Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu

Hazel and Jack have been friends for ages. While Hazel's mother tries to convince her that it would be a really good thing for her to make some new friends and maybe even give other girls a try, Hazel remains committed to Jack. Together, Jack and Hazel use their lively imaginations to turn the surrounding woods into an enchanted forest and to convert an abandoned shack into a mansion. They fight aliens and wizards, and save the day as a team. Hazel knows that only Jack really understands her.

But as they start fifth grade, things change. Jack no longer is as interested in Hazel and their games. He wants to spend his time with the boys. Mom tells her that this is normal, but Hazel knows the truth: it's a curse caused by an evil mirror that distorts your vision and only she can save Jack from the evil Snow Queen!

A strikingly original piece that transcends its genre. The story can of course be read as an homage to the tales of Hans Christian Anderson (The Snow Queen and The Little Match Girl in particular). Alternately, it can be seen as an expansive meditation on change and growth (and the difficulties of adapting to both). Or, perhaps it is a combination of both? In much the same way that fairy tales sometimes serve as fables to guide us through the real world, perhaps the real world is returning the favor in this story.

The good part of this story is that no answer is every really given and interpretation is left up to the reader. That is the strength of the book but also the root of its problem. Being such a thematically complicated book, it is hard to imagine the proper audience for it. The ages of the protagonists and the book's subject suggests a Middle School reader, but that is not a group that will find this tale easy to digest. Instead, I fear that they would find it pretty boring. So, kudos for a sophisticated and beautiful book, but it is one that will have difficulty finding readers.

Notes From the Blender, by Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin

Neilly is having the worst day of her life. In one day, she gets dumped by her boyfriend, finds out that her best friend has betrayed her, catches her Mom in a state of undress with some guy in their kitchen, and learns that Mom is about to marry said guy because she's gotten pregnant. So, it's probably no big deal that the son of the guy who knocked up her mother is a scary heavy metalist with the hots for her.

Not that all is honky-dory with Declan (the aforementioned boy into Norwegian death metal). He's still in denial about the death of his mother and finding out his Dad is going to get remarried is totally not what he had in mind. But he has to admit that the chance to pick up a sexy step-sister would be pretty cool! (ew!)

And so, in alternating chapters (presumably alternatingly written by the two authors), we get the story of how two kids from very different social circles found that they had a lot more in common than they ever imagined. And just about everyone discovers that the world is full of amazing coincidences and that they all have a lot to learn from blended families.

Team-written books are the bastard step-children of YA literature. One imagines that they start in some sort of writer's workshop and just take off from there. Far too often they seem like an exercise in who-can-top-the-other? One writer tries to put the other into a corner and they must make larger and larger leaps of logic to move the story forward. Thankfully, this one manages to wrap things up, but there is a jarring difference of styles between the two writers. Declan's character is noticeably more interesting and authentic than the emotionally precocious and unrealistically mature Neilly. Neilly (and her chapters in particular) were less interesting, more hurried attempts to tie up the chaos stirred up in Declan's chapters. I found the unevenness distracting.

Additional note: when deciding to publish an endorsement of your book from a famous YA writer, make sure that they've read your book carefully first (Reinhardt's mention of Finnish Death Metal on the back cover is unintentionally hillarious)!

The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson

Spending a year in London studying at the Wexford School is a dream-come-true for Rory. Given her Cajun background from the swamps of Louisiana, it seems terribly exotic. But what could have been just a story of an unforgettable year abroad gets a twist of the supernatural when her stay is interrupted by a series of mysterious murders. Someone is replicating the notorious crimes of Jack the Ripper in modern-day London. And Rory appears to be one of the few people who knows who he is. That's when things start to get really weird!

Maureen Johnson doesn't write books with deep literary pretensions, but all of her books are original and interesting. Her heroines tend to be independent adventurers, unafraid of flying from the nest. They will have a romantic interest, but the boy never gets in the way of the story and is usually not terribly instrumental in its resolution. But beyond those broad requirements, each of her stories are unique. This one combines psychological thriller and ghost story, but sets the whole thing in the comfortable YA world of modern-day English boarding school. And unlike other recent YA books that deal with supernatural matters (like Fade, which I despised!), this one is lots of fun. The wisecrack about vampires and werewolves on page 214 is priceless.

Johnson crafts a good story. Excellent pacing, memorable characters, a heroine we root for, all in that familiar school setting. One might argue that the story would have worked just as well without the murders and the ghosts, but it wouldn't have been as much fun. In sum, nothing deep, but a great way to pass a few hours.

You Don't Know About Me, by Brian Meehl

Billy Albright has lived a sheltered life in a Christian cocoon. For sixteen years, his mother and he have traveled around, stirring up religious fervor and launching semi-terrorist attacks on the godless. While Billy suspects that his career as a "Jesus Throated Whac-A-Mole" is a bit out of touch with reality, it takes an unexpected package from his long lost father to pry him loose. But once pried, Billy embarks on an action-packed scavenger hunt across the country, following clues that his father has left him in partial copies of Mark Twain's controversial classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Joined by a professional ballplayer (with a closetful of secrets) named Ruah, Billy seeks the truth about the world and the meaning of faith.

The book, inspired and based loosely on Huck Finn's story, is an attempt to modernize and update Mark Twain. It does this without the controversial language of the original but introduces new controversies about sexual politics and mass culture. It's an ambitious work and frequently interesting, but overall very clumsy. The parallels to Huckleberry Finn are obvious and forced and the political agenda is simplistic and unoriginal. All of which is a shame because the story itself is fun and one wishes that Meehl had just let the story be itself without piling on all the Deep Meaning. I enjoyed the adventures and the interactions of the characters, but every time it felt like the book was trying to teach me something, I turned off. Unfortunately, by the end, that feeling became overwhelming.

All These Things I've Done, by Gabrielle Zevin

Some seventy years in the future, chocolate and coffee have become illegal and Anya's family is deep in the business of the illicit trade in the substances. It's cost most of the members of Anya's family their lives and now Anya tries alone to look out for her little sister, older and mentally-challenged brother, and her dying grandmother. That's hard to do when your ex-boyfriend tries to rape you and then mysteriously ends up poisoned. And life isn't any less complicated when she falls for the cute son of the assistant district attorney. But Anya takes her loyalty to her family seriously and she'll figure out a way to keep things together, even if the list of her sins continues to grow.

Zevin writes interesting and original books. And while she places this one in a New York City mob family and many of the usual organized crime tropes are present, they are faintly subverted. There are the usual meetings, kissing of cheeks, and big guys with funny names in suits. But Anya herself still hangs out in high school, hides from the popular kids, and dodges trouble with her teachers and principal.

But what has really become Zevin's trademark is her ADD writing style, which is to say that she spends large amounts of efforts setting up a scene and then runs through it quickly. She's excellent at exposition, but not at concluding a story. So, she can send her heroine to prison, filling many pages to set up a prison drama and then just suddenly spring her before any of it plays out. The ending of this book is particularly maddening in this regard as Zevin simply loses interest in the story and wraps up everything in a breathless fifteen pages. I'm not sure if this is intentional or simply a result of Zevin's lack of focus, but it is a bit maddening to be patiently building up the suspense and just toss everything out quickly in the end. And when so many carefully crafted details become superfluous or ignored, it also seems a shameful waste of good writing.

Moonglass, by Jessi Kirby

Ten years ago, Anna's mother died in the ocean. Now, she and her father have returned to live in the town where her parents first met. It's hard to be new in a small town and worse when the locals know more about your parents than you do! But it is also an opportunity to learn about her mother and, as she does so, Anna realizes that learning more means confronting her fears and repressed anger at the loss.

A beautifully-written book which combines the author's love for everything from beach combing, scuba diving, and surfing to cross-country running and how to talk to people who are grieving a loss. The plethora of subjects and the intensity with which Kirby writes about them are infectious.

The story is one attractively constructed package. The characters are strong, realistic, and memorable. The subplots are related and tied back in to the story (everything is addressed, but not necessarily resolved). In sum, the story was complete.

Kirby scored a strong endorsement from Sarah Dessen on the cover of this book. This is actually very appropriate as the style of the writing (wistful and introspective, intense yet quiet) is strongly reminiscent of Dessen's own earlier writing (particularly That Summer and Someone Like You). This is not a story where an awful lot happens and the tale is hardly fresh (grieving for a dead mother is about cliche YA as you can get!), but a good book is really much more about context and character. I loved the book and look forward to reading Kirby's next novel!

Clean, by Amy Reed

In an inpatient drug rehabilitation facility for teens, five kids talk about how they got hooked, why they stayed addicted, and why they finally came in for help. Along the way, they try to understand each other with mixed success. In this carefully-planned story, each major character represents an archetypal addict -- smothered Christopher, abandoned and neglected Eva, physically abused Jason, sexually abused Kelly, and hooked-up-by-her-own-mother Olivia. Through a series of assignments and interactions, we get to understand each of them.

It's well-written and well-researched, the characters say compelling things, and the whole thing is amazingly predictable. You know where this story is going. Everyone starts off obnoxious and gradually melts by the end of the book. The tears are jerked out at the correct moment. All contractual obligations are met. It is, in sum, very sufficient. If you've never read a book on teen substance abuse, this isn't a bad read, but if you're looking for something new and compelling, this isn't the book.

Paper Covers Rock, by Jenny Hubbard

In 1982, at a boy's boarding school in the South, a terrible accident occurs. A boy drowns in the river after a drunken diving stunt gone awry. One of his friends, Alex, spends the next weeks trying to come to grips with what he saw and what he admits to others about the incident. To cope, he confides to his journal, for which he liberally borrows from Herman ("Her-man") Melville's Moby Dick, calling himself "Is-male." Because of fears that a young English professor may have witnessed the accident and thus be a threat to its secrets, Alex gets embroiled in a plot to discredit her and destroy her reputation. But at the same time, he struggles with admiration and infatuation for her, leading to a great deal of confusion about what to do.

An eloquent and well-written novel about fear and self-loathing among teen males, with plenty more implied than actually said. The high style of the writing and the large quantity of unanswered questions will provide ample material for classroom debate. Furthermore, the plentiful classical allusions are guaranteed to bring High School English faculty to orgasm (never mind the tragic English professor!). I can see now the study guides and forced class discussions of "what the author intended" and "why she chose to use certain words." No one could say that it is a bad book (it's superbly executed and beautifully done), but it isn't written to appeal to young readers. In sum, the book reeks of assigned high school reading, more than YA pleasure read.

It isn't so much that I hate literary novels, but books like this are not written for anyone to enjoy and the author doesn't have anything to say to young readers. She's neither interested in entertaining nor enlightening them. She written a clever book that critics will love, but it is a lifeless and joyless thing.

Warp Speed, by Lisa Yee

Marley's the kind of boy who likes to maintain a low profile. Choosing the word to describe himself at the start of the school year, he picks "invisible." It's the best way to be, especially if you are a magnet for every bully in the school. Hardly a day goes by when kids aren't punching, kicking, or otherwise taunting Marley.

To cope, Marley has a Star Trek obsession, burying himself in trivia and trying to guide his life through the characters of the show (WWSD? -- what would Spock do?). His friends in the AV club seem to cope similarly: Ramen loves Star Wars and the new kid Max loves Batman. Yet, it's Marley who gets singled out for special attention in the halls and after school. And it's Marley who will surprise the others (and himself most of all) by revealing particular talents no one imagined he has.

It's cute, it's feel good, and it's a quick read, but it's terribly pedantic. Consider this the polar opposite of the book The Misfits that I reviewed earlier this week: The anti-bullying message here is muddled and confused, and in the end ultimately dictated by the author since the characters are too weak to figure it out on their own. Marley, we learn, is too dumb to figure this stuff out for 280 pages, despite the help he gets from several adults and from her current and former friends. Instead, the reader is led by the nose to the correct conclusion in the last 30 odd pages: bullying is best dealt with by confronting it. That's simply not very interesting.

One also wishes that Yee hadn't tried to make her characters fans of real science-fiction shows as it quickly reveals her own ignorance of the genre. Better to have made something up altogether. As is, we're faced with multiple references to Star Trek that sounded about as authentic as the history teacher's "rap" songs. And I found myself cringing as much as the students in that class.

Ten Miles Past Normal, by Frances O'Roark Dowell

When Janie was nine years old, she dreamed of living on a farm. To her surprise, her parents decided that it was just the thing they all needed and decided to take the plunge. But what seemed like so much fun as a young child becomes a major source of embarassment as a teen. Fourteen year-old Janie desperately wants to hide the fact that she's a farm girl. She'd like to be more "normal," but High School doesn't seem to be an easy place at which to do that. She can't find a clique or a club to join. She hides out in the library during lunch. It doesn't help that her schedule's separated her from her Middle School friends.

The only extracurricular activity that attracts her is band jam, where she discovers an affinity with the bass guitar. It is the patience and attentiveness of a boy with the unfortunate name of Monster who teaches her the intricacies of the instrument, but this isn't really a romance (although a few potential romances fizzle out). Instead, goats and civil rights activists play a significant role in the story.

O'Roark Dowell has a tendency to write about young teens in transition and she carries on the theme here. Some of the strongest passages deal with Janie and her best friend Sarah's changing relationship. There's also some nice realistic stuff about the awkwardness of romantic feelings at this age. And in general, the tone is authentic and age appropriate.

However, the story itself is so random and across the board that it's hard to know how to read it. Neither the Civil Rights stuff nor the references to the farm seem related (more of an add-on than an essential part of the story). It seemed like an attempt to dump in a lot of cool ideas and then try to form a story around them as an afterthought.

The Misfits, by James Howe

Bobby is a member of the "Gang of Five," a group of four (!) kids who don't fit in and have been subjected to a great deal of teasing because of it. Addie is the outspoken activist, Jim the fey guy who used to wear dresses when he was little, Skeezie needs to work on his personal hygiene, and Bobby is overweight. Outcasts at school because of their quirks, the four friends meet in the afternoons at a diner to plot against the injustices of their world. At first, their target is the student council elections, but when their plans go awry, Bobby makes a suggestion that will change all of their lives, and potentially change things in their school for everyone else as well.

While a cynic might consider the premise of this story to be idealistic (sort of a pay-it-forward for tweens), there is no denying the actual impact of this story in the real world. Thanks to it and the efforts of the author, an anti-bullying message has been promoted across the country, inspiring anti-bullying days and no-names weeks in a number of middle schools.

But beyond the impact of the story in young peoples' lives, the book itself deserves special praise. My usual complaint about books written for middle readers (and I include some of the real classics like Judy Blume in my criticism) is that the authors of books for this age group don't seem to have much respect for their readers, talking down to them and lecturing, connecting dots that a kindergartener could probably figure out on their own. Somehow, no matter how bright the young protagonists of these books, the pearls of wisdom always have to come from adults. Not so here. The adults are far from stupid or cluelessness, but the good ideas and insights come from the kids themselves (and in words that seem authentic and believable). This makes the story so much more effective, because who wants to be preached to by adults when you are thirteen years old?

The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills, by Joanna Pearson

Janice thinks of herself as an anthropologist of adolescence in her small North Carolina town. In some ways, this is a coping mechanism, giving her the opportunity to observe, with detachment, the behavior of her peers (and thus ignore her own shyness and social awkwardness). However, as she discovers when she attracts the attention of a moody heartthrob, it also creates the impression that she is a snob and an elitist. Realizing in the end that her attitude is the cause of many of her problems, she manages to salvage much of her life with some mental readjustment. A beauty pageant also plays a role in the transformation.

The book tries hard to win you over, but it fails on nearly all fronts. The "anthropological" observations try to be clever and witty, but we've seen this done better (for example, see the Popularity Papers, reviewed in July, or re-read a classic like Speak). The relationships (whether between Janice and her best friend, between Janice and her mother, or between Janice and either of the two boys in her life) are underdeveloped and fall flat. Janice herself is contradictory, frequently switching directions in mid-stream. At first, she resists participating in the beauty pageant yet seems to adapt to it easily enough in the end. This leaves us wondering what Janice wants (or, more to the point, what Pearson wants us to surmise about Janice's desires). In the end, the book doesn't have much to say (and what it does say, we've heard before).

Entwined, by Heather Dixon

After their mother dies, Azalea and her eleven sisters are forced to spend a year in mourning, locked up in the castle, forced to wear black, and (worst of all) forbidden from dancing. But then the children find a secret passage to a magical land where beautiful people dance the night away. Managed by "Mr. Keeper," the girls are told that they can return to dance every night. They do so and it relieves the sadness that they feel at the loss of their mother. But Azalea becomes suspicious of Mr. Keeper. It all seems too good to be true. And before it is too late, she must figure out what is up!

Based on a fairy tale called the "Twelve Dancing Princesses (with which I am not familiar), this retelling fleshes out the story to nearly 500 pages. It moves quickly enough, but isn't all that well-written. Handicapped by my lack of knowledge of the original source material (or, apparently, the "classic" Barbie version!), I relied on the storytelling to lead me through the story. And I found that it just didn't hold up. Instead, I was continuously having to double back and re-read passages to figure out what was going on. This grew frustrating and, as a result, I found the writing tiresome. As a tribute, it might be a formidable work, but as an original story, it is lacking.

We'll Always Have Summer, by Jenny Han

In the third (and probably last) installment of the series, Belly is now in college and she and Jeremiah are dating. As the story opens, there is trouble in paradise: Belly finds out that Jeremiah cheated on her during Spring Break. She confronts him and the incident threatens to sever their relationship. Instead, they reconcile and Jeremiah proposes to Belly. She accepts.

Their families are aghast. Sure, they have always been close, but just about everyone else agrees that they are far too young. Belly and Jeremiah decide stubbornly that they will go ahead, with or without the approval of their families.

Jeremiah's older brother Conrad has his own reasons to object: he's never gotten over his own relationship with Belly. As the days to the wedding approach, Belly herself realizes that she still has feelings for Conrad. The resulting love triangle plays out much as expected, but is no less poignant in its predictability.

While I am not a big fan of series literature and romances usually fall flat (more because I am old and jaded, and less so because of the usual excuse of my gender), Han's trilogy is an outstanding exception. She has a beautiful way of plucking heartstrings and she does so through honest observations. All three of the books in this series are mature, well-written studies of feelings and emotions that ring true for all ages (both the adolescents and the adults seem real and vibrant). Yes, it may be easy to write a nostalgic piece about young love on the beach, but there is an unusual amount of substance and honesty here about what love really does to us. For anyone who has loved another enough to consider marriage, there are moments here that feel familiar.

If I have a complaint, it is a minor one: the epilogue seemed unnecessary and more like a desperate bid to have a happy ending, when a melancholy conclusion would have done just fine.

Choker, by Elizabeth Woods

Back when she was little, Cara had a best friend named Zoe to hang out with. The girls got into trouble a few times and Cara's parents never approved of Zoe, but at least Cara had someone.

When Cara and her family moved away, Cara was all alone. It was hard resettling and Cara's general nervous disposition didn't help (an accident in the lunchroom earns her the nickname "choker" and the mockery of her peers). But just when Cara feels it can't get any worse, Zoe appears on her doorstep and begs Cara to let her secretly stay over. Zoe has run away from home and needs her old friend to take her in.

Zoe's obviously hiding something and not telling the whole truth, but at first Cara could care less. Her friend is back and she is no longer alone. Having Zoe back, Cara again feels some degree of self-confidence. But when Cara's tormentors start to disappear and show up dead, Cara becomes suspicious of Zoe's behavior. Too late, she realizes that her old friend may be a danger to her.

Full of frightening imagery, this psychological thriller will make your skin crawl. I found the pacing a bit too slow and drawn out, but I was definitely glued to the book and wanted to know how it would end. A shocking twist towards the end threw me sufficiently off-balance that it was worth while. Kudos to Woods for creating the creepiest book of 2011!

The Summer I Learned To Fly, by Dana Reinhardt

Drew (or "Birdie" as her mother calls her) is burdened with a boy's name, an obsessed and entrepreneurial mother, and an unusual pet -- a rat named Hum. She doesn't really have any friends, so Hum is most of her life and working at her Mom's cheese shop with Swoozie (an ex-pat Wisconsinite) and Nick (surfer dude and mechanic extraordinaire) is the rest. Enter Emmett, the boy with a mysterious scar on his face, an evasive response to most questions, a strikingly deep knowledge of rats, and a plan that will take Drew away on the most amazing trip in her thirteenth summer.

The result is a charming and quirky romance about a moment when a shy girl left her comfort zone and made tentative steps to adulthood. Birdie, speaking as an eighteen year-old narrator of this story of her childhood, is endearing and insightful and imbues her story in a warm nostalgic glow. This is tear-jerking stuff and a perfect example of the types of things for which I am a complete sucker. In this respect, it is very much YA-for-adults (not just in topic, but also in its no-BS tone about human relationships between adults, children, and one another), but it is also a pretty story about a strong girl who learns how to unfold her wings. I can't say whether young readers will appreciate the beauty and honesty of the moment that Reinhardt captures, but I certainly did!

Hidden, by Helen Frost

When she was eight years old, Wren was kidnapped by a car thief who didn't notice that she was in the back seat of the car he was stealing. Scared, she hid and survived for several days before escaping. And while her feat required a lot of quick thinking, she was helped at the time by a girl of her age named Darra (who was also the thief's daughter). Darra secretly slipped her food and kept her existence a secret from her Dad. But when Wren escaped, the police came and arrested Darra's father, for which she blamed Wren.

The two girls never met up again, until five years later, when they end up - by chance - at the same summer camp. At first, they ignore each other, suppressing memories of what happened and pretending that they don't know each other. But the pain of it all is too much, and unsettled scores rise to the surface. Once aired, the two girls find common ground for an unusual friendship.

Told in alternating viewpoints through two distinct styles of free verse, this is a short but ambitious literary project. There are instructions on the end of the book for how to read the verses for hidden meaning and it is well-worth reading the book twice (once straight through and the second time following the author's instructions). It's clever but not the sort of thing that a lot of young readers will really care about. The verse itself is fairly bland and lacks intrinsic value. The idea for the story is interesting, but the end product is not so impressive.

Small Town Sinners, by Melissa Walker

As the youth pastor's daughter in her town's major church, Lacey is a fervent believer in it and her congregation's good works. The highlight of which has always been the annual "Hell House" (a melodramatic morality play used to acquire converts) that her church's teen group puts on to show the downfalls of sin. And while Lacey has come to see its flaws as she has grown older, she still longs to be a star and help save souls.

However, things are starting to change. A childhood friend named Ty moves back to town. He has secrets and hides his past but still makes her question her faith, with his ideas and statements. And around Lacey, things are happening that challenge her assumptions about moral questions being so cut and dried. Turning to her parents doesn't help. They don't have answers and even try to dissuade her from asking her questions. So she finds herself striking out on her own.

When it comes to teens and religion in YA, this theme of independent youth challenging rigid paternalistic faith structures is a common approach. And the idea of using an outsider bad boy to trigger the crisis of faith is a similarly familiar approach (think Footloose for example). The problem that most of these stories have is that the heroine's faith is usually a paper tiger -- easily challenged with a bit of common sense and then summarily vanquished. That's an easy out and certainly an issue in this book. Walker is obviously not a fellow-traveler of Evangelicals and shows that she can't accept that people would actually believe this stuff. But she also has the good sense to respect that her characters' faith would be difficult to dislodge. And so, while Lacey is shown questioning her faith, she does not simply toss it aside. That makes this story stronger than most.

However, I'm still seeking a book abnout teens and religion that does not walk us through the process of how the characters reach the conclusion which the author has already decided that they should have. In my mind, Walker's antipathy to Evangelicals is almost as bad as the Christian Inpirational novels that I occasionally pick up. It's a disservice to readers to portray religious faith as something so easy to resolve. So, you can put this in my want-to-read category: a book about a young person seeking faith who finds it in the end, but where the particular direction the book will take is not a foregone conclusion from page one. (My other big literary wish, of course, is the warrior princess who enjoys embroidery and slaughtering her enemies with a kick-ass sword!)

Sean Griswold's Head, by Lindsey Leavitt

When Payton discovers that her father has MS, the shock that he is sick isn't nearly as great as her surprise at learning that she's been kept in the dark about this for the past six months. Even her older brothers have known about it the whole time. However, her family has kept it a secret because they felt she was overly sensitive and wouldn't be able to handle the truth.

In shock and in anger, she gives her family the silent treatment. Her reward for this is getting sent to her High School guidance counselor for talk therapy. There, it is her counselor's idea that she needs to find something to focus on to journal about and sort out her feelings about her father's illness. But Payton finds it difficult to choose a worthy subject to center upon. In desperation, she chooses to focus on the back of the head of Sean Griswold, a boy who sits in front of her in biology class. Her first entries are silly and frivolous, but gradually she starts learning more and more about her subject until Payton realizes that she is falling in love.

An above average romance for younger teens. It gets some gravity from its topics of death, dying, and grief, but at its heart there's the romance, which doesn't have a lot of steam (the younger target audience probably doesn't need much -- it's all in the anticipation!). The subject of Payton leaning to cope with her father's illness is also handled pedantically (but again that's probably a requirement of the target audience). So where the story really shines is in Payton's appealing personality and some funny situations.

Shine, by Lauren Myracle

Over the past couple of years, Cal has shut herself off from her friends and become a loner. However, when an old friend Patrick is found badly beaten, bound to a gas pump, and with the nozzle shoved down his throat, Cal finds she can't continue to be shut down. The brutality of the crime (far too easily blamed by the police on out-of-towners) drives her to try to uncover the culprit. But as she starts to poke around, she quickly learns how far people will go to hide the truth and how much the people of her town have to fear. Rather than discourage her, the search emboldens Cal to dredge up the facts of what happened, even as it threatens to reveal her own truths to the world.

A surprisingly complex story of rural America. This isn't the simpleton hillbilly America of so many novels, nor is it an innocent and sweet place. Myracle's country, instead, is a world where meth production and consumption has invaded, driven by the despair of a world without jobs or future. It's a place where people cover up the truth because they realize that there is no point in knowing it. It's a grim world with its own sense of justice and reciprocity.

The book is impressive. The explanation for what happened to Patrick (and why it happened) is only arrived at through an honest (and painfully slow) unraveling of layer upon layer of smaller hidden truths. The pacer is pitch perfect. On only on a few occasions did I find myself ahead of the narrator in figuring things out. That kept me hooked and made the reading (aside from a fairly slow start) into an addiction.

If there is a fault, it is the nature of the story. I found myself disliking the characters so intensely that I began to not care what happened to them. That again is actually a credit to Myracle's writing. The characters are so well-formed that my dislike came because of who they were not because of how they were drawn up. So, while the story and its characters disgusted me, I still found myself drawn in.