Half of My Facebook Friends Are Ferrets, by J. A. Buckle

In some ways, Josh is a pretty normal sixteen year-old.  He'd like to have a girlfriend, his Mom drives him nuts, and he has an annoying older sister.  But as a metal head with a pet ferret (named Ozzy), he is also a bit unusual and quirky.  As his seventeen birthday approaches, he's made a list of things he'd like to do, including being kissed, learning to play Metallica's "One," seeing Finnish death metal band Children of Bodom in concert, owning a real guitar, getting a piercing, or being as cool as his father was.  But with no luck with girls, a single mother with "financial difficulties," and a father who died when he was little, Josh doesn't hold out much hope for success with any of these goals.

It's a funny and fast paced romp through Junior year for a group of boys in what is a surprisingly sensitive approach for a boy book (obviously, trying to appeal to young female readers as well).  There is the requisite gross-out/fart joke/girl-ogling/penis references, but Josh is a good kid and tends to do the right thing, even as he and his friends also do a large amount of putting their feet in their mouths.  I'm not a huge fan of the sub-genre, but this book was a fast read and enjoyable.  In fact, I was a little surprised that the author (a woman from England) was so effective at writing about life as a boy from New York.

The Book of Love, by Lynn Weingarten

In this sequel to The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers, Lucy is now a full-fledged sister.  Her three friends and her from a "family" and set off on more conquests, including a ruthless heartbreaking of a famous rock star.  However, breaking hearts isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Lucy learns that there is a price to pay.  Realizing she's made a mistake and nostalgic for the simplicity of her pre-sisterhood life, she yearns to undo what has been done.

The result is an even stranger novel that the first one.  This was a hard book for me to track, first off because the plot is so twisted and the book keeps changing directions.  And secondly, because the characters simply are not memorable.  I was glad to see a moral compass introduced towards to end of the story, because the mindless hedonism that predominates this story is really a turn off.  But I think the message that emotional authenticity is more powerful than any magic could have been made a bit more forcefully in the end.

Some Boys, by Patty Blount

After Grace accuses Zac (the star lacrosse player at school) of raping her, she finds the entire community turn against her.  From the boys and girls (including her former BFFs) at school who taunt her with slurs, to the teachers who tolerate the abuse, to even her own father who holds the belief that she brought this on herself, no one will give her a break.  But when she is sentenced alongside Ian (another lacrosse player) to a week of scrubbing out lockers during spring break, she discovers an unlikely ally.  Told in alternating chapters between Grace and Ian, we get to observe an amazing and organic character development, most notable of which is Ian's conversion from being Zac's friend to recognizing that Grace is telling the truth.

Heart wrenching as the topic of rape is, Blount dwells less on Grace's recovery than she does on the terrible treatment of victims by society, and furthermore never allows Grace to be the victim.  By far, Grace is one of the stronger teen heroines we have seen in YA in a long time (I have no doubt she could deck Katniss!).  While publicity for this novel interprets the story as being about a poor girl needing to be rescued by a man, it really isn't.  Grace falters and doesn't always survive the onslaught of hatred and cruelty which is unleashed on her, but she has amazing fortitude throughout.  And Blount does a pretty good job of pointing out that, while friends are helpful, in the end you really only have yourself to rely on, so that's where you need to find your strength.  A solid winner of a book and very very hard to put down!

It's a great cover, too!

Pretty Sly, by Elisa Ludwig

Willa should be trying reform herself and lay low since being released on probation after the larceny streak she engineered (see previous novel, Pretty Crooked). However, when her house is ransacked and her Mom disappears, things change.  Rather than obey her mother's clear indication that Willa should hang tight, she sets off in search of Mom.  This involves reeling in the old gang and even hooking up with her nemesis Aidan Murphy.  But can they find Mom before the cops find them?  Or the FBI?  Or the two thugs on their trail?

The book wants to be an adventure and, while it has its moments and a couple great chase scenes, there's too much weirdness, implausible/impossible twists, and just plain silliness.  The most egregious moment for me was when the two kids jumped out of a third-floor balcony and "somehow" survive (Ludwig never bothers to explain how, she just jumps forward).  The technical feats (car hotwiring, computer hacking, house alarm disarming, etc.) are pipe dreams that would never work in real life as described here, but again Ludwig doesn't let details get in the way.  And then there is the truly horrendous romance with Aidan.  This not only lacks sparks, but has a silly subplot involving Willa discovering Aidan is "sexting" with an unknown girl (although the "Where R U?" texts hardly qualify as sexting), to which I say, who cares?  The whole on-the-run thing is a bit too silly to believe either.  In sum, too much weirdness sucking away the interesting potential.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone, by Adele Griffin

Through interviews with a full cast of characters who knew her, Griffin unravels the sad details of genius artist Addison Stone.  With tireless sleuthing, she gets at the truth behind Stone's life and the causes of her death, dispelling several rumors that have persisted.  Copiously illustrated with Stone's key works and featuring numerous photographs from friends and family, we get an intimate insider's view of her life, blemishes and all.

Stone, in Griffin's hands, is a delicate and finely developed personality, even though we rarely hear from the artist directly.  The book gives us great perspective on what drove her.  And yet, what makes this a truly amazing work is that it is complete fiction.  With creativity and tremendous effort providing the illustrations, Addison Stone's character really comes to life in this faux biography.  Griffin thus achieves two impressive feats:  writing a smooth flowing biography, and doing so with a totally fictitious personality.  Truly a remarkable and unique novel.

Trouble, by Non Pratt

Fifteen year-old Hannah discovers she is pregnant.  She already has a reputation as a party girl, so this just solidifies people's preconceptions.  But in an atmosphere of shaming and hushed secrets, a surprising ally appears in the form of a new kid named Aaron.  The two of them really don't know each other at all, but he volunteers to step forward and pretend to be the baby's father.  Why?  No one really knows and Aaron is keeping his secrets pretty close.  Not that Hannah should talk, since she isn't telling anyone who really is the father!

What emerges is a touching story of two young people thrust into a difficult situation and showing tremendous fortitude in the face of peers and family who sometimes help and other times let them down.  There are some definite meanies (e.g., Hannah's brother and her ex-BFF Katie) and one could fault Pratt for creating Aaron a bit too benevolent, but mostly this is story of people who do both good and evil.  I always appreciate balance and nuance in my characters and Pratt does a great job here.

Pratt is also remarkably restrained in her storytelling.  In the beginning, as the challenges and plot twists get introduced, I felt like we were swinging from one melodrama to the next, but once we got stuff out there, the story walked us through everything at a pace that was believable.

Egg & Spoon, by Gregory Maguire

Elena lives a difficult life in an impoverished village in Tsarist Russia.  The men have all been taken away by the Tsar's men and the land has grown unproductive.  Elena has no food and is forced to watch her mother slowly dying.  They are at wits end and there is little to hope for.  Then fate brings a visit from a retinue -- a train laden with more wealth and food than Elena can imagine -- and a young woman Elena's age named Ekaterina.

Ekaterina is on her way to the capital in Saint Petersburg to be presented in Court as a potential consort for the Tsar's godson.  A fateful confluence of accidental events forces the two girls to swap places.  The disorder this unleashes will, in the end, involve the Firebird, the Snow Dragon, Baba Yaga, and the Tsar of All Russia himself.

It's a playful novel that riffs on Russian mythology in the way that his popular series Wicked played on the Grimm's fairy tales.  I liked the story best in the beginning where it is less fantastical and relied on the popular idea of a simple good peasant petitioning the Tsar (i.e., the first 150 pages or so).  But as the story progresses, it grows odder and loses the spirit of the originals.  Certain elements like Baba Yaga's snarky and anachronistic humor is downright grating and mood-killing (think Miracle Max but without Billy Crystal's charm).  The idea of the formidable domovoi transformed into a puppy-dog like creature with duck feet is downright bizarre!  However, the weirdest image is of an army of giant matryoshka dolls attacking in formation.  Still, the book is an amazing accomplishment, pulling all of these elements together, being witty about it, and still formulating a coherent story.

The Black Butterfly, by Shirley Reva Vernick

Penny's Mom is obsessed with ghosts and, after sixteen years, Penny has grown accustomed to her Mom rushing off at a moment's notice and leaving her with friends so she can pursue the latest sighting.  But it's something of a new low when Mom informs Penny that she's being sent to a remote island off the coast of Maine to stay with an old friend at the Black Butterfly Inn for Christmas.  Penny has never heard of this friend and isn't sure what to expect.  The initial reception is frosty -- her hostess is AWOL and her son is less than friendly.  But with some prodding and help from the Inn's cook, Penny and the boy break the ice.  At the same time, strange things are afoot at the Inn.  Secrets from the past play a large part and, much to Penny's surprise, even supernatural elements appear.

A bit of a messy story that starts off sensibly enough as a story of reconciliation as Penny learns about her mother's past through some old family friends.  The cook is a nice light touch and the story could have easily focused on healing and growth, and even thrown in some nice romance as well.  But Vernick wants to tell a ghost story, so we shift to the supernatural.  It's here that the story largely becomes unhinged.  There's several stories and none of them make much sense, but they work up to a climax that works OK within its bounds.  However, the end seems largely detached from the rest of the story.  It seemed forced and didn't gel.

A Blind Spot for Boys, by Justina Chen

Shana's decided to swear off dating after an unfortunate experience with a much older guy.  So, she is less than thrilled to have her heart set racing from a chance encounter with a handsome guy named Quattro.  Before she has much time to worry about it though, her world is turned upside down when her father is diagnosed with retinal neuropathy and given a prognosis of complete blindness within six months.  With those dark clouds on the horizon, the family decides to launch a series of trips to check off destinations on Dad's bucket list.  She's off to Machu Piccu with her parents!

When she gets there, she finds that Quattro is also there (this is actually foreshadowed in the beginning of the book and not entirely a coincidence).  Her anti-dating resolution is in serious danger (although Quattro for his part also seems to have issues).  The tension that develops could have been the story, but rather than allow that to happen, Chen points things in an entirely different direction.  Their hike to the ancient ruins takes a dangerous turn and the story becomes a survival adventure!

There may be something realistic about a story that doesn't stick to a path.  Perhaps, going from family tragedy to romance to adventure story has some appeal for keeping us on our toes, but it doesn't make for a particularly readable story.  At some point, you just sit back and decide to enjoy the ride.  And unfortunately, the romance and in fact the family's struggle with Dad's impending blindness are largely lost in the noise of the environmental disaster and sheer survival.  Chen is a great writer (I loved her North of Beautiful) and her characters have depth and emotional weight, but this story is wildly out of control!  A book with a title like this should really be about the romance and Chen tries hard, but it's just not a compelling part of the story.

Kiss of Broken Glass, by Madeleine Kuderick

When Kenna gets caught in the girls' bathroom at school trying to cut herself, she runs afoul of Florida's Baker Act and gets involuntarily committed to a "stabilization facility" for 72 hours of treatment and observation.  Those three days of institutionalization give her an opportunity to reflect on her compulsion, how she developed it, and how others around her who also inflict self-harm behave.

Telling the story in verse is a bit dangerous as it tends to invite poignant but ultimately shallow platitudes with implied ellipses.  However, some people (including Kuderick's mentor Sonya Sones) can pull it off.  I give Kuderick a passing grade for being both moderate and inventive.  She avoids some of the easy cheap tricks and at the same time shows some creativity in her verses.  When individual verses stand up on their own (as they sometimes do here), you know you have something.

I'll also admit that Kuderick's admission that this novel was inspired (although not entirely based) on her real daughter's struggle with self-harm gives this effort a pathos and bravery that would paint me a heartless person for criticizing.  However, I thankfully don't have to hide a frank review of what is ultimately an effective work. Books about cutting are pretty easy to find.  This is one of the more interesting ones.

After the End, by Amy Plum

For all of her life until now, Juneau has believed that a great war wiped out civilization thirty years ago.  She and her clan, living in a remote part of Alaska, are nearly the only survivors of an apocalypse.  Aside from occasional unwanted run-ins with brigands and raiders, there is no one else left.  Then, a surprise attack destroys her village and her people are abducted and taken away.  She alone must find them and she sets off in a search, using clairvoyance and other magic she has learned to locate them.

As she sets out, she immediately makes a shocking discovery:  the world was not in fact destroyed.  Civilization is very much still there.  Why would the adults on her tribe lie to her?  There's no one to ask, but it seems tied up to their recent abduction.  Meanwhile, she is definitely being hunted.  In fact, as she quickly learns, there are two separate groups looking for her.  With the help of a spoiled young man named Miles (with a secret agenda of his own), she seeks to find her people in this strange (and very alive) world, while evading the hunters.

An odd adventure, with both realistic and supernatural elements mixed in.  In general, the story worked.  I was less taken by Plum's research - it is fairly obvious that the author has spent little if any time in the settings of the story as her descriptions sound like they were cribbed off of websites and she makes some pretty big geographical errors.  Somewhat more frustrating is the cliffhanger ending which basically lets us know that this the first of an unannounced series.  Don't expect any sort of wrap up as the book stops abruptly without an ending.

Being Sloane Jacobs, by Lauren Morrill

Two girls with identical first and last names decide to swap places while attending summer camp in Montreal.  Sloane Emily Jacobs is the daughter of a US senator, who has just betrayed her.  Her helicopter mother meanwhile is forcing her back into a career in figure skating that Sloane no longer wants to pursue.  Sloane Devon Jacobs is from the other side of the tracks.  Her goal is to score a hockey scholarship to get into college and escape her alcoholic mother and distant father, but she's choking on the rink and afraid that she doesn't have what it takes.  When the two girls cross paths, they bond over their envy of the other's life.

On a dare, they decide to switch roles -- with Sloane Emily ending up at a summer hockey camp and Sloane Devon at an elite figure skating training program.  While they both can skate, they are essentially fish out of water and a great deal of the first part of the book traces their struggle to survive in their new environments.  There's the expected set-backs, but ultimately the overcoming of this adversity to succeed (and to learn something about themselves to take back with them).  Romance, as expected, also pops up and complicates things.

No major surprises here, albeit a unique setting (Montreal).  Morrill tries to add some weight to the story with the family troubles, but neither the alcoholic mother nor the philandering father really get pursued.  Most of the adversity, for that matter, is played through pretty fast.  The pacing is a bit too glib to get hung up on character growth or literary pretension.  Classify this as a summer read.

Like No Other, by Una LaMarche

Devorah and Jaxon both live in Crown Heights, but they couldn't be more different.  Devorah is a young Lubavitch Hasid while Jaxon is West Indian.  Their worlds are completely separated.  But one night, during a hurricane, they end up stuck together in an elevator.  This chance encounter changes their lives, opening up a view of each others' worlds that draws them together.  And thus, they fall in love despite the insurmountable barriers to them even seeing each other.

On one side, this can be seen as a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet.  LaMarche has carved out a splendid look at what happens when two strong-minded young people resist their community's notions of what the future is supposed to bring.  However, there is more going on here.  For Devorah, there is an important question of her ability to choose a future that may not involve marriage at all (and not just with whom she socializes).  And while Jaxon is pleasant enough, the glue of this story is really Devorah, as she explores the danger of rejecting traditional boundaries while still embracing her faith. 

The novel, in the end, becomes a cross between the meeting-of-two-worlds of The Geography of You and Me and a far more serious dash of Eishes Chayil's Hush (it certainly seems to offend the same audience!).  Where it differs from both is that it is far more thoughtful and less sensationalist.  Anyone expecting to find a bad guy here will be quite surprised by the ending!

Let's Get Lost, by Adi Alsaid

Leila, while on an immense road trip north to see the Aurora Borealis, chances upon four different young people.  There's Hudson, about to start his studies in medicine.  Then, there's an angry and lost Bree, who's running away from the only home she has left.  While fleeing, she is still desperate to find a way to stop running.  Elliott, obsessed with romantic comedies, presents a different challenge.  He has just ruined his prom by attempting to generate a picture-perfect moment with his best friend by (unsuccessfully) confessing his love to her.  Leila helps him make the night right.  And then there's Sonia, afraid to acknowledge in public that she's dating again less than a year after the untimely demise of her first love.  And finally, of course, there's Leila's own story (about why she's making this trip in the first place).

The ultimate result is five peripherally related short stories.  Most of them are about loss and finding love again, and this is the theme that ties everything together.  While that is a decent theme and these are good stories, they are a bit repetitive, and the message too heavily hit.  That said, I liked the overall structure, which seemed different and a bit unique for YA.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce, by Katrina Leno

For most of her life, Molly has experienced episodes which she has blacked out and afterwards cannot remember what has occurred for a period of time.  As far as she knows, no one else has noticed because she's always managed to care for herself.  This changes after Molly is involved in a terrifying auto accident, where a victim (whom she has never met before) recognizes her but calls her by an entirely different name. 

It quickly becomes apparent that there is an entire group of people who know her, but under a different name, and solely from the time periods when she has blacked out.  Stranger still, no one seems to be surprised from this finding.  But no one will explain to her why this is so.

A complicated and, at times, tricky plot to follow.  The pace is perfect for the story and the mystery unravels at a satisfying pace.  The characters are a bit hard to engage with, but this is a plot-driven story.  Leno makes some effort to round out the character of Molly, but to be blunt no one really cares if she is a bad friend or a kind older sister.  We simply want to know what the heck is going on!  And that need to figure out this story is what will keep you flipping pages.

I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister, by Amelie Sarn

Two teenage girls of Algerian descent, growing up in France.  The younger one Djelila is brave and fearless.  She wears tight jeans and makeup to school, plays basketball, smokes with her friends, and bristles at the patriarchal restrictions of her family's culture.  The older one Sohane takes a different path.  In her last year of high school, Sohane decides that she'll start wearing a headscarf as a statement of freedom and self-respect.  Her decision to wear a head covering in school violates French law and causes her to be expelled from school.  Djelila is outraged at the treatment of her sister, but far worse awaits her when she is murdered for her apostasy a week later by a neighbor.

Translated from French, this short novel packs quite a punch of political issues, showing how religious freedom is ultimately more complicated than civil society understands.  It's easy as an American to see the hypocrisy in the French approach to secularization, but even that outrage oversimplifies the complexity of the issue.  Instead, Sarn brilliantly shows the yearning for self and agency through these two sisters.  Along the way, she also tackles the complex feelings of love and jealousy that the two girls experience towards each other.

Thirty Sunsets, by Christine Hurley Deriso

On the eve of her family's annual month-long beach vacation, Forrest discovers that her mother has invited Olivia (her older brother's psycho bulimic girlfriend) to join them.  Worse still, she's going to have to share a room with her!  All that Forrest wants is to have a normal summer -- meet a cute guy on the beach and have a first kiss, sort out why her brother has gotten so weird, and maybe lose Olivia in a riptide along the way.  What Forrest gets, however, is completely unexpected:  a summer of revelations (about family, her brother, and herself).

I liked Deriso's great sense of family dynamics and her ear for language in complex scenes.  I was less thrilled by her taste for melodrama and piling on crisis upon crisis.  This story features a rape, an attempted sexual assault, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, an abusive mother, alcoholism, and even a death.  Deriso doesn't have much patience for storytelling, so rather than focus on her strengths in character building she resorts to action and violence.  This ultimately makes the book exhausting and thin, and wastes some lovely and interesting characters.

My Faire Lady, by Laura Wettersten

In this fairly basic story of summer romance, we get a bit of a twist in the setting (a Ren Faire) but a tale which pretty much follows an expected trajectory.  Rowena, recovering from being cheated on by her boyfriend, jumps at the opportunity to spend the summer working away from home at a local Ren Faire.  There, she is blown away by the pageantry and the friendly community that provides it.  Quickly, she sets off in hot pursuit of a sexy knight but discovers that her real true love is waiting in the wings for her to realize it.

The story is sweet but a little hard to believe.  What parent would let their teen daughter waltz off for an unsupervised summer at a Ren Faire (sheer luck and some attentive grown-ups seem to save Ro from bigger trouble that probably would have come her way).  And everyone is just a little too sweet and friendly for words (even the bad guys are a bit comic and harmless).  To me, this made the book seem like it was pitched for a pretty young audience, but with underage drinking and multiple veiled allusions to sex, I'm not really sure. I couldn't tell if this was for middle readers, YA, or NA (one review I read claimed it was for "all ages" -- but perhaps it was really for none?).

Fat Boy vs the Cheerleaders, by Geoff Herbach

Gabe has a love-hate relationship with the school's pop machine.  It certainly isn't helping his waistline.  On a good day, he can limit himself to only three bottle of Code Red.  But even though he has a bit of addiction to sugary carbonated drinks, the good news is that the proceeds at least benefit the band program.  A small comfort when the popular kids are making fun of your weight.

But then, the price goes up unannounced.  When Gabe goes to complain, he discovers something even more shocking: the proceeds from the machine have been diverted to a new program for the cheerleaders.  Summer band camp has been cancelled and the entire band program is in jeopardy.  In response, Gabe rallies the other band "geekers" to make a stand and defend the music program and their own self-respect.

A strange and fairly random story that delights in the sort of coarse razzing language that YA writers believe belong in "boy" books (and which always does a nice job of driving me towards the books with pink covers instead!).  There's plenty of frenetic activity and little troubling character development to interfere with it.  That would be fine, but most of the action is recounted by Gabe after the fact in the form of a one-sided interrogation.  This device drags things out and artificially builds up the suspense as important plot points are conveniently omitted until later to extend the story.  In sum, a pretty annoying read with a silly plot.

On the Road to Find Out, by Rachel Toor

Alice is an ace at getting good grades.  She's easily beat out all of the competition at school. But when her application for early decision at Yale is rejected, she has to do a reality check.  Outside of academics, her life is unbalanced.  Aside from her best friend (who's really more like her Mom's adopted favorite daughter) and her pet rat Walter, Alice doesn't really have anyone who understands her.  And when she has a falling out with her friend and a tragedy strikes at home, she realizes just how tenuous her situation is.

It is therefore something of a godsend that she discovers cross-country running around this time.  Having never done it before, a New Year's resolution to start doesn't go terribly well.  But Alice is persistent and determined to find something she can excel at, even if she really isn't sure what she wants.

I went through a lot of opinions about this book as I read it.  At times, I found it unfocused.  I wasn't really sure what it was supposed to be about (love for a rat, reconciling with mother, a search for meaning, etc.).  The story seemed to change more than the character.  Unhelpfully, Alice can be a terribly inconsistent character.  For such an insightful and intelligent narrator, she seemed far too capable of being clueless and boneheaded.  It's a character flaw that's supposed to be endearing, but it just seemed implausible and more like a lazy bit of writing.  But by the end, it seemed to hit its stride and it goes out on a high note, so I'll give it a qualified endorsement.

The Geography of You and Me, by Jennifer E. Smith

The night the lights go out all over the Northeast, Lucy and Owen find themselves stuck in a stalled elevator in their Manhattan apartment.  Once rescued, they decide to spend the evening together.  The city -- without electricity -- has become magical, a surprisingly friendly town where you can even see the stars from Central Park.

Afterwards, they move on -- Owen and his father move out west, while Lucy and her parents relocate to Edinburgh and then to London.  Long distance relationships are hard (especially when you're not really sure what the nature of the relationship is in the first place), but the friendship born that night survives and they stay in touch through postcards and occasional emails.

I loved the characters (so full of hope and anxiety).  I loved the settings (so many familiar places from New York to Seattle to Edinburgh, and just enough detail to make them seem authentic without overdoing things).  But most of all, I loved the sheer beauty of the story -- a simple romance to be sure, but a captivating one based on honesty and believability.  I might have gotten a bit annoyed towards the end when Smith drags everything out a bit more, but I forgave her as soon as I got to the pay-off.

The Truth About Alice, by Jennifer Mathieu

Everyone knows that Alice is a slut.  She slept with two guys within the same hour at a party.  She even was responsible for one of those boy's death a few days later when she sexted him while he was trying to drive his truck.  So what that folks haven't been nice to her?  And so what that people have sometimes exaggerated the things she's done when they re-tell the rumors?  The graffiti in the girls' bathroom?  And the casting out and shunning?  She deserved all of it!

However, the truth is a slippery thing.  As four of Alice's peers recount their stories and admit their small contributions and omissions, a somewhat simpler yet more damning story is revealed.  And it is all the more shocking for its plausibility.

A well-written and ultimately icky story about bullying and the role that adolescent insecurity plays in it.  It's a story that is calculated to make you mad.  While there are acts of courage and decency in the story, the overall message is of how pride, vanity, and arrogance will trump the truth.  Mathieu makes no attempt to whitewash and the result is an ugly (but very honest) story about the near destruction of a human being a mob.  Almost certainly the book is on its way to becoming a book discussion subject!

We Are the Goldens, by Dana Reinhardt

Nell and her older sister Layla have always been inseparable, at least, that is, in Nell's mind.  Going to separate schools, it's been only too easy to explain away any distance between them.  So when Nell starts at City Day as a freshman, she is certain that she and her sister (a junior) will bond tightly.  On her first day, Nell is surprised to learn that Layla has a secret life.  And when Nell learns what the secret is, she is torn between loyalty to Layla and her conviction to do the right thing.  Meanwhile, she's making her own mistakes and torn over her feelings for her best friend Felix.

Written in the heart-aching pleas of an extended letter directly to her older sister, Nell's story early on sets a high expectation of tragedy and heartbreak.  Unfortunately, this particular expedition into pathos didn't gel as well for me as her earlier fraternal take, The Things A Brother Knows.  It hurts that the material is not all that original and that the storyline is cluttered with subplots.  The story felt more like a novella that Reinhardt has stretched out with other stories that were peripheral at best.

Yet, there is no denying the strength and beauty of Reinhardt's writing.  Her ability to drop emotional bombshells with seeming ease makes this a pleasure to read.  And while I very rarely quote from the books I read, I can't help but quote a passage (from page 184) that knocked the wind out of me for its amazing insight into the pain of adolescent transition:

"It's suited Mom and Dad best to think of us as smart and mature young women with good sense who make good choices so that they could wrap themselves up in their own lives and fall asleep a little on the job of being our parents.  All these years, Layla, we've tried to make things easy on them.  We go back and forth, back and forth, smart and mature, building a bridge between two lives and crossing it over and over again.  You know I've always hated being called a baby, but I started to wish it were true.  The baby of whom nothing is asked or expected.

"I wanted to go to them, to tell them, to put them in charge, but I didn't know how.  I was afraid to cause that earthquake."

Love and Other Foreign Words, by Erin McCahan

A precocious student, Josie has skipped a few years of school, but her social skills haven't necessarily kept up with her academic advancement.  To cope with her challenges, she's learned to speak everyone's "language" (student-teacher, her sisters, her parents, etc.).  But when Josie's sister Kate brings home a fiance, Josie is dumbfounded.  He's just obviously wrong for Kate and Josie cannot imagine what she sees in him.  Worse, the new couple have taken to communicating in a new language that Josie finds she doesn't understand -- a realization that leads to the even bigger bombshell that Josie really doesn't understand "love" at all.

For a story about language and communication, it is a good thing that McCahan excels with dialogue in this rather chatty book. Unfortunately, she is less successful with telling her story.  There are some pretty obvious directions that the story will go (reconciliation being the obvious consistent solution in all cases), but there isn't much in the first 200 pages of the book to give any indication of where McCahan intends to go.

It didn't help that I failed to gain much sympathy for Josie or Kate.  For much of the book, they were just plain mean to each other.  And, while I know full well how siblings can be, it's hard for me to believe that the parents wouldn't have more effectively stepped in.  Finally, there's that silly infatuation that Josie has over Denis DeYoung -- excuse me?!  Gag!

A Time to Dance, by Vadma Venkatraman

Veda loves dancing and has talent in the Indian art of Bharatanatyam dance.  Her strength, flexibility, and dogged determination have given her the ability to strike amazing and difficult poses demonstrating immense technical proficiency.  She wins competitions and is justifiably proud of the achievements which have come from years of hard work.

Then an accident injures her, leading to the amputation of one of her feet.  Her once-supportive dance instructor tells her that her career is over, but she refuses to give up.  Instead, she focuses on rebuilding her strength and learning to use a prosthetic foot and picks up a new teacher.  From this new teacher and the inspiration of another dancer, she discovers an entirely different approach to dance which is focused more on spirituality than form.

A beautiful story that sheds light on an unfamiliar world of Indian dance and spirituality.  Veda is a great ambassador for the reader, providing us with a sympathetic heroine with a heart of gold.  She is both strong and virtuous and, in Venkatraman's gentle hand, she both rewards us and is rewarded.

I was less taken by the writing itself.  Venkatraman chose to write the novel in a pithy broken form that claims to be free verse, but which felt more like half-finished ideas.  The writing lacks the coherency of prose or the beauty of poetry, leaving us with words that seek to be poignant in their minimalism but that just look sketchy and rough.

Searching for Sky, by Jillian Cantor

For as long as Sky can remember, Island has been her world. Surrounded by endless Ocean, she and her friend River have survived on captured rabbits, fish, and berries.  Her mother and his father perished some time ago, so now it is only them.  But then, they are rescued and brought back to a world that Sky does not know or understand.  Sent to live with her maternal grandmother (who she doesn't remember) and separated from River, she has to learn entirely new survival skills.

Beautifully written, Cantor delights (perhaps a bit too enthusiastically at times) in contrasting the innocent life on Island with Sky and River's existence in California -- all a little Gods Must Be Crazy (but without the laughs)  Those contrasts and the process these two young people go through in acclimatizing to their new world could make for a stellar book on its own, but Cantor is not content to tell that tale. Instead, she throws in a lot of back story about Sky and River's parents belonging to a cult and a mass murder that implicates River -- all of which ultimately seems unnecessary. Thankfully, this extra stuff is more of a distraction than something to ruin this otherwise nice story of innocence lost.

I Kill the Mockingbird, by Paul Acampora

In the summer before they start high school, three friends decide to honor their late English teacher by hatching a plot to incite a mass movement for reading his favorite book -- Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird.  The kids reason that if they can make the book seem controversial, they can artificially stir interest in it.  Learning that modern bookstore chains are incapable of tracking books that are mis-shelved, they trigger an artificial shortage by simply hiding copies of the books in every large bookstore in Connecticut. Their action inspires copy-cats nationwide and, before they know it, the whole thing has swung wildly out of control.

I liked the concept and eagerly dived into this short middle reader. The characters were smart and funny and I expected cleverness. But the book gets a bit too precious for my taste.  First of all, there's the very weird idea that To Kill A Mockingbird could go viral.  Weirder still, the way it is done (can you really manage in a few weeks to travel all over the state, misplace every copy of a book, and not get caught?).  Perhaps none of this matters and perhaps this absurdity is all supposed to be in fun, like a Kate DiCamillo book.  But it's really just silly and what is the point anyway?  There are a number of great opportunities to say something (about literature, growing up, romance, or even cancer) but Acampora just wants to be goofy and convince us that (since the book is about good literature) it must somehow be valuable intrinsically. But it never did it for me.

Pointe, by Brandy Colbert

Theo has struggled with an eating disorder and self-confidence issues since her first boyfriend disappeared on her and (barely two weeks later) her best friend Donovan was abducted.  Four years later, she's mostly recovered and well on her way to a professional ballet career.  But then Donovan suddenly returns and she's shocked to learn that her disappearing boyfriend was also her best friend's kidnapper!

What develops seems like a classic (and predictable) drama where everything comes to a head at the same time:  she'll have to testify against her former boyfriend, publicly reveal her shame, probably pass out from her increasingly dangerous starvation routines, and audition for her professional dancing career -- all in rapid succession.  But what turned my opinion of this story from "predictable drama" to a pleasant surprise was an ending that completely shocked me.  Colbert goes for something completely different, with an ending that was so fitting and so much better than I expected.   It's easy to get jaded when you read hundreds of YA books, so when an author throws you a curve ball, it will make your day!

The other characters are largely forgettable (and easily confused with each other) so it's important that Theo carry this story.  That is hard as she is hardly sympathetic.  Frankly, she does a number of plain stupid things and does a similarly terrible job of sorting through her life (for example, her hesitation over testifying became increasingly implausible to me the more it was drawn out).  Yet, there's no denying that she pulls herself together in the end (and not, as I said above, in the expected fashion).

Notes from Ghost Town, by Kate Ellison

Nearly a year has passed since Olivia's mother confessed to killing Stern -- a piano prodigy who was also Olivia's boyfriend.  As the time of her mother's sentencing approaches, Olivia is angry and scared, and going a bit crazy.  Literally.  Olivia's suddenly gone color blind.  Her doctor can find no physical cause of the disorder and suggests it may be stress-induced.  This is no small matter.  Mom suffers from schizophrenia, which can be hereditary.  And perception disorders can be a symptom of the disease.

Worse still, Olivia has started to experience hallucinations that Stern is appearing before her.  Or are they really hallucinations?  He tells her that her mother is actually innocent, that she was framed, and that he is stuck in limbo until the injustice is corrected.  Olivia, he says, must figure out what really happened and rescue her mother before she is sentenced.  While none of this makes any sense to her, Olivia decides to act.

It's a little of a slow starter, but once the sleuthing begins, Ellison weaves a tight story of intrigue that still finds time for all levels of trust and betrayal, and even a small romance.  The ending wraps things up a bit too easily, but we go through enough to get to that happy ending that it is welcomed nonetheless.  The story's debt to Ghost is a bit obvious, but it's recast enough that younger readers won't mind that this is hardly original.

Say What You Will, by Cammie McGovern

Amy is the girl in a motorized scooter, a hand-held computer that talks for her, and half a body that won't work properly.  Matthew is the kid who taps the lockers when he walks down the hall, washes his hands repeatedly, and never goes out.  Neither of them really have any friends.

When Amy complains to her mother that having a grown-up health aide with her at school basically ensures that she'll never meet anyone, a plan is hatched to hire four "peer helpers" to work with her at school.  Matthew gets hired as one of those helpers.  It's an odd match-up and Amy's over-protective parents aren't thrilled to have Matthew (with his steadily worsening OCD) taking care of their daughter.  However, the two kids discover a special chemistry that transcends their usual public identity as "the girl with CP" and "the OCD boy." The result is a surprisingly touching story of two young people with a special relationship.

The strength of the book is the characters.  They can be stiff (McGovern struggles with Matthew in particular), but they are sympathetic and insightful.  Frustratingly prone to doing dumb things, this makes the reader root for them all the more.  Sales reps with limited imaginations have tried to bill this novel as Fault In Our Stars meets Eleanor & Park, but it really is none of the above.  The kids are not dying and they really aren't geeky nerds either.  They are, however, the only two young people who can see past each other's disabilities due to the sheer fact that they know what it is really like to be labeled.  Their relationship is frighteningly lovely and fragile in a way that grownups will appreciate, and it will break your heart.

The only criticism I have with the story is how long it was dragged out and how randomly the story weaves and dodges.  McGovern has a near-stubborn refusal to follow the usual predictable arc and the story that we begin with is hardly the one with which we end (to paraphrase the wisdom of Chekhov, the pistol in the first chapter is used in chapter three to dig up turnips!).  Yet, the completely unpredictable trajectory of the story is also its strength as it serves to underscore the truth that life goes in unpredictable directions.  Those looking for a definitive conclusion will be disappointed by the one chosen here.  In the end, the story doesn't end so much as slow down enough for the reader to leap off.

A Girl Called Fearless, by Catherine Linka

In a parallel universe, genetically-modified beef has triggered a mass cancer epidemic that has killed off most of the adult female population of the United States (wiser countries outside of the US never allowed the GMO beef to be consumed).  In the country that was left behind, the Paternalist political party has risen to power and gotten the government to restrict the surviving women and girls to the home.  Banned from going to college, girls are sold off to the highest bidder as breeding stuck when they reach adolescence.

Despite the political changes, Avie had hoped to attend college when she completed high school, but her cash-strapped father has instead sold her off to an odious, rich and powerful benefactor of the Paternalists.  Determined to avoid her fate as a trophy wife and provider of offspring to a man twice her age, she decides to flee to Canada (where the authorities remain sympathetic and have been known to grant asylum to women fleeing the US).  However, the escape won't be easy.  More so, because Avie has unwittingly stumbled over a conspiracy whose exposure threatens the entire status quo, placing her in the position of having to choose between her dreams of college and freedom, and her sense of duty to her sisters.

The obvious inspiration is Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, but Linka's story doesn't have quite as lofty literary ambitions.  Pitched more for the adrenaline and hormones of a teen audience, the story features more violence/action and the gratuitous attention to fashion and glamor that one expects in the modern YA dystopian (a sequel is due out next year and, yes, this book is already optioned for a movie!).  An amazingly accommodating boyfriend provides suitable eye candy.

All that said, Linka is a bit grittier than the usual YA writer.  There's significant attention given to real-life survival skills, a realistic lesson on how to fire a 9mm, and a focus on the practical details of this (nonetheless far-fetched) alternative world.  I especially appreciated the fact that this isn't set in some "near future" but most explicitly in a parallel time-line (the mass extinction of women took place in 2002, shortly after the Towers fell).  I found it readable and engaging.  Fluffy but good!

Infinite Sky, by C. J. Flood

In the aftermath of her mother's abandonment of their family, thirteen year-old Iris discovers love from a Traveler whose family has squatted on her family's property.  But while the boy's company brings her peace, the gypsies' presence becomes a focal point of rage for her father and her older brother (who both redirect their frustration from Mum's departure against the unwanted trespassers).  As one can imagine, tragedy ultimately ensues.  But in the calm before the storm, Iris and the boy enjoy a summer of quiet talks and nature walks.

A gentle and tightly-written novel that is ultimately a bit dull and seemingly geared at an adult audience.  Precocious young readers might enjoy its pacific pace, but there is entirely too little about Iris's feelings and little appreciation for how a young heart thinks.  Instead, this seems like a book for adults looking back wistfully on a "summer that changed me forever" -- an admittedly popular and appealing genre, but something quite distinctly different from YA.

Somehow, I also miss the significance of the cover or the book's title.  They are both pretty but not really much related to the ideas of the novel.

Guy in Real Life, by Steve Brezenoff

Lesh is a heavy metal fan who's grown tired of the same old grind. His best friend is trying to turn him on to online multi-player gaming, but Lesh can't get into the constant violence and mayhem of hacking and slashing.  It just seems like a boring waste of time.

Svetlana is an introvert and a creative genius.  Leader and dungeon master for the school's gaming club, she spends endless time in her room planning out vividly hand-illustrated and carefully plotted adventures for the club.

When these two young people literally cross paths one night, an unlikely attachment develops. Svetlana isn't used to being noticed (aside from a sleezeball that her parents are trying to hook her up with).  But it is Lesh who truly goes all out:  inspired by her qualities, he creates an online avatar that represents how he sees her and he starts to play this online "Svvetlana," discovering that being a healer rather than a fighter and helping others appeals to him more.  Pretending to be a girl online, however, creates complicated when you are really a G.I.R.L. (guy in real life).

A mixed bag for me.  I love the originality of the story and the idea of an adolescent boy who is growing comfortable with his feminine side.  I just wish that the idea had been developed further. Instead, we spend an awfully long time in the gaming world (inside the characters themselves in a pseudo-fantasy environment), which isn't terribly interesting because it's mostly narrated (apparently gamers in Minneapolis just sit back and get told what their characters are doing, rather than play them).  I wasn't entirely sure what the point was?

And while I liked Lesh and felt he had some great nuances, Svetlana is neglected.  You get some sense of the sexism in role-playing, but not much about why she likes it nonetheless.  As a general observation, guy writers seem to have trouble giving their female characters depth -- which seems ironic in the context of this book's theme!

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me, by Julie Anne Peters

The shock of having her girlfriend die from heart failure is about as big of a surprise as Alex can imagine (who dies of something like that in High School?). That is, until she discovers that her girlfriend was seeing someone else at the same time that they were together.  Meeting Liana (the other woman) is hard for both of them, but as Alex gets to know Liana, the two of them discover that they have a lot more in common than just the same taste in girlfriends.

Peters writes great YA fiction, where the fact that her characters are gay plays second to simply writing a good story.  On the sheer desire of wanting to support the normalization of LGBT YA fiction, I enjoy reading and promoting her books.  Unfortunately, this particular novel is not her strongest.  The plot (which really doesn't have that much to do in the first place) meanders about. Subplots involving the dead girl's younger sister and another one about Alex's former BFF are never well integrated into the focus of the story on Alex and Liana's budding relationship.  However, I still enjoyed this story of girl-meets-girl as an appealing romance.

Ask Me, by Kimberly Pauley

Aria Morse is cursed to be an oracle -- a speaker of the truth. Following her grandmother and a string of ancestors running back three millennia, every time someone speaks a question within earshot (rhetorical or not), Aria must respond (often with answers she didn't even know until they were altered) and always truthfully.  When the behavior first appeared in middle school, it branded Aria a freak at and she learned to keep a low profile and try to avoid being around people asking questions.  And that mostly worked.  But when a string of brutal murders rock her small Florida town, Aria finds her talents bring her into the crosshairs of suspicious police and the murderer.

It's a clever idea and creates lots of interesting twists to the plot.  I like the setting as well.  But the sociopath storyline left me cold. Compared to the fascinating ramifications of a teen who only speaks the truth, a homicidal crazy simply wasn't very interesting. And, while foreshadowing is largely absent, I had figured out whodunnit about fifty pages before Aria did and that just made the rest of the book a chore.  So, a great concept but the execution was a disappointment.

Girls Like Us, by Gail Giles

Quincy and Biddy have known each other from their years in the Special Ed program together, but they were hardly friends.  Quincy is perpetually angry and aggressive with others while Biddy cowers inside her jacket with an eating disorder.  But when these two young women graduate from school, they are placed together as roommates, caring for an elderly widow.  What develops is a touching and sensitive portrayal of discovery, growth, self-respect, and burgeoning understanding between the three of them.

Written in alternating chapters with Quincy's and Biddy's distinctive voices, the text takes a bit to warm up to.  But once you do get accustomed to it, the story is an eye-opener.  Giles takes her career in Special Education and uses it to give an authentic and inspiring voice to these two marginalized women.  The result can be heartbreaking at times, but it is ultimately uplifting.

The Battle of Darcy Lane, by Tara Altebrando

Julia's plans for the summer get thrown askew when a new girl named Alyssa moves to her street.  Alyssa isn't very nice and seems to immediately set her sights on stealing away Julia's best friend Taylor.  Amidst the battle over Taylor lies a number of other major events:  a competition between Julie and Alyssa, a friendship with the boy next door that may be growing into something more, new friends at band camp, some sneak watching of a forbidden TV show, and the arrival of the cicadas.

Altebrando hits a number of key tween themes in a light, realistic, and respectful manner.  This isn't a story of big events.  In her own words, it's a "quiet" book.  Kids are kids, grownups are grownups.  Everyone is a bit flawed and acceptably happy.  And truth be told, Julia isn't a terribly nice girl (being almost as mean to girls she doesn't like as Alyssa is to her), but she recognizes it and the reader can sympathize with her flaws.  It all rolls up into a lovely honest story of the struggle to maintain friendships in the turmoil of pre-adolescence.  I'm really not sure where those bugs fit in though!

To All the Boys I've Loved, by Jenny Han

Lara Jean is the middle girl of three.  After their mother died, her older sister Margot kept things together and there was a comfortable routine.  But now, Margot's graduated and gone to study in Scotland.  So, it's Lara Jean, her little sister, and her father.

Things start off on an inauspicious note when five private letters that Lara Jean wrote to her secret crushes (and never intended to send) somehow get mailed out.  She must do some quick damage control (particularly because one of the recipients is Margot's ex-boyfriend and Margot doesn't know that Lara Jean liked him as well!).  Her peculiar Shakespearean solution is to conspire with another one of the boys to fake a relationship to throw off her sister's ex-.  This, as one can imagine, complicates things yet further and has numerous unintended consequences.

Jenny Han scores again with a beautiful book that combines authentic stories and behavior with finely nuanced and detailed characters.  The girls and their father felt so real it was impossible not to be sucked into their story.  Han gets teen angst and the complexities of adolescent love.  However, her talents go far beyond teen romance as she also shows a fine appreciation for family dynamics and has a real ear for how people actually talk and relate to each other.  A truly wonderful book about love, trust, loyalty, and being brave when your heart is on the line.

Free to Fall, by Lauren Miller

In the near future, everyone will have the Lux app on their handhelds to guide them through life.  They no longer have to worry about making mistakes and wrong decisions, because Lux tells them exactly what the correct choice is.  Of course, they could always choose to do something else, but why would they bother when Lux is always right?  That is, unless they were one of those disturbed individuals who listen to voices in their heads that make them act irrationally -- a socially dangerous condition known as The Doubt.

Rory is a bright kid, so it surprises no one (except her) that she's been accepted at the elite Theden Academy (a sort of Grande Ecole for gifted teens in Western Massachusetts).  Her doubts are not the work of humility; they are founded in a secret that she can't risk revealing:  that she hears The Doubt (an inconvenient fact that would lead to her immediate expulsion if it ever became known).  It's a hereditary condition and her mother (an alumna of Theden) suffered from it as well.

Once at the school though, far more serious issues rear up.  With the help of her roommate and a townie boyfriend, Rory discovers that there is intrigue afoot at the school.  And it has ramifications far outside of its walls.  The release of a new handheld device and its new improved Lux app threatens civilization as a whole and the project, Rory and her friends discover, is tied to the Academy itself.  It is up to them to save humanity from its own willingness to abandon free will for the convenience of technology.

So, it's a dystopian with a strong anti-technology message.  That message can be a bit too heavily delivered and the plot strays into the realm of the silly (particularly when it drags flu immunizations into its crosshairs), but Miller makes some good points and will set some young minds thinking about the benefits and costs of mobile social media.  Not all of it comes off as Luddite ranting.

It's a long book, though, and a busy story.  There are so many subplots that it is a credit to the author that she can tie them all up by the end.  It does though seem like a chore to do so and perhaps a more concise story would have made its point as effectively.

The Lost, by Sarah Beth Durst

Upset by her mother's worsening health, Lauren drives blindly out into the desert.  An unusual dust storm swallows her up and she ends up in a run-down town called Lost.  There, she finds a strange community of dangerous and desperate scavengers, criminals, and rabid animals.  But with the help of a beautiful god-like man and a resourceful little girl, she manages to stay alive.  Escaping from the place is another story however.  To do that, she is told, she must first figure out why she is lost in the first place.

An imaginative and creepy fantasy.  I didn't care so much for the ending, where in service to the continuation of the story as the first of a trilogy (why?), Durst veers far away from the compact world she so wonderfully has created.  Given how certainly the plot twists destroy the beauty of the novel's central conceit, I'll focus on the world of this one book alone.

The idea that when things are lost they end up in an isolated desert town is quite picturesque and the logic of the place is nicely played out here.  This original setting had a great mix of intrigue and danger to make things interesting without being too scary.  I also enjoyed the characters (who mostly play against type from the little girl who is so resourceful to the romantic lead who is notably blasé throughout to the heroine Lauren herself).  Technically, this isn't even a YA book, but it will appeal to teen readers (and folks who like the genre) just fine.

Tom's Midnight Garden, by A. Philippa Pearce

Tom and his brother Peter are very close and, when Peter is diagnosed with measles, Tom is upset that he is to be sent away to spend ten days with his aunt and uncle.  But the pain of the separation from his brother is assuaged by an adventure shortly after his arrival.  One evening, he discovers that the door to the back of the house leads to a secret garden which only appears at night.  And in the garden he finds a young girl named Hattie, with whom he has many happy adventures.  Night after night he returns, not noticing that she is continually growing older while he of course stays young.  More frustrating, as Tom's brother recovers, it comes time for Tom to leave the house (and the opportunity to spend time in the garden with Hattie).

It's a classic story (first published in 1958) but I've never read it before.  One is immediately struck with how stiff and awkward the writing is (from a combination of the era when children's books were stiff and awkward with the English-ness of the writing and setting).   The mannerisms (particularly Tom and Peter's affection for each other) also seemed a bit creepy at times.

However, it has its charms.  The tale is terribly innocent in a way that children's books don't allow much anymore.  The appeal of the book (child able to take secret adventure to places adults can't go) is timeless, even if the story itself is horribly dated.  And the story, with a dash of The Secret Garden and Somewhere in Time even has a sweet romantic quality to it, although naturally enough (given the context it was written in) that romance is more infantile than passionate.

Torn Away, by Jennifer Brown

After a tornado devastates her town, seventeen year-old Jersey has to learn how to recover.  Her mother and little sister have been killed.  Her stepfather, while physically alive, is so emotionally damaged by the loss that he shuts her out.  All that is left are her estranged father (and his dysfunctional family) who don't want her and her mother's parents (whom she's never met and was well-warned off by Mom while she was still alive).  With her home and family destroyed, all would seem lost, but Jersey finds that even when you seem to have lost everything, there's always something left to hang on to.

A moving and engaging story that explores two powerful themes: the process of coping with loss and the meaning of family.  These are hardly new themes, but Brown breathes new life into them with compelling characters and tightly-woven narrative.  A story without a dull moment is a joy, but it's really the people in this story that made me thoroughly enjoy it.  Brown has previously shown a talent (see Hate List or Bitter End) for creating rich and realistic characters with complex motivations, and she does not disappoint here.  Most of all, it is Jersey's spirit and determination that wins over the reader, but even the most repulsive members of her father's family are interesting. 

Hidden Girl, by Shyima Hall

When Shyima was a little girl living in rural Egypt in the 1990s, she was sold by her family into slavery to pay off her older sister's debts.  After a few years of service, her captors moved to the United States and brought her along to continue her back-breaking servitude.  It took almost three years for her to be found and rescued, and many more years after that to recover.  While this true story was widely recounted in the press at the time, in this book she gets to tell that story herself.

The book itself is fascinating, eye-opening, and (of course) horrifying.  That said, it is hard to critique it.  It comes off as petty to point out the inadequacies of the writing as the author has the double whammy of being a non-native speaker and of being denied primary education until well into her teens.  If anything, the halting and sometimes unfocused writing gives the book authenticity and a clear sense of voice.  Some light assistance from co-writer Lisa Wysocky helps, but doesn't interfere with the immediacy of Hall's anger and hurt as she recalls her most painful memories.

What really makes the book shine is Hall's honesty about herself.  She has many strong opinions, but she is as quick to find fault in herself as she does in others. In particular, there's a fascinating section near the end of the book where she talks about her own personality and what enslavement did to how she relates to others and the outside world.   But even before you reach that point, you know that one of the striking legacies of her ordeal is her ability to be bold and frank here.


[Editorial aside:  I don't read much non-fiction and I have never reviewed it here, so this is a bit of a departure for me.  But as this autobiography covers Shyima's adolescent years, it seemed appropriate to include (and the book is being marketed as YA non-fiction by the publisher).  It also doesn't hurt that I've been heavily exposed to Egyptian culture through my father and can vividly recall visiting the type of town from where Shyima came.]

The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy, by Kate Hattemer

When it is announced that a reality show will be staged at the Selwyn Academy (a high school for the arts in Minnesota), a group of nerds and outcasts decide that they have to do something to fight back against it.  Reality television and this show in particular, is simply an exploitation of the school and a perversion of true "art." Inspired by the poetry of Ezra Pound, which they are studying in English class, four of these students embark on a secret plan to strike back.  Even when their plan is betrayed by one of their members, the other three double down to bring this television show to its knees and to expose the hypocrisy of the show's producers and the school's administrators who are in cahoots with them.

It's an odd story that flirts with absurdity while maintaining humor and originality.  Undeniably, it's very funny, but in the crass and tasteless way that I associate more with male writers like David Levithan.  In the end one doesn't know how seriously to take a story featuring defecation artwork, a heroic tumor-ridden gerbil, and an 864-page "long poem." It works best as an adventure, but Hattemer makes the mistake of occasionally trying to add gravity by exploring hero Ethan's fear of commitment and decisiveness.  The story doesn't have the patience to pursue this, though, and Hattemer was better off sticking to the crude and the rude.

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

Every summer, Cady and family have come to their private island off the coast from Martha's Vineyard.  Three families in all (grandparents, uncles and aunts, and lots of cousins) -- the entire Sinclair clan in their rich privileged WASPish glory.  The eldest three children (Cady, Mirren, and Johnny) and Johnny's friend Gat (who Cady has been crushing on for many years) have been inseparable.  But something happened in their fifteenth summer and Cady got very sick.  She was found in the water, suffering from terrible migraines and, for some unknown reason, totally alone in her underwear.  And she had no memory of how she ended up this way.  She missed the opportunity to return the next year but, now in her seventeenth summer, she looks forward to being reunited with Gat and her cousins.

However, something is not quite right.  No one will talk to her about what happened two summers ago.  Her grandfather has torn down his old house and put up a new one.  Her younger cousins keep their distance.  As the summer progresses, memories come back to her and the terrible horrible truth is re-emerges.  For Cady, who has been unable to recall it all, the horror is being relived.

A rather darker tale than I usually associate with E. Lockhart, and I don't think I cared for it much!  The story is well-written and the mystery unfolds at a nice pace (although, once revealed, the book really has nowhere to go for the last twenty pages).  I did love the little interludes where Lockhart goes off on the gruesomeness of Brothers Grimm in a lovely set of parallel tales.  But the story was not very pretty or beautiful or even as suspenseful as I hoped it would be.  It was ultimately gross and tragic and a bit cruel.

Never Ending, by Martyn Bedford

And while we're on a dead brother kick, here's another one...

After Shiv's little brother Declan dies, she can't shake the sense that she was responsible for his death.  The guilt is tearing her apart, making her prone to sudden violent acts and memory loss.  When traditional therapy fails, she ends up at a remote institute that practices an extreme form of immersion therapy.  Along with a group of other young people who have also lost loved ones, they struggle through the emotional healing process. As for the facts of what happened to Shiv's brother, they are slowly unfolded through alternate chapters of flashback, recounting how an idyllic and romantic Greek vacation went tragically bad.

It's well-written and the characters of Shiv and Declan are interesting and their relationship complex, but it's hard to shake the fact that we've done this story all before -- the tragic accident, the exaggerated self-blaming, the institutionalization (with its combination of patients who want to get better and those that don't), and so on.  There simply isn't anything new here.  In fact, there's plenty of the old tricks, like not revealing the great "trauma" until the end so we can't evaluate how legit (or usually, illegit) the main character's sense of guilt is.  All of which leaves us with the Big Question:  why read it?