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.]

Pawn, by Aimée Carter

At the age of seventeen, in this version of America's dystopian future, every one has to take a test which determines their future.  Kitty never had big ambitions - just perhaps the chance to get into a decent job.  But when she fails the test because of her dyslexia, she gives up and decides to throw herself into prostitution instead.  That plan too goes awry and she finds herself offered the opportunity, instead, to enter the inner sanctum of the Hart family who rule the country. 

But what in fact is she signing up for?  Once ensconced, she finds that the rulers may live a life of amazing luxury, but it is also a world of depravity and bloodlust.  Family members plot and counterplot to hold on to power -- a cycle of violence that Kitty finds herself drawn in to as a helpless pawn.

So, what is there to say about this new addition to the vast family of dystopian trilogies?  Not much. The setting isn't terribly plausible and, aside from an obvious dig at aptitude tests, there isn't much useful social commentary.  Instead, we have to look for interesting characters and a strong story.  Unfortunately the characters aren't terribly deep.  Aside from a constant barrage of empty threats to kill to protect each other, there aren't really any signs of passion.  There are at least two separate romances, but neither one feels real or elicits much interest.

Roomies, by Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando

At the start of the summer after graduating from high school, Elizabeth receives a notice from Berkeley about her room arrangements for the fall, including contact information for her roommate.  Coming all the way from New Jersey, she figures it would be good to coordinate who's bringing what, so she reaches out to Lauren, who lives in San Francisco.  This starts up a correspondence that runs through the summer, full of plenty of adventures, anxieties, fall-outs, and reconciliations -- all without ever meeting in person.

It's not a book of surprises (girl meets girl, girl develops strong friendship with girl, girl hates girl after misunderstanding, girl makes up with girl -- plus the usual boyfriends, sex, younger siblings, and parents thrown in), but it is a charming read.  I would describe it as "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" without the sisterhood ... and without the pants.  The book is helped by the fact that Zarr and Altebrando are both decent writers and this team effort is good for showing their particular talents.  Presumably, they each took care of one of the characters, which allows for strong distinct personalities.  But being good team players, the characters interact well with each other.

The Living, by Matt de la Peña

Shy comes from a town on the border just south of San Diego and his job on a luxury cruise liner opens his eyes to the immense wealth that some people enjoy.  He's hoping to make some money and get his mind off of the recent death of his grandmother to a new virulent disease called Romero.  But on his first trip out, an upset older man commits suicide right in front of Shy.  Soon, Shy finds that all sort of figures are interested in what Shy saw before the man died -- Shy is being followed, his cabin broken into, and a man in a black suit makes vague threats against him.  Meanwhile, Shy has other issues closer to home.  He's grown close with a fellow crew member Carmen (who is engaged but seems interested in Shy).  And, from back home, Shy learns that his nephew has now contracted Romero's.

The story, however, takes a sudden left turn when a huge earthquake levels California, sending a massive tsunami out into the ocean and threatening the ship.  By the time that threat passes, Shy finds himself on a wrecked lifeboat, in the company of a spoiled young woman named Addie.  Larger dangers await!

Sometimes, even I need to take a break from the "pink" books, but at the end of the day the mindless violence, nonsensical plots, and sheer brutality of action stories doesn't really do that much for me.  I kind of liked the dynamic between Shy and his crew mate Carmen (and even Shy's budding attachment to Addie), but the romance never really develops very far and character development is not a major focus here.  I think I'll go back to my usual stuff again.

The White Bicycle, by Beverley Brenna

Taylor, a nineteen year-old woman with Asperger's Syndrome, spends the summer in the south of France with her mother and the family of her mother's boyfriend.  During the summer, Taylor comes to discover her own independence through the friendship of an older woman -- it is a change to which Taylor's mother has trouble adjusting.  Told entirely through Taylor's voice, the reader is provided a unique perspective on how the world appears when you have Asperger's.

A quiet and gentle book, but still challenging because of the unreliable narrator of the story.  People have tried to write books like this before, but I think Brenna succeeds largely because the story is modest and this allows us to patiently explore Taylor's mind.  That mind can certainly be frustrating, and there are times when you want to just throw up our hands and give up (the way, apparently, Taylor's father did in her youth) but by the end we're cheering along with her.  Nice!

Now I'll Tell You Everything, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Alice McKinley has grown up.  She's left home and started school at the University of Maryland.  But unlike the other books in the series (that tackle 4-6 months of Alice's life at most), this book covers the next forty-two years of her life -- including marriage, children, and grandchildren.  It's a longer book, but still a whirlwind of activity.  The details, of course, are all spoilers, but suffice it to say that Naylor covers pretty much all of the key moments of Alice's life (although not quite to the funeral).

I really had not intended to read this book.  As the twenty-eighth (and final) book in the series, however, I felt obligated to finish what I had started.  Keep in mind that I absolutely despise series books so the simple fact that I read the entire series -- over the past fifteen years -- is an impressive endorsement.  The series has always impressed me for its realism and painstaking detail, but my love is tempered by my frustrations.  The books covering Alice's younger years work well as middle readers, but as Alice hits adolescence and gets older, the chaste style of Naylor's writing grates.  It's not that the books lack sex (far from it, Naylor packs the later books with plenty of good sexual information in a Judy Blume tradition), it's the moralistic and preachy quality that never feels quite right.  The later books also lack much cohesion -- being, instead, anecdotal and disjointed.  A few individual books (Reluctantly Alice, Alice In Between, and Dangerously Alice) stood out by being thematic and more plot-driven, but for the most part, Naylor has preferred unrelated events that are age-appropriate for the given book, delivered by the often too-perfect Alice. 

In the breezy survey of the bulk of Alice's life that the current tome covers, these issues are even more pronounced.  The chapters read a bit like Christmas letters and the speed at which events go by leaves us with very little story to grasp on to.  And because the events speed up as the years go by (200 pages on four years in college, leaving 300 pages to cover 38 years of life), the sense of disconnect simply grows as you read the book.  There are plenty of sad, joyous, and poignant moments, but nothing sticks for long.

Flowers In the Attic, by V. C. Andrews

So, if I'm reading YA literature in my late 40s, what was I reading when I was actually in the demographic?  Mostly science-fiction and fantasy.  However, if I had been reading YA in the early 80s, I probably would have cracked this book.

The story is infamous enough:  Recently widowed and desperate mother returns to her parents' home to live with her sadistic parents.  Because her father would not approve of the fact that she had offspring with her late husband, she hides her four children in the attic of their grandparents' huge mansion.  For several years the children live in these cramped corners and endure all sorts of mental and physical tortures.  And the two oldest children develop a strong bond that eventually spills over into incest.  Several sex scenes - while tame and fairly oblique by modern standards - were probably mandatory reading by teen-aged readers at the time.

It's a classic and spawned a major literary phenomenon (five books in the series and two film adaptations -- the most recent just a few months ago).  It is a book that will not die.  Yet, it doesn't really have that much objective literary merit.  It's depressing and rather plodding:  the kids suffer and then they suffer some more.  After a while, there is more suffering (you get the idea!).  The prose is turgid -- intended to emulate Dickens, but without much of the wit.  And the naughty bits, as previously mentioned, are pretty tame by modern standards.

Things I Know About Love, by Kate Le Vann

Seventeen year-old Olivia comes to visit her brother in Princeton for a month in the summer.  Away from her home in England, she lets down her guard and falls in love with (an ironically) English boy named Adam.  But before all of that, she recounts for us all the previous experiences she has had with boys.  It's the usual heartbreaking and awkward encounters of adolescence and calculated to pull our heartstrings and make us feel sympathetic to the character.  And, if you left the story about ten pages before the ending, you would feel pretty good about the sweetness of Olivia and the wonderfulness of her love with Adam.  Unfortunately, the book takes a nasty sharp turn at the end and the whole thing goes up in smoke.

I started out really liking this book.  Olivia was wonderful and her recounting of her first boyfriends was poignant and realistic -- the sheer authenticity of the feelings and actions of the boys and her reaction to them were enchanting.  And when she meets Adam, the romance really grew organically and felt right.  Olivia is such a self-effacing and modest girl that it is hard for the reader not to embrace her.  All of which makes Le Vann's decision on how to end the story particularly brutal and cruel (and largely unnecessary!).  I don't reveal endings as a policy, so I can't tell you much more than that, but the ending basically ruined the story.

The Theory of Everything, by Kari Luna

String theory and giant panda bear shamans, oh my!

Sophie, like her father, is obsessed with late 80s alternative rock.  She considered it one of the few ties she has to the man, since he walked out on her and her mother four years ago.  But there are apparently other similarities.  She’s been having “episodes” where she leaves reality for a few minutes at a time (sometimes to a place where rock videos come to life, sometimes to a world with giant pandas, and sometimes to a land where inanimate objects  come to life).  These experiences, she learns, are similar to what her father went through when trying to explain his theory about the universe.  With that realization and a desire to prove to her mother that she’s not losing her mind, Sophie and her friend Finney go to New York to search for her Dad.

It’s hard to succinctly summarize this quirky and original novel.  The late 80s rock thing is old and tired but Luna gives it the most original twist she can.  The rest of the book is just way out there and loads of fun.  What can you say about a giant panda named Walt?  Or hallucinations about jamming with The Cure?  Or just the funky weird way that even the normal people are in this story?  Or about how seriously the characters are  about love’s relationship with theoretical physics?  It’s weird, lively, and worth a read as one of the more unusual YA books of the year!

Lily and Taylor, by Elise Moser

Over the years, Taylor has watched her older sister being brutalized by her boyfriend, and she has copied her sibling and acquired an abusive boyfriend of her own.  But when Taylor's sister is murdered, Taylor has to relocate to her grandmother's home and the physical distance provides her a break from her own boyfriend (not that that stops him from jealously tracking her in regular phone calls!).  Just before Christmas, he shows up at her new home and abducts her and her friend Lily, and takes them to an isolated cabin in the woods.

It's a brutish story that starts off with an autopsy and ends in terrible violence.  This is not a story for the squeamish.  No doubt, these two young women have horrendous lives, but the book itself feels exploitative and not very informative.

Moser does a great job of showing the brutality and depicting Taylor's inability to break out of the cycle, but she does a less successful job of explain how Taylor got in that place.  There's no story of how the boyfriend charmed her, of how he only slowly revealed his ugly side, and only oblique intimations of how Taylor had been basically bred to accept extreme physical abuse as a normal part of life.  All of that has to be inferred.

The job of telling Taylor's story is clouded up by Moser's desire to also tell Lily's story (of neglect and falling between the cracks of the system). Towards the end of the book, Moser does a much better job of belatedly explaining how Lily got to where she is.  It is ironic that Taylor's story is not similarly explained.

Promise Me Something, by Sara Kocek

Thanks to redistricting, Reyna gets assigned to a different junior high school than her BFFs.  As one of the only "new" kids at the school, she has a hard time making friends.  So, she settles for Olive, an extremely intense girl who everyone else seems to avoid.  Olive has definite anger issues and has an unfortunate habit of saying whatever pops into her head.  But, over time, Reyna grows to like her.  That lasts until Reyna discovers that Olive is a lesbian.  While she doesn't consider herself homophobic, Reyna doesn't want the other kids at school to get the wrong idea and she puts distance between herself and Olive.  This does not go well and, after a tragic incident occurs, Reyna has some major soul searching to do in order to straighten things out.

Numerous subplots also have their place in this story (including Olive's alcoholic mother, Reyna's discomfort with her widower father getting re-married, the growing chasm developing between Reyna and her old friends, a homophobic teacher, a runaway teen, and even a romance).  It's these subplots that are probably the weakest part of the book.  Any one of them would have been sufficient, but together they seem a bit excessive.  Resolving all of them satisfactorily is nearly impossible and the wrap-up is a bit perfunctory.

But the book simply soars on the strength of its characters.  Reyna feels unusually authentic.  She is not a character that one will like at first, but her personal growth feels real and you gradually like her. As painful (and maybe even distasteful) as it was to watch her rejection of Olive's homosexuality, it felt realistic.  The fluidity of the relationships overall (as Reyna flits from one circle to another) also felt painfully right for the age group.  By getting the kids right, Kocek is able to make a story which is otherwise set in very stereotypical settings (even including the traditional unsupervised party) feel extraordinary fresh.  Anyone who reads a lot of YA knows how the characters are supposed to interact, but Reyna defies those expectations and takes us places that just feel better and more appropriate.

Catch A Falling Star, by Kim Culbertson

Carter loves her small town of Little CA.  She loves its beauty, quiet, and solitude.  And while other kids dream of getting away, Carter just wants to stay.  So, when a film production company comes in during the summer to shoot a film, tearing up the tranquility of the town, Carter wants nothing to do with it.  Every other girl in town is excited that hot young bad boy Adam Jakes is part of the cast (Carter's BFF Chloe is absolutely loopy over the chance to see him!), but Carter could care less.

But then Adam's manager approaches Carter with an outrageous proposal:  pose as Adam's girlfriend for a few weeks and help to resuscitate Adam's image.  For Carter, there's a huge cash offering -- money that her family could really use to help Carter's gambling-addicted big brother get into rehab.  And Carter decides to go for it.

At first, things don't go well, but with time Carter and Adam - as one fully expects in a summer romance - find a halfway point.  With time, their pretend romance threatens to bloom into the real thing.

The story has some serious ambitions (with a lot of family swirl involving the brother and Carter's own issues with being afraid to leave the nest) but it gets ultimately buried in the silliness of the romantic plot.  Far better, IMO, to have just done the romance and abandoned the ambition.  After all, no one minds a bit of escapist fluff where bad rich boy falls for small-town girl with heart of gold and takes her away -- she cleans him up and he provides lifetime financial security.  What's not to like?  But when you bring in all this heavy stuff about seeking your dreams, it just gets distracting.  Sure, I loved Carter's honesty and kind heart, but it really was out of place in this bit of summer good time.

[Disclosure:  I requested and received this book from the publisher - without cost - in exchange for my review.  I'm donating the book to my public library and my evaluation was unaffected.]

Stitches, by Glen Huser

Travis and his friend Chantelle have long been a focus of unwanted attention from the local bullies.  If you ask Travis's uncle, however, Travis just brings it on himself.  Between hanging out with girls, a love for puppets, and some serious sewing skills, Travis isn't exactly sticking to normal gender stereotypes.  And while Travis doesn't want to stand out as different, it's hard to do otherwise when he enjoys puppetry, sewing, and his friend Chantelle so much more than "boy" stuff.  Set in a small Alberta town, the book also provides a vivid look at what life is like in rural Canada.

A bit of a mixed bag for me.  I like the idea of Travis and the portrayal of life in Acton, Alberta was interesting (albeit a bit depressing), but the book was hard to engage with.  There are a lot of characters and the pace is uneven.  The drama of the bullies is artificially drawn out by Travis's unwillingness to seek help (an issue that is never really addresses, although even he admits it is pretty stupid by the end of the story).  And, while Huser does a decent enough job with exposition, the conclusions are pretty rushed affairs.  The ending itself comes out of left field and reads more like an epilogue, as if Huser couldn't quite find a way to end the book.

The Midnight Dress, by Karen Foxlee

Rose and her father travel across Australia, rarely settling down for long.  So when they come to the town of Leonora, she figures that they won't last long.  But the town captures her imagination quickly.  She befriends a local girl named Pearl who is obsessively searching for her father -- all Pearl knows is that he is Russian and his last name is Orlov, so she is writing letters to every Orlov in Moscow.  Pearl is also obsessed with the local harvest festival and the chance that the girls have to appear in it in fancy dresses.  Rose has never worn a fancy dress, but Pearl convinces her to ask a mysterious local old woman (rumored to be a witch) to make a dress.  The woman accepts the request and, while Rose spends days with her helping to sew the dress, she reveals many secrets of her past.  In the end, one of the girls mysteriously disappears and is presumed dead.

The story itself is told in a broken narrative, with each chapter beginning with a police investigator trying to figure out what happened to the missing girl, and then the chapter switches back to the past where Rose and Pearl become acquainted, the dress is made, and things eventually fall apart.  More so than normal, the flashback approach is cumbersome and difficult to work through.  In the interest of being mysterious and "lyrical," the writing is dense and tricky.  I found it a lot of work to read and, in the end, not really worth the trouble (too much back tracking and confusion whenever I drifted and lost focus).  Reading shouldn't be that much work!

Followers, by Anna Davies

Something is rotten at MacHale, an elite boarding school outside of the town of Forsyth, Maine.  During winter term, the students are staging a production of Hamlet, but the production is plagued by death.  First, the school's drama teacher dies and is replaced by an eccentric and driven young director from New York.  Then a freak accident takes out the assistant director. Others mishaps and accidents follow.

The real story, however, is about Briana and her attempts to fit in at the school.  A recent transfer, Bree has tried to be accepted in order to appease her overbearing mother (an alumna).  Winning a part in Hamlet is part of that goal.  When she fails to do so, Briana finds herself saddled with the throwaway role of being the play's "Social Media Director," which involves stirring up excitement for the production through Twitter.

The blurb for the book makes these two plots sound intertwined but appears to largely be describing the final fifty pages of the book (where the body count rises and the plot's coherency fades).  The book succeeds best as a boarding school story -- a tired but usually effective setting for coming-of-age stories of under-supervised teens.  The overbearing mother fits in well and Briana has some interesting character flaws (vanity, insecurity, etc.) that are promising.  The homicides (which really don't kick into full gear until 3/4 of the way through the book), in contrast, just seemed distracting.  It felt like Davies took a decent draft of a book about Briana and tossed in some murders (and a Twitter account or two) to sell the MS to Scholastic as a horror piece.


[Disclosure:  I received an ARC of this book in return for my consideration and review.  No compensation was received.]

If You Could Be Mine, by Sara Farizan

In modern-day Iran, homosexuality is a capital offense.  That makes the love that Nasrin and Sahar share a very dangerous situation.  Growing up, it's been easy for the two girls to hide the true nature of their feelings for each other.  But when Nasrin becomes engaged to the charming doctor Reza, it will all be over -- there is no way they can hide what they have been doing any longer.  Sahar becomes desperate to prevent the marriage and keep Nasrin for herself.  Thanks to her cousin Ali, who lives in the shady world of drugs, smuggling, and illicit sex, she discovers an unlikely and extreme solution:  a sex-change operation.  Because, while loving a person of the same sex is illegal, changing your sexual identity is not!

A truly remarkable story that shows a side of Iran that no one probably wants to see (or would believe even exists!).  I was fascinated by Farizan's accounts of gay bars, prostitutes, and illegal parties (keep in mind that consuming alcohol is illegal in Iran, so what does one make of opium!?).  But once we move beyond the titillation of these illicit scenes, there is a warm and authentic story of not just these two young women, but of their parents and friends as well.  The actual romance that forms the center of the story didn't have a lot of heat to it, but the honestly and depth of Sahar's feelings of loss, betrayal, and despair are heartbreaking and moving.  I was drawn to the book by the novelty of the story, but stayed for the appeal of the characters.

Mila 2.0, by Debra Driza

Since her father died in a fire, Mila has struggled with piecing back together her life.  She and her mother have moved to a horse ranch in rural Minnesota and Mila.  It hasn't been easy and the kids aren't very friendly.  When a new boy shows up and he and Mila bond over their newness, jealousy from the other girls turns things ugly.  That's when stuff starts to get weird.

An accident that should have been fatal to Mila proves to be just a minor scratch.  But the scratch itself reveals that Mila's innards are mechanical and she is something very different from the sixteen year-old girl she thought she was.  Soon, she and Mom are on the run, pursued by a wide variety of forces of evil.  Mila learns that she is an android built to be an ultimate fighting machine.  She proves to be a fierce fighter, but her fears and anxieties prove to be a handicap.  Can she overcome her reluctance to harm the people who want to kill her and save herself and her mother?

It's an odd story that starts as a basic teen romance but quickly moves into high speed chase and violence.  Comparing the first 100 pages and the last 100 pages are striking -- as if Meg Cabot met Tom Clancy.  I suppose it works in the sense that the beginning of the book gives us the background to appreciate Mila's human side, while her ability to drive a Camaro around downtown DC in a high speed chase comes much later.  I'm happier with the moody adolescent girl we begin with than the gradually dehumanized machine that she becomes (despite her struggles to the contrary).  But I guess I understand the appeal of the message that even a "normal" teenage girl can become a super deadly killing machine.

For those interested in the character, her struggles continue in the sequel that was just released last week.

Freakboy, by Kristin Elizabeth Clark

Brendan is a tough wrestler with a tough wrestling girlfriend, but he harbors a secret:  he's always been more comfortable around girls.  In fact, he's always been a bit jealous of them -- of the way they dress and how they act.  He even sometimes wishes he could be one.  But he's not gay!  He's just....awfully confused! 

Vanessa, his girlfriend, can tell that something is wrong but she can't quite figure out what.  Brendan is distant.  He no longer seems to care about her.  She suspects he must have fallen in love with someone else. 

And then there's Angel, a transsexual who's been on the streets for the past couple of years.  Early in the book, she randomly befriends Brendan, and she'll help direct him through his confusion, but her purpose to the story is really to show his future by telling the story of her past.

It's an ambitious original story exploring gender fluidity.  Told in verse through shifting points of view, it tries to capture not just the process of identifying with transexualism, but also the impact that such decisions have on others.  Clark's depiction is authentic, showing that a great deal of research went into this.  Her poetry is sophisticated and often quite good.

In my opinion, however, the story itself tries to bite off a bit too much.  While we get a great story about Brendan's acceptance of his identity, neither that story, nor in fact any of the subplots, truly wraps up.  Rather, this is an ongoing adventure, whether it is the relationship with Vanessa, Vanessa's own self-realizations, Angel's story and her own growth, or the overall future choices that Brendan will make.  That's realistic but frustrating for the reader.  It's an enticing story, but one which is left (for reasons of space or just ambition?) unfinished.  I wanted to learn more about Vanessa!

A tighter story with fewer subplots could have done more. For example, dropping the character of Angel altogether might have allowed the space to take the main narrative farther to a more satisfactory point of departure.

Formerly Shark Girl, by Kelly Bingham

A year has passed since Jane was attacked by the shark, losing her arm in the process.  While the immediate aftermath of that was told in Bingham's 2007 book, Shark Girl, the author returns to her subject now to tell about the continuing healing process.  Surprisingly, for a sequel built on the same structure and same premise, the continuation is actually a far more interesting novel than the original.

A year later, Jane is still struggling with the psychological and physical trauma but determined to move on with her life.  The question, though, is move on to where?  Should she pursue her original dream of being an artist?  Or should she follow the inspiration of all the people who helped her through the last year and pursue a career in nursing?  In truth, she's not a natural in either (her artistry suffers from a loss of her muse and the physical challenge of learning to draw with her left hand; meanwhile, nursing requires stronger science skills than Jane has ever possessed).

Other themes also play a part in the story.  There's romance in the air (both for her, as well as for her mother who has started to secretly date again).  And finally, there are the never-ending letters from her "fans" -- people who tell her what an inspiration she is, much to her complete and utter astonishment!

While I still find Bingham's verse underwhelming (it takes a lot of skill to write a novel in verse!), I really did find the story more compelling this time around.  There's a greater distance from the trauma and Jane is focused enough to lend a strong direction to this sequel.  It's a more compelling adventure (moving on, rather than just healing).  In sum, it just works better.  And where the non-verse parts of Shark Girl were distracting, the letters from the fans in Formerly Shark Girl are well grounded to the story and provide an well-integrated Greek Chorus to supplement Jane's own musing.

Revenge of the Flower Girls, by Jennifer Ziegler

When Lily announces that she's planning to get married to dorky nincompoop Burton, her three little sisters - Dawn, Darby, and Delaney - are aghast!  Under no circumstances can they allow this to happen!  They've always preferred Lily's prior boyfriend Alex and they know that Lily and Alex are still in love with each other!  So, with a month before the great day, the three girls start plotting how they will prevent the wedding from occurring, and also how to get Lily and Alex back together.  Many tricks and hi-jinx follow in what imagines is the beginning of many stories about these spunky eleven-year-old triplets.

While the story is lighthearted and cute, I found it a bit hard to enjoy a story about a group of children intending to sabotage their older sister's wedding.  Despite numerous warnings from all the grown-ups around them, they persist in their goal.  And their stubborn persistence made them seem more like selfish brats concerned with getting nice presents and having fun, than caring younger siblings.  Perhaps younger readers won't be bothered by the story's inherent mean streak (the title itself is a misnomer - there is no "revenge" going on here; but rather, simple plotting), but it interfered with my own enjoyment of the book.   And regardless of the happy ending, it was hard to not feel that a lesson in respecting people's choices and proper boundaries was called for.

A note on the cover:  in the book, the girls resist wearing dresses and end up attending the wedding in tuxedos.  Somehow, the marketing department at Scholastic didn't get that message!

[Disclaimer:  I received the book from the publisher in return for my consideration and review.  No other compensation was received.  As is usual, I'm donating the book to the public library.  This book will be released on May 25th.]

Storm, by Donna Jo Napoli

When the rain begins to fall, young Sebah just thinks that they have come early this year.  But as the rain turns to flood, she finds herself climbing higher and higher to find safe ground.  As that becomes harder and her situation grows more desperate, she is rescued and joined by a young man.  Eventually building a raft, they set out on the sea.  Still, the rains continue.  Tragedy strikes but as all seems lost, they suddenly come across a large mysterious ship, full of animals, messianic humans, and few new allies.

Napoli loves to explore legends and myths.  In this novel, she takes on the story of Noah.  Genesis doesn't actually provide much detail and since this story doesn't actually focus on any of the known participants, she has a great deal of license to imagine instead what stowing away on the Ark might have been like.  It's an interesting premise but surprisingly different than I imagined it would be.  Much of Napoli's interest is in imagining life for the animals and the book focuses on how hard spending a year in the Ark would have been for human and animal passengers alike.  It's a sort of brutal realism that doesn't quite work for a story like this (Genesis is not exactly the most realistic of books in the Bible!).  And some might argue that her literal interpretation sort of misses the point.

Towards the end, Napoli makes a belated exploration into the entire mindset of being Noah and what that experience might have been like.  It's an interesting digression and gets into territory that would have been much more interesting to explore.  Overall, the book seemed a bit of a lost opportunity.  Well-written, but simply not rising up to the glory of its source material.

The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose, by Mary Hooper

Eliza's arrival in London starts off badly: nearly immediately she is tossed in prison for theft.  Through a series of struggles and set-backs, Eliza gradually works her way up through the theater and gains the attentions of the nobility and the royalty in Charles II's Court.  Along the way, she holds a number of occupations as diverse as selling oranges at the theater to being an accomplice highway man.  Her quest throughout is to find her true family, having been cast out of the only family she knew, when she discovers that she is not the child of either of the parents that raised her.
No one writes as richly about seventeenth-century London as Mary Hooper.  Beautiful historical detail fills this story, which will serve mostly to impress upon readers just how terribly hard life was - especially for an unattached woman.  Hooper hasn't ventured far from the settings of her other books (and there is even a small cross-over to the heroines of her Petals in the Ashes and At the Sign of the Sugared Plum books), but this provides familiarity and lends her confidence to tell a slightly bolder story that mixes fiction and fact, and remains truly entertaining throughout.

Letting Ana Go, by Anonymous

She always thought that girls with eating disorders who starved themselves to death were dumb.  Yet, when she sees her father abandon her mildly overweight mother in favor of a more streamlined girlfriend, she learns the importance of watching what you eat!  Along with her friend Jill (and Jill's mother guilt-inducing cheerleading), she starts counting calories and losing weight - in search of a perfect body that is always just a few pound less than her current weight.

The author has drawn out a pretty classic text-book case of anorexia nervosa (perhaps a bit more eager to blame the grown-ups than the media that normally gets the nod).  It's a book with a mission (one that few of us would disagree with) but not much to sell it.  The characters and story exist to scare or warn the reader of the perils of eating disorders.  It seems unlikely that most young readers would be unfamiliar with the concept already.

If not original, is it still a story worth repeating?  If someone reading this book learns enough from doing so that a death is averted, than some good will have been done.  The problem, I fear, is that the book probably can't do that for the simple reason that the story illustrates so well:  the behavior is not rational.

The Rules for Disappearing, by Ashley Elston

Meg and her family are in Witness Protection and have been relocated six times in the past ten months.  Each time, they are forced to assume a new identity.  Meg doesn't know why they are hiding out - her parents won't tell her - but the strain is wearing everyone out.  Dad is continually on edge, skulking around, and having angry private conversations with strangers.  Mom has dived into the bottle and turned her social drinking into a major problem.  Meg's little sister is fleeing every time men in suits show up, afraid that they are about to be relocated again.

Meg is convinced that this most recent relocation needs to their last.  She wants answers to why they are hiding and has started sleuthing to figure out what is going on.  She has also decided that, after numerous hasty departures, that she won't get attached to anyone or anything this time - no clubs, no friends, nothing to miss if she has to leave again.  But that plan is thrown when she meets Ethan!

A little slow to start and periodically rough (the "rules for disappearing" at the beginning of each chapter are consistently silly and unnecessary), the story does pick up as it goes along.  Also, important for a story with lots of subplots, Elston does a great job of tying everything together into a satisfying conclusion.  Some of this gets a bit too neat and convenient, but it's a good piece of escapism (no idea, however, about whether the sequel coming out later this month can keep up the magic!).  The romance did less for me than the action, but thankfully Meg and Ethan's relationship is not a critical part of the story.

The Secret Tree, by Natalie Standiford

Minty and her friend Paz love to roller skate.  They dream of becoming roller derby stars together.  And while their older sisters warn them that starting sixth grade may bring changes that will challenge their friendship, they are sure that they will stay best friends.  However, as the summer progresses it seems like those warning may come true even before school starts!  Suddenly, everyone seems to have secrets!

But the real adventure occurs when Misty finds a strange boy spying on her and her friends.  Tracking him when he runs away, she finds that he is living alone in an abandoned house next door to the crazy "Witch Lady" who strikes terror in the local children.  But it is his pastime - collecting other people's secrets - and how he does it (pulling them out of the trunk of a tree in the woods) that interests Minty.

If that synopsis sounds a bit odd, it's because the story is a bit hard to summarize.  It's an odd mash-up of realistic middle school drama and junior supernatural lore.  It's a story where your best friend's sister can be casting voodoo spells on your friend, but the biggest problem is that that same friend has failed to invite you to a pool party!  As crazy as this all sounds, it actually works.  There's just enough fantasy to seem magical and enough realism to be grounded.

Tales from My Closet, by Jennifer Anne Moses

Five sophomores struggle through family difficulties.  While the specific details of their obstacles differ (and encompass some pretty heavy subjects like divorce, addiction, and parental neglect), each of these young women share a love of clothes.  And while it might sound a bit pathetic, each chapter (rotating narrators) ties in to a particular piece of clothing.  Rather than displaying vanity, the stories instead show us the importance of clothing and the varieties of ways it plays a role in our lives.

The writing itself is functional and the characters fairly stock items, but the novel benefits from its clever and ambitious concept.  When I cracked the book, I fully expected some tired fashionista agitprop and maybe a bunch of shallow clothes-obsessed girls gabbing about their fave brand names.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find that, while the story does indeed center around clothing, it isn't really about it at all.  There's plenty of wardrobe details here for the reader who craves that stuff, but the clothes are really just props (or maybe literary devices) here.  And, as much as I'd like to chide young readers for caring too much about style and fashion (being a crotchety middle age guy!) I found these stories about self and self-expression to be surprisingly deep.



[Disclosure:  The publisher supplied me with an unsolicited free copy of this book with the hope that I would review it.  Upon finishing the review, I will donate the book to my local public library.  No other compensation was received.]