good ol' boy Southern stereotypes that plague stories place in the bayou, and instead uses the setting and local color to prettify the story.  I also appreciated the fact (which I only realized in conclusion) that all of the important characters in the story are female -- proving that one can write a story that is empowering without having to make a big point in doing so.  People who are squeamish about creepy possessed dolls, however, should probably give this one a pass.


[Disclosure:  I solicited and received an advance copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review.  The book is planned for release at the end of July.]