Sway With Me, by Syed M. Masood

Arsalan has been raised and homeschooled by his great grandfather Nana.  Since his mother died in a car accident a few years ago, it's just been the two of them (his abusive father abandoned them long before). Now Nana has decided that it is time for Arsalan to attend public school. Nana's tutelage, heavy on literature and neglectful of math or science, has left Arsalan's education unbalanced and his social skills non-existent.

Recognizing his weakness, Arsalan turns to the daughter of a prominent matchmaker in his class named Beanish, in hopes that she can find him a girlfriend.  Beanish has a request of her own:  she needs a partner for an upcoming dance contest.  Arsalan knows nothing about dance, but he'll do whatever it takes to get her help with his problem. She in turn solicits the help of Diamond, a stylish and athletic boy who helps Arsalan bulk up for his role.

The situation (and Diamond in particular, with his habit of referring to himself in the third person) is comedic and overall there is a rom-com element to this story, but it has several serious themes as well.  Beanish's dance is not actually for a contest but for a more important purpose:  saving her sister from an unwanted marriage.  And Arsalan is not just socially awkward, but also a survivor of horrific childhood abuse.  Masood's writing beautifully balances out the light and the heavy, often at the same time, as in this passage which so crushingly depicts Arsalan's association of love and abuse:

Before I could respond, her lips -- accidentally I am sure -- grazed the crook of my neck. Their touch was soft and impossibly delicate against the spot where my father had once pressed a match and threatened to burn me.

And it's not just Masood's sensitivity to complex emotional states that makes this story shine.  Culture and religion feature prominently and treated with some sophistication.  Some of the pious (the intended groom of Beanish's older sister and Arsalan's father) are negative, but Diamond (for all of his vanity) is a positive role model for religion.  Nana's skepticism (rooted in intellectual pursuits) contrasts with Beanish's instinctual rebelliousness.  Arsalan stands between them all, full of doubt, picking out his own understanding of faith.

Not everything worked for me.  I thought the father's abuse was over the top and not really sure it was necessary for it to be so, but overall this is a beautiful story.  Masood is such an original writer and the characters so vibrant and interesting that I can't help but recommend the book.  This is a joyous book about friendship, adopted family, and loyalty.  While rooted in Pakistani-American experience, there is nothing particularly exclusive about the story.

Pax, Journey Home, by Sara Pennypacker

In this sequel to the pacifist allegory Pax, years have passed and both boy and fox have grown.  The war which raged through the first book has ended and humans are rebuilding, focusing on cleaning away the ecological damage of warfare.  Restless and uncomfortable at home because of the memories the place stirs up, he joins up with the "Water Warriors" -- a group of young people restoring the lakes and rivers in his old stomping grounds.  Just as the water ways need to be cleansed of toxins left by the war, Peter also struggles under his feelings of loss and anger from the hostilities and the more recent loss of his father. Back in the woods, his memories of his former pet Pax dominate his brain and he yearns to see the fox again.

Pax, meanwhile has grown up and built a family.  Safe from war but now threatened by the return of the humans, he goes out in search of safer spaces to raise his young family.  While intending to leave his three kits with their mother, his stubborn daughter tags along and  Pax is forced to bring her along.  Pax introduces her to the forest and to the ways of the humans.  He tries to explain to her that some humans (like his Peter) can be kind.  The eventual reunion with Peter is marred by his kit falling ill and Pax must make a fateful decision to trust Peter to take care of the young one.

The original Pax always seemed a bit too complex to be a children's book -- its style too moody and its story difficult to follow.  The sequel is even more so.  This is partly due to the heavy reliance on actions and characters from the predecessor (I would strongly recommend reading or re-reading Pax before reading this book).  However, even standalone, the novel's primary themes of environmental devastation, suicidal ideation, and grief are more personal and much darker.

I really appreciated the karmic circularity of this story, allowing the themes of the first book to come back around and the arc to achieve pleasing closure, but this is overall a weaker story.

In Deeper Waters, by F. T. Lukens

Having come of age, Prince Tal is now on his traditional coming out tour of the kingdom.  Few of his subjects know him because he has been hidden from view.  His family is supportive and highly protective, so his cloistering is not the result of shame, but of wariness.  His great grandfather was an evil and terrible mage who terrorized the kingdoms and sowed discord.  After his defeat. the royal family has had to work hard to recover any honor among their peers.  So the fact that Tal shows signs of possessing the same magic now is dangerous.  If the other kingdoms find out about Tal's powers, he and the entire family will be in danger form proactive attacks.  It is in this awkward and dangerous position that Tal must operate; remaining cautious about revealing his true self.

But Tal's plans to keep a low profile are thrown asunder when he rescues a mysterious boy named Athlen from a group of pirates.  The two young men form an immediate attachment in spite of knowing so little about each other's secrets.  And when Tal himself is kidnapped, it is Athlen who must rescue him and help him save his kingdom.  And along the way Tal must also deal with how to come out publicly as a mage.

Swashbuckling sea adventures in a fantasy world, but the book lacks much of the urgency of a good adventure.  The fantasy setting itself is also largely underdeveloped.  So what does the story have?  Lots and lots of exposition and discussion.  This is a story where the characters talk and talk and talk some more, so that by the time anything actually happens, we've pretty much hashed through it from all of the angles.

Homoerotic elements are present but largely played down, much to the detriment of the story as the potentially hot romance between Tal and Athlen never quite takes off.  In their world, homosexuality is a non-issue, so it is the side plot about Tal gaining the self-confidence to come out as a holder of magic is a cute way of writing in a coming out story.  All of which brings us to the crux of the matter:  the story has cuteness and potential, but it never delivers on its promise.

Kate in Waiting, by Becky Albertalli

Kate and Anderson have been friends for ages.  One of the best parts of having a gay friend is their ability to crush on the same guys as you do.  And as long as the objects of their longing are distant and far way, there's no harm or foul.  But when their shared summer crush Matthew enrolls at their high school in the Fall, suddenly it's a different story.  As much as Kate and Anderson realize that it would be best for their friendship if they both swore off Matthew, they realize that neither of them want to.  Instead, they agree that they will each be free to pursue Matthew and that they promise to have no hard feelings if they lose out.  Will their friendship survive this?

The novel is an extremely brisk read that I found nonetheless challenging to get into.  Albertalli drives the action forward almost exclusively through dialogue which sounds simple until you try to read it.  Exposition and reflection take a back seat to a rather relentless drive forward as one interaction leads to another.  Blink and you'll miss an important plot point.  You certainly never get bored, but you stand a good chance of getting left behind.  Admittedly, this is a pretty good depiction of the whirlwind of adolescent relationships, but in written form it makes it hard to invest in the characters.

The book's heavy use of the F-word is unnecessary and distracting, adding little to the story except to become numbing.  It probably also draw unnecessary attention to the book for people looking for excuses to keep it out of young readers' hands.

Otherwise this is a pretty much by-the-numbers dramarama adventure (i.e., kids put on a theatrical production -- Once Upon A Mattress in this case).  The eventual resolution of  Kate and Anderson's romantic lives and their friendship with each other is largely uneventful and unsurprising.

Clarice the Brave, by Lisa McMann

Clarice is just a little ship mouse.  Since her mother was washed out to sea, she's looked after her intelligent (but largely impractical) brother Charles Sebastian.  For the most part, this has involved avoiding notice from the humans, keeping away from the chickens, and trying not to get eaten by the cats.  It's a simple life with easy rules to follow (even though Charles Sebastian seems to still struggle).

Humans are far more complicated.  When the crew rise up in a mutiny, the captain and his supporters are set adrift in a small boat.  Clarice finds herself on the small boat, while Charles Sebastian is left behind on the ship.  Separated by leagues of open sea, Clarice is distraught and determined to find a way to reunite with her weaker brother.

What can a little mouse do?  With no one else to turn to, Clarice cleverly befriends Special Lady, the captain's cat.  Faced with a mutual need for each other's support in order to survive, Clarice and Special Lady form an unusual alliance.

An action-packed story of adventure and friendship.  I was nonetheless disappointed with the book.  Honestly, based on the cover and a cute blurb, I was hoping for a gentle animal story (i.e., Stuart Little-esque adventures on the high seas) but this story is too gory for that.  There's an awful lot of death (often by unpleasant means) and it's not a very cheery story.  It's also a surprisingly morally ambiguous story without any clear heroes and an ambivalent ending.

With You All the Way, by Cynthia Hand

The family trip to Hawaii (ostensibly for her mother's professional conference) has been something that Ada and her sisters have been looking forward to.  And with the way things have been going wrong lately, Ada can certainly use a break!  Just before the trip, Ada finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her because she wouldn't have sex with him.  Her older sister Afton has had a falling out with her boyfriend as well.  And then they find out that their stepfather isn't going to be joining them, which makes no sense until Ada catches her mother having an affair with a colleague on their first day of vacation.

Given that Ada's problems seem to come back to her fear of sex (something which doesn't seem to bother anyone else!) she decides that it is high time she did something about it during the vacation.  There aren't a lot of young people her age at the conference except for geeky Nick, whom Ada would never have given much thought to, but who's available (and willing).  Awkwardly, the two of them plan out how it will happen.

While following in the proud steps of Judy Blume's Forever, this is a generation removed and then some!  It's a very plain and explicit discussion of sex, whether it's Ada's fears of it, her desire to have it, and her preparations with Nick. As many YA books as I read, you would think I've become unfazed by sexually explicit stories, but the directness of this book often made me uncomfortably aware that I'm a middle-aged guy reading about an underaged woman's intimate sexual feelings.  My gut tells me that Hand gets the tone right.  Ada is a perfect product of modern sex education, a target of the mass media sex, and the eternal ignorance of an adolescent on matters sexual -- it's all as painfully awkward as you can imagine it could be.  I certainly was not like this as a teenager, but modern kids have much more information at their fingertips, even if they are no more emotionally mature than we were.

Infidelity, which comes up in at least three distinct cases in the story, is another theme.  It doesn't seem to serve much purpose except to link together mother, sister, and Ada, but I did not see where it was going.

I really liked the sister dynamic.  Ada plays the usual middle child and performs admirably sorting out her older sister's recklessness while protecting her little sister from all the shenanigans.  Little sister also provides comic relief throughout.

It's a nice story but aside from providing a really drawn-out sexual encounter (and a week of planning leading up to it), I'm not sure that the book delivers much value.  In sum, a book that people can read for its scandalously frank discussion of teen sex while enjoying a largely functional story with some sweet sisterly bonding.  However, if teens having frank conversations about mature topics and engaging in activities that they aren't quite ready for makes you uncomfortable, this is not a good book for you. 

I do wonder how many young readers would actually enjoy reading this?  Would they find a heroine to whom they could relate or would they feel that the author was being condescending?

The Mirror Season, by Anne-Marie McLemore

Ciela has inherited her great grandmother's talent for intuiting what pastry someone at her family's pasteleria would most enjoy.  It's a talent that's made her famous with the customers as La Bruja de los Pasteles, but after a traumatic incident at a school party, she's loses her touch.  Now, her world is full of leaves that turn into dangerous shards of silvery mirror and trees that mysteriously disappear in the night.

At that party, she was assaulted, but she was not alone.  A boy, who she barely knew, was raped nearby at the same time she was.  Afterwards, she took him to the hospital but fled the scene to avoid having to explain what happened.  Months after the incident, at the start of the school year, she is surprised to run into the boy again, newly enrolled at her school.  He was so drugged at the time of the assault that he doesn't recognize her now.  She could easily turn away and ignore him, but those shards of silver mirrors she sees everywhere tear at her and drive her to protect him.  She knows she could come forward and fill in the blanks in his life, the things he can't remember from that night, but telling him means also confronting what happened to her ... and what role she played in what happened to him.

An emotionally intense trip through the experience of rape and its emotional aftershocks, buffered somewhat by magical realist imagery inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (and probably Like Water for Chocolate). It's definitely not for the faint of heart, but this exceptionally honest and raw portrayal shares much about the experience.  The focus is not so much about healing as it is about understanding the experience and processing it.  Ciela is not always honest about what happened and it takes several shocking iterations for the full story to emerge.  

McLemore writes beautifully.  Whether it is describing Ciela's talent as "the part of me that speaks the language of flour and sugar" or the many ways she describes her grief (e.g., "All of me has poured out, like the middle of a pinata cake") this is gorgeous writing.  She also takes considerable risks to create strong and unexpected scenes.  A romantic and sensuous interlude, stunning for its incongruity and yet defiant appropriateness, is a notable highlight -- beauty in the midst of horrible cruelty and suffering.

I have something of a soft spot for magical realism. The imagery of baking and trees (both in their leaves turning to mirrors and their mysterious disappearance) are used in multiple and powerful ways.  Of the too, I generally found the food references less intrusive than the mirrors (which I never quite fully understood -- hidden guilt?  anger?).  Ciela's ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class come up frequently, but are largely peripheral to the overriding theme which is about recapturing a sense of self in the wake of a violation.

I know that many people avoid stories about sexual violence like the plague and that for some this is because of how triggering the experience of reading about it can be.  However, this is a book -- as the afterward makes clear -- written by a survivor with the aim of giving an honest survivor's voice to the experience.  It is an insightful voice, a proud voice, and one that ultimately refuses to be silenced.  This is a book worth reading.

Jude Banks, Superhero, by Ann Hood

After the death of his beloved sister, Jude and his family deal with their grief.  His parents are both deeply lost in depression, but for twelve year-old Jude it is more anger and guilt.  With good reason, he believes that he was responsible inadvertently for his sister's death.  Reconciling that knowledge with his sense of loss, Jude finds it hard to imagine that he could ever feel happy again, but he develops a fantasy that he is some sort of superhero.  All around him, he notices how fragile life is and how easy it is to die young.  In response, he envisions himself as some sort of superhero, capable of rescuing kids before they die and thus preventing what he could not prevent with his own sister.

There's a later glimmer of hope when he meets Clementine in a grief support group and they develop a strong bond.  She, too, lost a sister and seems to understand what Jude is feeling in a way that his peers mostly don't.  But too late Jude realizes that Clementine's feeling are of a different and more dangerous nature and he is out of his depth in trying to console her.

Intended as a book for young people who are coping with the loss of a sibling, I can see how learning about another child's experience might be helpful, but it's a dreary example.  Jude alternates between despair and anger, and never quite manages to work through his feelings to start healing.  Instead, his grief seems just to slowly suck him (and his parents) down.  It's a sensitively-told story, but without any resolution there isn't much inspiration for a child who actually wants to feel better.

Written in Starlight, by Isabel Ibanez

Catalina was supposed to be a seer -- a person blessed by Luna with the ability to perceive the future -- but she's failed miserably at the task.  Betrayed by her own people, she has lost her throne and been exiled to the jungle to die.  

Given her sheltered prior existence, her chances in the wild are not good.  The jungle is a treacherous place.  Treacherous wild animals are everywhere and even the plants are dangerous.  But she is fortunate enough to run across an old friend -- her former guard Manuel -- who still feels loyalty towards her.  Together, they battle with caimans and jaguars, and try to stay ahead of the indigenous Illari who are hostile to their presence.  Yet it is precisely these Illari to whom Catalina must turn.  If she is to regain her throne, she'll need their support.

The Illari, however, want nothing to do with her dynastic squabble and they have something rather more pressing to deal with:  a mysterious force that is killing off all life -- human, animal, and plant -- within the jungle.  The Illari at first blame Catalina and Manuel for bringing this evil, but the true cause is far more serious and poses an existential threat to the world.

A very lush story that sets fantasy elements within a South American rain forest setting.  The adventure moves at a luxurious but utterly satisfying pace as Catalina faces a variety of challenging situations trying to survive in the jungle.  A history of forbidden attraction between Catalina and Manuel gives the story some smoldering passion.  A romantic triangle opens up when they reach the Illari.  It all proceeds swimmingly. Unfortunately, things get really rushed in the last fifty or so pages as a whole new series of facts and characters are introduced.  The climax, which develops out of thin air in a breathtaking ten pages, is strongly out of character with the rest of the book and it's hard not to feel like it was a rush job and a cheat.

While it is not acknowledged anywhere, this novel is a sequel to Ibanez's Woven in Moonlight.  I suspect that having the full backstory would have made reading this book more enjoyable.  Some of the confusing innovations at the end are apparently based on characters and ideas developed in the first book.

Clues to the Universe, by Christina Li

Ro and Benji are complete opposites.  Ro is organized and methodical -- the type of person who excels at science.  She has a mission.  Before he died, she and her father were building a rocket together and now she is determined to finish the project and win the science fair.  Benji, on the other hand, is a dreamer.  He'd rather focus on his drawing and comic books.  He suspects that his absent father is actually the creative force behind his favorite comics series but doesn't know how to find out for certain.  More immediately, his Mom has warned him that, if he doesn't pull up his science grades, she's going to pull him out of art class.

When Ro and Benji are paired up as science partners, they both have strong motivations to do well, even if their approaches are different.  They make a deal:  Benji will assist Ro in her rocket experiment and Ro will help Benji find his father (a not-so-insignificant task in the pre-Internet setting of the story).  Significant set backs along the way present challenges that they have to overcome.  And an act of betrayal triggers a chain of events that force them to reconsider their priorities.

A predictable and safe story of friendships formed and challenged -- standard middle grade stuff.  The vaguely 1980s or early 1990s setting may confuse readers as only the absence of computers and cell phones provide clues to the era.  Bullying, divorce, and grief are all raised as issues, but not really dealt with in any depth.  The story ends on a set of super happy notes.  It's a fine read, but not overly memorable.

A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions, by Sheena Boekweg

 "...throughout history, anonymous has been a woman."

In this alt-history, Abigail Adams's threat to her husband to pay attention to the women bears fruit in the formation of a shadow organization of women, called the Society.  Throughout American history, it has indirectly held on the reins of power through the manipulation of  husbands. Broken into castes, Matrons rule, Spinsters fight, and Gossips maintain surveillance.  Young men are noted and earmarked for success by the Gossips and promising young women -- pledged to be loyal to the Society -- vie for the affections of these men so they can be positioned to control them when their husbands rise to power.  Never in the spotlight, these women know that the only way they can hold power is to pull the strings in secret.  The world would never tolerate a woman in charge.

It's 1926 and 17-year-old Elsie is one of a set of girl who have Andrew Shaw in their sights.  With help from their Society sisters, they try to win his heart.  Ellie wants to make a difference in the world and marrying the man most likely to become president is the way to do it.  But Ellie's heart is not really into the hunt.  Her older brother, supported by the Society through his well-place spouse, is making a name for himself.  Ellie wonders why she can't do so as well in her own name.  Andrew Shaw, while his heart seems to be in the right place, is nice enough but Elsie doesn't really fancy him.  She prefers the brooding and dangerous Patch, a young man with a revolutionary agenda.  And when his plans lead to tragedy, Elsie is forced to decide whether to pursue her plan of gaining power by becoming Mrs. Andrew Shaw or whether to follow her own dreams.

A striking and original story that explores a variety of contemporary feminist topics in an easily digestible format.  Don't let the highly retrograde-sounding premise and the historical setting fool you into thinking this is just some young women wearing fabulous gowns and throwing themselves at a guy (although there are fabulous gowns and a guy).  This is really a much deeper discourse about what it means to be a feminist in contemporary times. Race, class, sexual orientation, body positivity, and gender identity all take a turn making an appearance (in this alt-history, folks are surprisingly worried about equality and economic injustice).  But it is really the oldest issue of all -- agency -- that takes center stage.  All the more so because of the inherent contradictions that are present in the premise of women seeking power through marriage and children.

This is a book which I would truly love to hear young people discuss.  As a member of the previous generation of feminists, some of the arguments here are unfamiliar or strange to me, but I know I would learn a lot by hearing the next generation tackle them.  And the book is full of quotable passages (like the one above) that act more as landmines than hidden gems.

Nothing is perfect.  I found Ellie's growth as a character unsatisfying and the fluidity of the story gets sacrificed for the more ideological aims of the novel.  However, this is a very thoughtful book which has used the alt-history rubric in the best possible way: to facilitate deeper thought and discussion about feminine ambition in contemporary society.  A memorable read.

Breathing Underwater, by Sarah Allen

Living with an older sister who has been freshly diagnosed with severe depression is challenging for Olivia.  And while she knows that Ruth is really sick, she wishes that her sister would not give up.  On a cross-country roadtrip with family friends, Olivia hopes to have a break through with her sister.

Three years ago, before the family moved from California to Tennessee, the two sisters buried a time capsule on the beach.  Now, they are heading in an RV back to California.  Maybe if Olivia can remind her sister of the good days they used to have -- topped off by digging up that time capsule -- she can fix her sister.  But as the trip progresses, Olivia's efforts are largely in vain and she has to confront the truth that her sister's problems are out of her control.  And that issues that are bugging her are really problems that lie within.

A short and sensitive look at the challenges of having a loved one struggle with clinical depression.  The novel is wonderful as far as it goes, but it is basically a one-note story.  There's not much to say that isn't stated outright in the first fifty pages.  A final climactic blowout attempts to break through to new ground, but the subject matter doesn't realistically lead to a breakthrough.  Well-written, but with no particular place to go with the story, it's a bit of a disappointment.

War Girls, by Tochi Onyebuchi

A dystopian YA for readers of The Economist.  The story in brief: take the Biafran conflict (a civil war that took place in Nigeria in the 1960s) and project it forward two hundred years.  Add nanotechnology, cybernetics, and man/machine robots taken from Mobile Suit Gundam.  Mix in child soldiers, ethnic cleansing, and climate change.  When nearly done, generously garnish with a complicated sibling-like relationship between two really tough protagonists.

Onyii and Ify look out for each other in the War Girls camp, a rebel base of girls hidden in the jungles of Biafra, near the irradiated and uninhabitable Middle Belt.  Onyii has developed a reputation as the "Demon of Biafra" with numerous kills while operating her mech against the Nigerians.  Ify's talents are quieter -- an ability to hack into any computer system and to synthesize limitless data.  When a surprise attack from the Nigerians knocks out their camp, the girls are separated.  Ify is taken by the Nigerians back to Abuja.  Onyii is "rescued" by the regular Biafran army which fails to see any value in a force made up of young girls.

While both girls manage to survive, their attempts to reunite are thwarted.  At least part of the problem is that they are both being exploited, albeit in different ways.  Onyii's ferocious anger and her surreal fighting skills are an asset to the Biafra military while Ify finds herself a pawn being passed back and forth between the sides.  An armistice, brokered by the developed nations (who have all fled to outer space as Earth itself has become largely uninhabitable) brings into stark contrast just how disposable child soldiers are in peacetime.  Without a war to fight, the girls have to come to terms with the horrible things they have done to others (and the ways they have even betrayed each other).

A strikingly original vision by a brilliant Nigerian writer.  For those who don't have a working knowledge of Nigerian history and/or African politics (i.e., most of the readers who will pick up this book), I strongly recommend starting at the back of the book and reading the author's historical notes.  Nigeria is an interesting nation-state and Onyebuchi is following a fine tradition of self-reflection in Nigerian literature.

I was most struck by the armistice.  The author's observations about rehabilitating child soldiers and the anecdotes in the novel are heartbreaking.  His damning critique of foreign aid and truth and reconciliation tribunals are incisive.  As one character observes, when most people see a African, they don't really see a person.  Our understanding of Africa is full of oversimplified analysis and indignation.  This novel goes some ways towards trying to explain the cause of conflict from a grassroots perspective.

Personally, I found the extreme amount of violence to be numbing and cumulatively boring.  Every few pages, we are subjected to a blow by blow description of woman and machine conflict where bones break, blood spills, and limbs decapitate.  Each encounter seems terminal, but thanks to the superior bioengineering of the future, the characters are ready to jump back into action a few pages later.  As the violence never seems to have consequences, it becomes less and less interesting.  I eventually just started flipping past the battle scenes to get to the parts that interested me more.  That those scenes were worth flipping to will give you an idea of how compelling I found this book.

Middletown, by Sarah Moon

Eli and her older sister have their differences but they have allied over having to deal with their erratic and alcoholic mother.  However, when Mom gets sent away to three months of mandatory rehab, they struggle to keep things together.  Anna manages to impersonate a long-lost aunt and become Eli's court-appointed guardian, but the girls still have to figure out a way to feed themselves and pay the rent.  When inevitably things start to collapse, the girls run away and seek out long-forgotten family connections.  In doing so, they learn a lot of family secrets and a bit about the strength of family ties.

While not so original as a story, Moon's quirky novel is full of original and memorable characters.  The girls' (real) Aunt Lisa steals the show with her feisty and world weary outlook, but I also enjoyed the tentative romance between Eli and her best friend Meena.  The exploration of alcoholism and the way it tears families apart is a great topic but is never fully developed -- which would be my overall criticism of the book (that manages to never really take things as far as they could have gone).

Set Me Free, by Ann Clare LeZotte

Described as a "companion," LeZotte's Set Me Free is actually more of a sequel to her groundbreaking Show Me A Sign.  Picking up three years after the events of that first novel, Mary, still wary of mainlanders and overcoming the trauma of her abduction and escape, is swept into helping a young girl who may be suffering the same fate.  

One of a large community of deaf settlers in Martha's Vineyard, Mary has learned from her experiences that outside of her home, deaf people are despised and persecuted.  She's restless living in Martha's Vineyard, but afraid of that outside world.  But an old friend has written to Mary and told her about the strange feral eight year-old girl who lives at the manor house where she is serving.  She begs Mary to come and see if the girl is in fact deaf and if Mary can do something to help her.

Mary realizes that she must do what she can to help the girl and so she accepts the invitation.  When she arrives at the estate, she is shocked to find the girl is imprisoned, kept shackled, and frequently beaten and abused.  She tries to reach out to the girl, but finds that all of her well-meaning ideals pale in comparison to the task.  Humbled by the experience, Mary gradually comes to understand the girl and eventually engineers her escape for her captivity.

A much better book than its predecessor (which I will admit that I never finished), it throws light on a number of neglected facets of early American history ranging from the poor understanding and treatment of deaf people in the late 18th century to the practice of separating Native American children from their families.  The woke idealism of Mary's character is gratingly anachronistic, but serves the valuable purpose of drawing attention to the norms of general society of the period.  As an educational work (i.e., the sort of book one gets assigned in school) it checks off all the right boxes.

More in spite of this agenda than because of it, it's also a very entertaining book.  A suspenseful story that kept up my interest and a character that gains insight and self-confidence as the novel progresses made this a much better book than its predecessor.  In sum, I enjoyed the book and learned a great deal from it.

Catch the Light, by Kate Sweeney

For a family dealing with grief, a move across country could be a new beginning or running away, or maybe a little of both.  Nine months ago, Mary's father passed away and now Mom has decided to move Mary and her younger sister from Los Angeles to upstate New York.  For Mary, it is the start of her last year of high school -- time for thinking of moving on anyway -- but she finds herself mired in grief and depression.  Unable to complete her college applications, lost in her new home, and burdened by her inability to heal her mother or help her sister cope, Mary feels like she is under water.  She is blessed by a good new friend and a potential romantic interest (with whom she shares a love of old fashioned film photography), but she feels trapped between her past life back in California and the unwelcome sense that her new home in New York actually feels more real to her.  Through it all, she is terrified that her memory of her father is slipping away.

While built on a common YA theme (why are there so many dead parents in YA books anyway?!), Sweeney's treatment is actually pretty stand-out.  That's hard to explain as everything from the sassy younger sibling to the petty misunderstandings to the inability to tell the truth are pretty much canon.  But Sweeney's writing is nuanced and while situations feel very familiar, one also feels like we actually understand where Mary's behavior is coming from.  In other words, this isn't paralysis for the sake of filling pages, but a story really being told.  I never felt manipulated and I wasn't having my heart strings pulled at gratuitously.  In fact, this isn't a story in the end that packs a huge emotional punch, but instead tells a story well about imperfect people who are trying to sort things out.  Mistakes are made all round, feelings of hurt are aired, compassion is shown, and realistic forgiveness and healing develop.

Off-tangent rant:  Like the mix tape, analog photography really has no place in contemporary literature.  Yes, I get that dark rooms are excellent places for intimate feelings to be explored (they certainly were in the 1980s when I was a teenager!) and I see how much fun it is to use the chemical process of film development as a metaphor for emotional change.  But really?!  Digital photography has long supplanted the whole business.  More to the point, a creative writer could probe the complexities of LightRoom and the amazing potentials in digital aesthetics and break some new ground.

The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo (ill by Sophie Blackall)

Everyone at the monastery is afraid of Answelica the goat.  She's mean and angry and bites.  So, the monks are surprised one day when they find a girl sleeping with Answelica.  The girl is an unknown stranger who can remember only one thing about herself:  her name is Beatryce.  But from the very start, she is exceptional.  The girl can read and write, which is forbidden for commoners and women overall.  She is fearless and brave and stubbornly determined to confront the king for reasons she does not yet fully understand.

But Brother Edik has an idea of what is going on:  there is a prophecy that declares "that one day there will come a child who will unseat a king.  The prophecy states that this child will be a girl.  Because of this, the prophecy has long been ignored." And while the prophecy is often disregarded, no one is ignoring it now.  The king's men are hot on Beatryce's tail and it falls upon Brother Edik to convince her to hide.  But being stubborn, Beatryce instead befriends a local boy (Jack Dory) and a former king (Cannoc) and reveals herself to the king in order to fulfill her destiny.  Along the way, she drafts a fairy tale of her own that eventually supplants the prophecy of the main story in a very meta literary moment.

DiCamillo falls into extremes.  She is undeniably a great writer and full of original and clever ideas that challenge and disrupt typical formulae and tropes.  Sometimes this works fantastically (Because of Winn-Dixie, Flora and Ulysses) but other times the story flies so far off the rails that only adults can really enjoy it (The Tale of Despereaux).  Here, it's more the latter.  The story and its many layers is clever but I can't imagine children being able to keep up with it.  It sounds like a children's fairy tale, but is too knowing and subtle.  It's self-destructive narrative is far too aware of its own cleverness.

That said, it is a very pretty book, with beautiful illustrations (both full plates and marginalia) by Sophie Blackall.  The layout and presentation is truly gorgeous and Blackall probably deserves a third Caldecott for this book.  The design perfectly complements the text and makes for a handsome overall package. Aware that this is a truly outstanding work, there's even an upgraded "collector's edition" of the book featuring more of all of this, which I would be very tempted to own if it weren't for the hefty price tag and my lukewarm feelings for the story.

Lucky Girl, by Jamie Pacton

Considering the problems she has to deal with, Jane's real name (Fortuna) seems like a sad joke:  a dead father, a mother who hoards to cope with her grief, and a nasty ex-boyfriend.  But then she wins the lottery and the 58 million dollar grand jackpot.

Now, she has an even bigger problem:  How is she going to collect?  As a minor, she bought the ticket illegally and she can't just walk in and claim her prize.  If she hands it over to her Mom, her mother will just waste it all on junk.  The only person she knows who is over eighteen is her ex-boyfriend and THAT isn't going to happen!   While she tries to figure out what to do, she keeps quiet about it.  But her best friend Brandon is obsessed with identifying the winner and coming dangerously close to figuring it all out.

A comedic look at lottery madness.  In order to find a solution to her dilemma, Jane researches what prior lottery winners have done and uncovers the various ways that good fortune has generally turned bad.  The book thus is mostly a vehicle for exploring the sorts of crazy things that lottery winners do.  The ending, which relies on a rewriting of assumptions, felt a bit like a cop out, but the story itself is entertaining.  There are some potentially disturbing themes (death, mental illness, violence) but very little attention is drawn to any of these issues and the overall tone is light.

Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love, by Jared Reck

Oscar has no illusions of going to college.  The only classwork he really enjoys is cooking class and that's because it is what he does when he's not in school -- helping his grandfather run a food truck specializing in Finnish kebabs and Swedish donuts.  So, there really couldn't be a more opposite person at school than overachiever Lou.  She's taking all AP classes and set on being the valedictorian, and she's taken on a huge project for girl scouts that involves reducing landfill waste -- a project that involuntarily involves Oscar.  But as the two of them start working together, they find that Oscar's culinary skills and Lou's organization complement each other and that synergy spills over to the food cart.

While taking an out-of-the-blue left turn in the final fifty pages that disrupts the story, I really enjoyed this romantic comedy.  The strength of the story lays in its vivid characters.  Farfar (the grandfather) is a gem and adds a wonderful foil for a story that benefits from Reck's dry writing style.  Reck isn't a John Green, but he delivers a decent young male character who isn't (like most boys in male-written YA) obsessed with sex -- a feat worthy of supporting.  And while Lou is largely neglected, she gets enough development to make her an intriguing person in her own right.

The story takes a bit to really get going.  There is a wonderful back story involving Oscar's mother and  another about Farfar's former lover that truly were criminally overlooked, but I think Reck wanted to avoid long digressions.  Left as-is, the back stories provide depth without becoming integral to the story, but they do make the early pages a bit hard to follow as we are not quite sure at first where our focus as the readers should lay.  And the aforementioned late development to the story really serves to hijack where the author was leading us for most of the book.

I've never seen a story that mentioned the Aaland Islands before (and even Swedish-American stories are in short supply), so this book with its focus on Scandinavian street food will serve some multi-cultural value as well.

The Lost Language, by Claudia Mills

As Betsy's mother struggles with getting a grant approved for researching and documenting dying languages, Betsy's best friend Lizard suggests that she and Betsy undertake a project to save a language by learning it and teaching it to their friends.  Between Betsy and Lizard, this is how things normally go:  Lizard is always coming up with the ideas and Betsy is left following her lead.  But when Betsy decides to audition for the school play on her own and makes a new friend, Lizard becomes jealous and lashes out.  The girls have a falling out.

At that moment, Mom's work stresses build up to a crisis and Betsy reaches out to her old friend for support.  But instead of reconciling, Lizard betrays Betsy.

Mills writes lots of middle grade books, but not usually in verse as she has done here.  The style works in this case because the story is so centrally about language and communication, but I don't think it was essential.  With few words and lots of white space, the book is a very fast read.  I would not call this one of Mills's best books, but it is a good read and deals with the popular topic of the strains that a friendship goes through as children grow older in an effective and sophisticated manner.

The story features some fairly mature themes, including adult mental illness and alcoholism.  These are handled in a straightforward and age-appropriate fashion.  As always, it's nice to see adults being treated like real people in a children's book.  It is also good to see children being treated as responsible enough to handle that reality.

Goodbye, Perfect, by Sara Barnard

When Eden's best friend Bonnie disappears, Eden is as shocked as everyone else.  Sure, Bonnie had told her about this guy named Jack who she was mad over, but she was so vague on the details that Eden wondered if Jack was even real.  So, it comes as a surprise when to learn that Bonnie has run away with him and that Jack is actually their music teacher at school.

With parents and police pressuring Eden for information, she finds herself in an awkward position of trying to be supportive of her friend by lying to the police about whether she is in touch with Bonnie.  But the longer Bonnie is gone, the more Eden starts to question just how well she knows her friend.  How can Bonnie just leave her family and friends, throw away her life, and embrace a fugitive life with a man who is twice her age?

A engaging story with enough adventure to keep the plot moving with delivering a surprisingly poignant look at a friendship being torn apart as two childhood friends grow up.  Barnard is consistently strong at realistic portrayals of human relationships as seen in her other novels (e.g., Fragile Like Us, Destination Anywhere), respectfully capturing how children and adults really interact.  As in her other novels, our protagonist Eden is provided a deep backstory that gives the reader a true sense of what her relationship with Bonnie means to her, all of which adds to the pathos of the way Bonnie's runner really tears Eden apart.  And while minor characters can't possibly get as generous of a treatment, Barnard does take the time to fill in enough details that no one present is a throwaway -- parents get to have flaws without being caricatures, children are not always right, and so on.  

It's a story that can't have a happy ending and it is not particularly inspirational subject matter, but Eden's journey to adulthood is emotionally satisfying as a story.  Highly recommended.

The Hollow Inside, by Brooke Lauren Davis

Phoenix and her mother have been on the run for a while, but that is about to come to an end.  Years ago, a horrible wrong was committed against Phoenix's Mom and the two of them have returned to Jasper Hollow to make things right.  Phoenix's job is to do reconnaissance, finding out everything she can about Ellis Bowman, celebrated author and self-help guru.  Without intending it, Phoenix befriends Ellis's son and finds herself brought into the family circle.  And while she is supposed to be gathering intelligence to help her mother's plans for revenge, her loyalties are tested as she gets to know Ellis's family and falls romantically for Ellis's daughter.

Through flashbacks, the details of Ellis's original betrayal (and the complicity of the people of Jasper Hollow) is revealed.  And yet, the more the reader learns about the wrongs that were done, the more everything grows murkier.  Good people did bad things.  And then they did worse things.  The past is being revisited, but events are still unfolding and there is still time for people to make more mistakes.  By the time the story ends, no one is going to get what they truly want.

The thing about tragedies is that they are not particularly fun to read.  Or rather, the "fun" of reading comes from the realization of the inevitability of the story: a well-written tragedy in other words writes itself, which what happens here.  Events unfold effortlessly and each new page fills the reader with dread -- the proverbial train wreck.  That Davis is able to exceed expectations and pile tragedies beyond my imagination (without creating a melodrama) is testament to a well-constructed story with sound foundations.  With that effort upfront, the author exploits vengeance and fate for maximum effect.

This is a story where every major character has a purpose.  Ellis is the guilt-ridden king.  His wife the long-suffering queen who knows all but remains steadfastly loyal.  Ellis's pastor tries to protect them both but not out of any loyalty; he has his own guilt to avoid. With the adults carrying heavy parts of the backstory, the dramatic weight of the current moment falls heavily on the kids.  The relationship between Phoenix and Ellis's daughter Melody is particularly central.  There's not much romantic heat between them, but as representatives of the two sides of this conflict, they are a junior version of the conflict between Ellis and Phoenix's Mom.  Well-developed characters, they have a nice spark between them that makes their romance just another layer of complexity in a story without much time for love.

A compelling tragedy with strong characters and an engaging narrative.  Dedicate the time to finish the last hundred pages in one sitting.

Apple in the Middle, by Dawn Quigly

Apple feels like she is always between one thing or another, but never quite belongs to a particular identity.  Her family is rich, but she attends public school.  Her mother, who died giving birth, was Native American, but her father is white.  Her father remarried and she's been raised by her stepmother for most of her life, so she really doesn't know her mother's heritage.  As far as the white kids are concerned, her dark skin tags her as not one of them and for the Indians, her name is a joke ("apple" is a derogatory term for a half-breed, red on the outside but white inside).

One summer, her parents decide that she needs to get to know her mother's family better and they send her out to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.  Out there, she meets her relatives, learns more about her mother, and connects with her culture, changing her life forever.

A fairly predictable undertaking used as a vehicle to explore Ojibwe culture.  Despite that rather clumsy undertaking, this is a nuanced piece that occasionally lapses into an overly "teachy" (pedantic) style but has its heart in the right place.  The usual pitfalls of noble Indian or oddball life on the Rez are noth avoided.  Instead, it's a story with a lot to impart about the complexity of life for contemporary Native Americans.  I learned a lot through reading it.  At times, the story itself suffers from this grander purpose and loses its dramatic momentum, but it's not dull or dry.  Apple herself, who seems to have some traits of ADHD, is not always a likeable protagonist and seems overly quick to assume the worst of people, but ultimately is intelligent and insightful.  Her struggles to understand her family and their culture provide us with a sympathetic guide and help open up this fascinating culture.  A flawed but unique and valuable book.

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera

The Last Cuentista imagines a world in which there remains only one human being who can recall the stories, myths, and memories that make up human existence.  In doing so, it explores the importance of culture and the terrible cost of forgetting from where we have come.

Petra loves to tell cuentos and dreams of becoming a storyteller like her grandmother.  But destiny is about to seriously disrupt this innocent dream.  With the Earth about to be destroyed by a comet, a very small number of people have been chosen to board spaceships that will take them on a nearly-four-hundred-year journey to a distant hospitable planet in order to rebuild.  Petra's family are among the chosen ones.  They will sleep in suspended animation for the duration of the voyage, tended by monitors who will spend their lifetimes taking care of the ship, passing along their responsibilities to their children and grandchildren.  It will take many generations of these monitors until the ships reach their destination.

Years later, when the ships reach the end of their trip, Petra is awoken to discover that things have gone horribly wrong.  A totalitarian Collective has taken over the ship and enslaved everyone in the name of achieving a stifling consensus.  To maintain the control, the leaders use a combination of sedatives and ignorance.  Key among their policies is forgetting everything about the past and so they systematically erase the memories of the sleepers when they bring them out of hibernation.  No one can be allowed to remember how life was on Earth.  Instead, all thoughts must be focused on the Collective and its current mission.  For some reason, Petra proves resistant to attempts at wiping her memories and she sets about covertly to undermine the regime. Using her talents as a storyteller and her memories of Earth, she tries to enlist allies and save humanity.

Part Gabriel García Márquez and part Ben Bova (i.e., The Exiles Trilogy), Higuera creates a unique Hispanic-flavored science fiction story.  The narrative is uneven, with frequent flashbacks to Petra and her time on Earth jarring the narrative flow.  The overall depressing nature of the story (i.e., end of humanity) is not fully balanced with the optimistic message of Petra's cuentos and a very open endings leaves much of the dilemma unresolved.  Petra's stories (adapted from traditional folk tales) do not always align with the ongoing action.

As science fiction, then, the story does not always manage  to be a success, but the deeper message of the importance of oral history and culture as the root of what makes us human is powerful and quite moving.  Marketed to middle school readers, the serious themes and the upsetting nature of the material probably make it more appropriate for an older audience.

Carry Me Home, by Janet Fox

Lulu and her little sister Serena, along with their Dad, have been living in their car.  Dad is making money as a carpenter and promises to soon have enough so they can get a real home.  It's been fine so far as summer moves into fall and the girls start attending school, but the weather is getting colder.

And then one day her father doesn't come home.

He did this once before, back when they lived in Texas.  It was shortly after their mother died and he just got so sad that he had to go away.  It was a month before he returned, but the girls managed on their own.  And Lulu understands that it is best that way.  If people start to notice that your Daddy is missing, they call social services and the kids get taken away (and probably separated).  Lulu wants to avoid that at all costs. But as the days go by, keeping things together gets harder and harder and nosy adults begin to wonder where the girls' father is.  Twelve year-old Lulu is running out of ideas for how to prevent people from finding out.  And also running out of the means to keep her and her sister safe.

I've never been a fan of child abandonment stories or understood why so many of them get written.  The solution is obvious enough (adults find out and foster care turns out not to be as bad as the child imagined).  Dragging out that inevitable conclusion just seems like child abuse to me.

Setting aside that bias and preconception, this version of the story has some nice features to it.  Lula shows great resilience, taking care of her sister and even finding some time to have some fun.  I especially like the kindness of the people with whom Lulu deals  It's not just the expected kindness of the local librarian (which is sort of a requirement, no?) but lots of kind adults and kids as well.  Even a classmate who initially teases Lulu turns out to be a generous friend.  It must be something about Montana (where the action takes place)!  In any case, the positive, community spirit of the setting helps to buffer the traumatic nature of the material.  A happy ending helps as well.

Hello (From Here), by Chandler Baker and Wesley King

Maxine and Jonah meet while shopping.  They are both hunting for toilet paper and Maxine accuses Jonah of hoarding.  It's the spring of 2020 and the governor has just declared a full lockdown to deal with the rapid spread of COVID-19.  

All in all, an awkward time to kick off a romance, but life (as it has become) marches on.  Max is trying to make ends meet as a personal shopper, bringing quarantined people their groceries.  Her mother's dry cleaning business is grinding to a halt as people no longer need to clean their suits and dress slacks.  Meanwhile, Jonah ostensibly only has to deal with the cancellation of his long-planned trip to Paris this summer and the fact that his Dad is stranded in Spain.  But underneath these stark class differences, Max and Jonah share a great deal in common and as they endure those uncertain first months of the pandemic, their relationship undergoes unusual stresses and strains.

I've been waiting for a decent YA romance set in the contemporary moment for the simple reason that all of the traditional ones feel so unrealistic in today's world (where even kissing seems unwise).  Baker and King do an incredible job in capturing the mood of the times in a way that will make this book a go-to for young readers in the years to come trying to understand life in 2020.  Is it too soon for historical YA of that period?  No, I don't really think so.  Children's literature is as much about helping young people connect to their world as entertaining young readers.  What could be more relatable to a teenager right now than other young people trying to navigate a relationship that takes place with masks on and six feet apart?

Unfortunately, I found the story itself to be dull and aimless.  Reminiscent of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist with its meandering unstructured format, this is a story that really does not have a goal.  There are a number of ideas (absent parents, illness, and poignant subplot about a famous movie director, rescuing a shelter dog, etc.) but no consensus about where to take the ideas.  It reads like two established writers with not-entirely-compatible styles that are playing literary tug-of-war.  Characters and situations introduced by one are pointedly ignored by the other.  For a team-written novel to really work, you need collaboration, which inevitably means re-writing large sections after you reach the end to make the exercise into a story.  This book is far too rushed to do that serious editing process.  The end result is simply boring.

So, not great literature, but fascinating material.  Hopefully, it will inspire others to tackle the subject.

Faceless, by Kathryn Lasky

Alice is a spy for the British and a member of the "Rasas" (as in Tabula Rasa) -- a long line of spies who have a genetic mutation that gives them perfectly symmetrical faces that are incidentally impossible to remember.  This inscrutability gives them an advantage when working undercover.  Rasa also have superior intellects and can memorize facts easily and acquire languages flawlessly.  In all, Alice and her family make formidable spies.

In the waning days of World War II, Alice and her parents are sent to Berlin to help assist an attempt to murder Hitler.  Passing herself as Ute, a star student, she infiltrates Hitler's inner circle.  The plot (based on a real event) ultimately fails, but Alice gains firsthand knowledge of life in Hitler's bunker.  She also befriends a Jewish boy who is hiding from the Nazis and helps him survive.

Throughout her mission, Alice is distracted with worry about her older sister.  Just prior to leaving for Berlin, her sister retired from service and declined to join them in Germany.  Instead, she went to work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park.  To her shock and amazement, Alice starts to catch glimpses of a young woman on streets of Berlin who looks like her sister.  Tracking that woman down reveals even further surprises.

The adventure is a bit too rushed to develop any strong feeling of suspense, but the story is rich with details that will be inspirational for further reading.  That strength can also prove to be a weakness when we get so bogged down in the details that there is not much room left over for story.

I was less taken with the subplot involving the Jewish boy and the mysterious sister.  The boy turns out to be largely inconsequential to the story and Alice's sympathy for him seems out of character and distracting.  It is also anachronistic -- glossing over the anti-Semitism of the period -- which is striking given the otherwise strong devotion to historical details.  The sister's story sticks out uncomfortably because it is neither well set-up in the beginning nor really effectively resolved at the end.  It also added little to the story.

The Rasa concept is a rich jumping off point for any number of adventures and one hopes that Lasky will take other points in history and give them the same treatment.

You & Me at the End of the World, by Brianna Bourne

Hannah wakes up to find she's the only one left on Earth (that is, until she finds Leo!).  Everyone else has disappeared.  Now, it's just the two of them.  Houston Texas, population 2.

What would you do if you had the world to yourselves?  Neither Hannah nor Leo really know, but having the whole city to themselves, they are free to explore.  With an absence of any other human life, they also compare notes about their lives up to now.  The abandoned streets of Houston invite self-reflection.

Before this happened, they knew of each other, but definitely moved in different circles.  They are both seniors, about to embark on their real lives.  Hannah is on the verge of becoming a professional ballerina.  Leo, while a talented musician, seems destined to screw up his latest opportunity.  In an empty world, however, what future is there for a dancer and a guitarist?

An unusual story about what it would be like if all of the world's distractions were to disappear and you could really get to know another person.  I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic feel of an deserted Houston, but the implausibility of the scenario grated on me.  First of all, because there was little in the novel to give me a sense of place (Bourne made very little effort to bring up landmarks or invoke anything particularly Houstonian -- it may be a huge metropolis, but it definitely has plenty of local character!).  Secondly, because there is no way that a place would function very long if the entire living population suddenly disappeared.

As the story progresses, rather than address the implausibilities, Bourne stresses her protagonist's inner turmoil and pulls the characters into an emotional breakdown.  The story gets bogged down in insignificant chat.  The story's eventual resolution is a complete let down, especially given the potential of the premise.  It is all worsened by meaningless side trips (out to grandmother's house and later to a house party) that seem designed mostly to fill pages than to develop characters or move the story along.  Disappointing.

Salty, Bitter, Sweet, by Mayra Cuevas

Still reeling from the recent death of her grandmother and her father's decision to start a new family, Isa is looking for a direction in her life. Thanks to her grandmother, she has always loved food. Winning a coveted place in an elite training program in a Michelin-starred chef's kitchen seems like just the ticket for Isa. She is prepared to throw herself into it, even though it means that she'll be living uncomfortably in the house of her father and his new wife (with baby coming).  

That dedication to her craft is precisely what drives her crazy about lackadaisical (but infuriatingly attractive) Diego.  He's lazy and carefree, with no serious ambitions of his own.  Worse, he's staying at the house as he's the stepson of her stepmother.  Managing the intensity of her culinary program and keeping Diego out of her hair and her heart is enough to drive her crazy. But, of course, opposites attract.

As she warms to Diego and appreciates his more relaxed approach to life, she also discovers that maybe studying to become a master chef isn't what she wants after all.  If only her grandmother was still alive to offer her guidance.  All she has of her is her grandmother's cookbook, which she can't bring herself to open and read.

An engrossing story of fine food, dedicated culinary arts, and a general sense of how dysfunctional world culinary fame can actually be. Lot of details for dedicated foodies and enough fun stuff to keep even us amateurs enraptured and hungry.  However, I have a bone to pick about Isa's taste in guys.  I found Diego really hard to take at first.  I get that we're supposed to root for him and see Isa as unbalanced and uptight, but I couldn't get past how inconsiderate he was about the things that mattered to Isa.  It's only fairly late in the book that Isa starts coming around to the notion that she herself might be a bit too high strung.  At that point, Diego's arrogance starts to look a bit more like care and concern, but that doesn't change the way he fails to respect the things that are important to Isa. That she finds her true calling at the end is small comfort since it seems to require that Diego be part of the package.

Big Boned, by Jo Watson

Lori defines herself through the way she thinks people see her:  as a large overweight young woman.  Certainly not as anyone attractive, let alone beautiful.  However, at her art high school in Johannesburg, she has made friends and come mostly to terms with a traumatic assault she endured a few years before.

When Lori's autistic brother needs to move to a new school, it's exactly what her mother needs as well:  leaving Joburg and moving to Cape Town and starting again. There, Mom buries herself in her new career, generally ignoring them and leaving Lori with the responsibility of taking care of her brother.  While Lori is happy that her brother is getting the help he needs, Cape Town's sporty vibe is not for her.  Her new high school is all about water sports and Lori can't stand athletics and fears the water.  But some of that could change thanks to Jake, a friendly water polo captain.  He would normally be out of her league, but his attention-deficit younger sister attends the same school as Lori's brother and the younger siblings have become fast friends.  It doesn't take long, to Lori's surprise, before genuine sparks ignite between her and Jake as well.

With some support from Jake, another girl in Lori's class who aspires to design clothing for plus-size women, and a witty counselor, Lori learns how to deal with her fears, embrace her aspirations, and confront her mother.  Along the way, she discovers an aptitude for street art. The result is a winning story about believing in yourself and overcoming your fears.

Jo Watson is a revelation.  While covering familiar ground and all the usual scenes (the mirror, dress shopping, binging, and bullying) that one would expect in a story about a full-bodied young woman, Watson quickly leaves that behind and shows Lori really grabbing on to self-improvement.  She has her insecurities, but they really don't stop her from trying (and succeeding!) in shedding them. All of this success can make the novel seem unrealistically rosy (so much so that the protagonist even complains at one point that things like this don't happen "unless we're in the pages of some unrealistic YA book that totally throws social conventions out the window and sets itself in this totally made-up world where fat girls win and the guy looks past all her cellulite and sees the girl inside"). Yes, Lori, that's basically what this story is...and it's a winner!

As an aside, I don't believe that I have ever read a YA novel by a South African writer.  The different settings were a mildly disorienting, but pleasant change.  For while I've visited SA, I tend to see it only through a political lens.  I'm happy to report that angst-ridden adolescence is pretty much the same (if not better) there!

Hot British Boyfriend, by Kristy Boyce

Ellie's habit of following her impulses gets her in trouble and leads to public humiliation when she throws herself at a boy at school, only to find out that he likes her best friend instead.  Needing to escape, she signs up for a high school study abroad program in England.  Armed with her Jane Austen novels, she's determined to meet a cute British guy and forget all about what's-his-name back home.

While the academics are far more rigorous than she's prepared for, she seems to get her wish pretty quickly when she meets Will at a flea market.  He's not only gorgeous but also insanely rich, shuttling her around in his Jaguar and taking her out for fancy dinners at posh places.  But Ellie is never quite comfortable in his presence.  He's so much better than she is and she expends all of her energy trying to impress him and prove herself worthy.

All the time she is trying to impress Will, she is missing out on her friends, her chances to get to know England, and the things that are really important to her.   And, in that pesky way that romances do, there's a sweet quiet boy in their group that Ellie can't quite seem to forget.  Dev is understanding, patient, and supportive.  And while he isn't British, maybe she needs to stop and think about what she really wants in the boyfriend?

No surprises and none expected, but I found this romance a bit more cringeworthy than normal.  Ellie comes across as shallow, throwing away her unique opportunity to study in England in the name of chasing a boy (a boy who doesn't even come across as worth it).  It's easy enough to toss Will aside in the end because the relationship between Ellie and Will seems so superficial.  While it is fine to hate the bad choice and be rooting for the good one, I found myself actually hoping that poor Dev would wake up and realize that Ellie herself wasn't that much of a prize.  All of which begs the question:  if you don't like the protagonist, how exciting can the romance actually be?

Transcendent, by Katelyn Detweiler

Sequel to the novel Immaculate, in which normal teenager Mina became the center of controversy when she has an immaculate conception.  At the end of Immaculate, Mina faked a miscarriage and fled into obscurity.  This story picks up eighteen years later when a terrorist attack at Disney World has left over ten thousand people dead and many more of them injured.

Reeling from the trauma of the event, people are desperate to find meaning in the loss.  A father of one of the victims tracks down Mina and her now grown daughter Iris.  Believing that Iris is a Messiah, he insists that she has to cure his dying daughter.  And when she refuses, he outs her to the public. The ensuing media storm as fanatics on both sides come out of the woodwork.  Believers want and demand her help.  Refusing to believe her protests that she is nothing special, they respond violently to her refusals to help and then just as badly to her failures.  Meanwhile, others claim she is a fraud and want to punish her.

Frightened by this mixture of adoration and hatred, Iris runs away, trying to sort out what she should do.  She finds unlikely help in the guise of Zane, a boy at school with a troubled background.  After much deliberation, she figures out her path forward.

Put a strong stress on that "after much deliberation." The book starts off strong as it unveils a turbulent America that is well-primed for a savior.  Iris's reluctance to take on that role (especially with the threatening behavior of those who would follow her) is understandable, but Detweiler doesn't seem to know where to go with this.  Instead, the book drags down as Iris waffles back and forth, ignoring advice and generally repeating herself.  By the end, even the solution seems weak.

In sum, a promising premise but one which the author doesn't really seem to know how to resolve.  And certainly not needing 400+ pages to resolve.

Denis Ever After, by Tony Abbott

Like most people who have died, Denis doesn't remember the particulars of what took his life away five years ago, but he's at peace with it and ready to let go and move on.  But his still-living twin brother Matt can't let go of him.  And as long as Matt refuses to let go, Denis is stuck in Port Haven (a waiting area for recently-departed souls).  There's only one thing to do about it, Denis must return to the living world and convince his brother to let go.

While the case was never resolved, Denis was murdered and Matt wants to know who did it and why.  The two boys tackle the mystery using clues dug up by Matt and his friend Trey.  Denis who initially can't recall anything, finds his memory being jarred loose by revisiting the scenes of the crime and the mystery gradually is resolved.  However, time is running out.  With every visit he makes to his brother, Denis is putting his own soul in jeopardy.

Denis is no Patrick Swayze and Matt is no Demi Moore, but you know this story well enough.  I didn't always follow the plot developments, but the mystery unfolds at a nice pace keeping us wondering until the end what really happened to Denis.  I personally didn't find the story all that compelling.  The boys are pretty whiney and their parents are grating and annoying.

Take Three Girls, by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell, and Fiona Wood

A mandatory "wellness" class at St Hilda's creates an unlikely pair up.  To break up the usual cliques, the facilitator makes the students form groups based on thumb size.  As it turns out, queen bee Ady, smart Kate, and swimming champion Clem all have similarly long appendages, but at their school they would otherwise have no reason to hang out together.  To their surprise, as they spend the weeks of the program together, their personal lives begin to overlap and they grow close, especially when they all become targets of a vicious anonymous gossip website.

Team-written by three popular Aussie YA writers, this book explores identity and life choices.  Ady is dealing with her family falling apart as her father succumbs to addiction, Kate is having second thoughts about her career path, and Clem is making bad choices in love.  To a lesser extent, the website issue provides some ground to cover cyber bullying. 

The wellness class and its weekly writing prompts serve as launch points and themes for each stage of the story, which the authors each run with.  It's not a seamless process.  Team writing rarely works in my experience:  most authors have such different styles and those differences and egos turn the book into a competition as the authors try to control the story.  Here, as a three-way, the approach becomes especially messy.  At several points, you can tell that one author didn't like what another had done in a preceding chapter.  Sometimes the chapters overlap chronologically.  Sometimes, there are large gaps.  But what there rarely is is coordination between them and no great attempt to edit out the rough edges. It's great to have each girl have their own voice, but without an overseeing editor to iron out the rough spots, this is a bumpy ride. The approach is more distracting than clever.