Dark Shimmer, by Donna Jo Napoli

In this retelling of Snow White, set in medieval Venice, tortured Dolce flees her home after her mother dies and is befriended by little Bianca and Bianca's father Marin.  Dolce, raised by dwarfs, has always seen herself as some sort of giant monster and is astonished to discover that she is actually normal-sized!  For his part, Marin adores Dolce and brings her home.  Living with him and Bianca, Dolce is no longer treated as an oddity.  Marin marries her and Dolce settles.  But she is not at peace. Instead, she becomes obsessed with freeing the dwarfs of Venice, who are kept in servitude for the amusement of the nobility.  To buy their freedom, Dolce creates little mirrors, made of the clearest glass and backed with tin and quicksilver.  That the quicksilver is toxic, she knows, but her obsession to free more people makes her reckless in handling it and leads her into madness.

Another beautifully researched historical novels from Napoli, who does them so well and also does some of the most sophisticated retellings of myths and fables.  That's a potent combination in this novel.  There's all sorts of lovely detail here (from the science of mirror making and glass blowing to the social mores of the Venetians).  And Napoli's re-imagining of the fairy tale and her refusal to fall on to magic in any way (she adeptly provides plausible explanations for everything from the poison apple to the glass coffin to the Prince's rescue) is enchanting.

However, I found this storytelling itself hard going.  The beginning was fairly slow and it's only half-way through that the story of Snow White became recognizable.  This is also the point in the story where our heroine becomes the villain -- a twist which is awkward in its unexpectedness.  Having invested rather heavily in Dolce, it is asking a lot of the reader to accept her transformation.  It makes her more sympathetic, to be certain, but should fairy tales really have sympathetic villains?

Infinite In Between, by Carolyn Mackler

On their first day of high school, five freshmen are put together in the same orientation group.  As an icebreaker activity, they write letters to themselves with a plan to read them together when they graduate in four years.  They then embark on their lives and this novel traces the paths of these kids (and their friends) through high school.

Ambitious and, unfortunately, too much so!  With five characters and their supporting players, there isn't much time to spend on any one of them.  Covering four years, there's quite a lot to keep track of.  The result is a story where each chapter (averaged 3-4 pages!) just starts to get interesting before we're jumping to the next character or month and moving on.  It's thin, superficial, and ultimately not very interesting.  I like Mackler as a YA writer, but this is too much and, even at nearly 500 pages, she can't really deliver a story that gels with so much going on.

Your Voice Is All I Hear, by Leah Scheier

April was obsessed with Jonah before they had even met (she scoped him out before he showed up for his first day at their school).  And, much to her surprise, he's just as taken by her.  Their romance kicks off beautifully, but something isn't quite right.  At first, it's just little quirks that she easily ignores and explains away, but his behavior becomes more and more erratic until he has to be committed to an inpatient psych facility.

He is diagnosed with schizophrenia and, as he struggles with the sickness, April is urged by her parents, friends, and even Jonah himself to let him go.  They are too young and she shouldn't be wasting her life on him, April is told.  But Jonah is the first great thing that has happened to her and she simply cannot abandon him.

Heart wrenching stuff, as one would expect.  I loved April and the way we really got in her head.  She's brutally honest with herself, which wasn't terribly realistic but more fulfilling from a dramatic perspective.  She always knew when she was screwing up, even as she did so.  And I loved Scheier's sensitive and authentic description of Jonah's suffering.  The resulting dynamic between the two of them was captivating and hard to watch at the same time.  As a result, this is a difficult book to get through because you really feel for these kids and the nearly impossible situation they are in.

I was less taken with the narrative, which kept jumping about.  Scheier focused on particular dramatic moments, often without sufficient transition or foreshadowing and I felt like I was being dragged through the story.  It felt like April was telling the story in retrospect years later and just glossing over details -- a realistic approach, perhaps, but not very good storytelling.

Don't Fail Me Now, by Una LaMarche

With their mom in jail again, it falls on Michelle to take care of her younger sister and brother.  But the kids are running out of places to stay and the means to take care of themselves.  Her younger sister is being bullied at school and her younger brother is about to be expelled.  Michelle's job won't pay their bills and she's too young to gain custody anyway.

In the midst of her despair, Leah and her stepbrother show up.  They couldn't be any more different from Michelle and her siblings (wealthy, white, and privileged), but Leah and Michelle share one thing in a common:  they have the same father.  And now their dad is dying and has asked the girls to leave Baltimore and come out to California so he can see them.  This unlikely pair, with their siblings, set off on an illicit cross-country road trip full of widened horizons and adventures.

Ostensibly, a typical road trip-and-getting to know you adventure, Don't Fail Me Now is an outstanding example of the subgenre.  Strong characters who are fun and interesting move this story along.  I'm not a fan of YA that put kids in danger, but LaMarche is gentle with these kids and they mostly muddle through on their limited resources (one might even accuse her of soft-pedaling their hardships!).  A lot more could probably have been done with the underplayed class and racial differences, but that was not the story the author wanted to tell.  In general, it was pretty enjoyable.

All the Rage, by Courtney Summers

Everyone in town knows the Turners.  Power neatly resides with whoever is allied with them.  So, when Romy and her family falls out with the Turners, it's pretty much open season.  The older Turner boy rapes Romy, but rather than elicit sympathy, Romy is accused of fabricating the story and she is subjected to another sexual assault a few weeks later.  The second attack is not so easily written off by the town, because another girl has disappeared at the same time.

None of which matters to Romy.  She has no will to fight the town and she seeks refuge in a job out of town and a boy she meets there.  All she wants is to keep that world separate from the one back home.  But doing so is getting more and more difficult.


A gruesome and unpleasant story that combines a suffering and sympathetic protagonist against some heavy baddies.  It also has a lot of ambitions, building a story on the important subject of rape culture, but it stretches credulity along the way and relies on thinly drawn villains and poorly explained motives.

The blurb for the book claims that the author is trying to show how silence is "inflicted upon young women" but it is not that simple (even in this story where Summers has stacked the deck against Romy).  I have no problems believing that a rape victim would be reluctant to go public and that she would not want to deal with a law enforcement force that is this blatantly corrupt.  But when she is unwilling to talk to anyone at all (including a mother with whom she apparently has a good relationship), one has to acknowledge that some of this silence is self-imposed.  And rather than explore that idea, the story leaves a huge void that leaves us wondering why Romy doesn't speak (and not why others try to silence her).

Furthermore, it all seems terribly exploitative.  Rather than give Romy a chance to gain a voice or to heal, we're just shown again and again how helpless and ineffectual she is.  There is enough injustice in the world and sexual violence is cruel enough in itself to provide ample drama for a decent story.  Inventing a character who does everything she can to hurt herself just seems cruel and mean.  To me, it seemed like Summers just wanted to amp the trauma and drag out the story.  What I learned is that when you're hurting and need help, you should spurn every offer you receive (that is, if you want to make the story "shocking").

The Accident Season, by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Cara is searching for a girl in her class named Elsie that no one seems to remember.  Elsie, however, seems to show up in every photograph that Cara owns and Cara wants to know why.  It is also the beginning of the "accident season" when Cara and the members of her family are subject to an unusual rash of accidents that always seem to strike them in October.  Undeterred by falling bridges and collapsing bookshelves, Cara goes ahead with her plans for a Halloween party at an abandoned house, which somehow seems to evoke the spirit of Elsie.

A really strange paranormal story.  I liked the way it was heading (even if I didn't understand every scene) but it got steadily weirder and weirder.  By the end, it simply ceased to make sense and lost me entirely.  Perhaps I didn't give it the attention it deserved, but once lost in the plot, I lost interest in the story.  Nice writing but a story that went from poetic and lyrical to ridiculous and illogical.  Skip it.

Fair Coin, by E. C. Myers

Crazy things are happening to Ephraim.  His mother has ended up in the hospital from an overdose, after trying to kill herself because she believes that he's just been killed by a bus!  In the belongings of the dead person (who does look a lot like Ephraim) is a strange coin. With a little trial and error, Ephraim discovers that the coin appears to grant wishes, sending Ephraim into alternate realities where his dreams come true.  But with each wish granted, unexpected side effects start occurring and Ephraim (along with his best friend Nathan) find themselves in deeper and deeper trouble.

What starts off like a series of Sliders episodes, morphs about half-way through into darker territory when the guns appear and people start dying.  It also gets bogged down around that point by long explanations of what is going on.  A little exposition is a good thing, but my attention and patience lagged as the adventure became a physics lesson.  So, an uneven story.  Ephraim and his love interest make an unlikely (but eventually pleasing) pair but, by the end, I had really lost interest in their fate.  Like Mary Shelley (one of the characters) kept begging, just shoot the bad guy and get this over with!

Where People Like Us Live, by Patricia Cumbie

Libby and her family have moved a lot.  Whenever her Dad's job has dried up, the family pulls stakes and they relocate.  Now, they've come to "Rubberville" (a.k.a. Racine WI).  But during this final summer before High School, things are different.  Her father's pulled into a strike and the family has to scrimp to get by.  Her brother and sister are striking out into new territory.  And Libby has made her first real friend, Angie -- a girl with a troubled past and a dangerous secret.  And when Libby figures out with is going on with Angie, she realizes she is going to have to decide between saving her friend or protecting the friendship.

A well-written novel aimed really at an adult audience (full as it is with life-changing secrets and the frustrations of adults).  This is classic character-centric work -- the people are vivid and the action quite languid.  That slow pacing allows us to savor each person we meet but there isn't much to take away from the story.  And not really much effort to tie it together.

A Year Without Mom, by Dasha Tolstikova

In 1991, Russian middle schooler Dasha is struggling with typical middle school problems:  friends who are drifting away, passing exams, and a boy she has a crush on.  Her greatest desire is to get accepted to a prestigious high school.  The world is changing in other ways, as the Soviet Union comes to an end and the Russian Federation emerges as an independent state.   But the greatest trauma of all is that Dasha has to deal with these problems without her mother, who has gone away to a graduate school in the United States to study advertising.

Told in a graphic novel drawn in a style that betrays Tolstikova's love of the Russian absurdists, A Year Without Mom tells a simple but genuine story of growing up in a time of change.



And now for the full disclosure....

I met Dasha's mother Natasha when she came to the University of Illinois to study advertising during the "year without mom" and met Dasha herself the following summer when I visited the family in Moscow in 1992 (somewhere around page 152 in this novel).  I, of course, knew nothing of the dramas of her life (for me, she was a schoolgirl with an impressive knowledge of The Beatles), but I grew to know her mother and grandparents quite well in the years that followed.  And I took this picture of Dasha in her family's kitchen that summer:

What You Left Behind, by Jessica Verdi

After his girlfriend dies of cancer, Ryden can't stop blaming himself for her death.  After all, he got her pregnant and it was the pregnancy that killed her (she had been receiving treatment for cancer and had to stop chemo during the pregnancy).  Now he a single Dad and sucking at the job. And his old dreams of getting an athletic scholarship seem to be slipping away.  But somehow, he's going to figure this whole thing out (fatherhood, the scholarship, and school), keep his old friends, and make a few new ones.  And then he starts discovering his late girlfriend's journals and finds out the horrible truth about why she really died.

I liked the premise and I (mostly) liked Ryden -- he's got a lot of facets and he's generally quite sympathetic. But the whole blaming himself thing fell flat, as did the really harsh criticism he takes from his friends.  The story was melodramatic enough without all the whining from Ryden.  There were also a number of throwaway subplots (the girlfriends' parents, Ryden's ex-girlfriend Shoshanna) that did nothing at all.  In sum, the novel needed a red pen and a focus.  It also needed to be shortened and given a lot more punch -- the secret truth that is supposed to devastate our hero is painfully obvious to the reader long in advance.

Longbow Girl, by Linda Davies

Brave and resourceful fifteen year-old Merry Owen discovers an ancient book on their property in Wales.  The book is valuable and the sale of it could save her family's ancestral home from the clutches of the bank and their greedy neighbors, the de Courcy's.  But the book is far more than a valuable artifact, as Merry and her friend James discovers, as it leads them on a time traveling adventure to the sixteenth century and the fulfillment of Merry's destiny.

Wales, longbows, and ponies!  What's not to like?  The story dragged in the beginning while stuck in modern day, but as soon as we find our way back to Renaissance Wales, I was hooked in to the adventure!  Fast paced and the total page turner, I needed to know how it would turn out.  It helps to be an archery fan, but after Hunger Games, who isn't a sucker for an adolescent girl with a bow?  Merry was intelligent, extremely resourceful and just plain kick ass.  (It didn't hurt that the author knows her archery and the descriptions were technically accurate)

I was less taken with the love interest, which fell flat.  There was supposed to be the traditional star-crossed lovers thing going on (poor girl, rich boy), but it never really clicked.  In fact, James seemed like a wimp compared to Merry! But English writers don't tend to write very convincing teen romances, so no surprise there! 

Overall, I enjoyed this lively adventure, which reminded me of Michael Crichton's Timeline or a good Stargate episode.  It mixed some decent history, a compelling heroine, and an addictive story.  There's more installments in the works so if you like reading intelligent stories about female Welsh archers who kick butt, you're in luck!


[Disclosure;  I received an Advanced Reviewer's Copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.  The book is slated for release on February 23, 2016]

Forever for a Year, by B. T. Gottfred

Told in train of consciousness and alternating viewpoints, Forever for a Year traces Carolina and Trevor falling in love and the various dramas of this first romance of ninth-graders.  From the initial ecstasy of finding out that their feelings are reciprocated to experimentation with alcohol and sex to the betrayals and fallings out, every emotion is tracked in painstaking (and painful) detail.

Neither character is particularly deep and Gottfred does a particularly astute job of portraying the contradictions and randomness of the characters' thoughts -- this is both a strength and a weakness.  Far too often, I've criticized YA books for creating artificially mature-sounding narrators.  But one can take this too far in the other direction and there's a limit to how much waffling and melodrama one can take.  Worse, both of them have a tendency to become repetitive, which makes the 420-odd pages of this novel excruciating at times.  The lack of depth in their thoughts also does not endear them to the reader.  Carolina in particular can be grating (although Trevor's whining got on my nerves as well).  It's an interesting experiment, but I think I'll return to my overly erudite protagonists.

The Cost of All Things, by Maggie Lehrman

What if the hardships of adolescence could be assuaged by magic?  In this alternate reality tale, four teenagers struggle with the normal traumas of youth but hire "hekamists" to cast spells to relieve them of the consequences.  Kay gets a "hook" to keep her two best friends close to her forever.  Ari gets her memories of her dead boyfriend erased so she doesn't have to deal with the grief.  With the only immediate cost a matter of paying for the spells, solving problems with magic seems easy. 

But there are always consequences.  The magic itself comes with side effects that have complicated ramifications.  As spells fly around, a solution for one person becomes a problem for others.  And then there is the unknown of the human mind and heart -- the unpredictability of life itself, which even the strongest magic cannot make safe.

A nuanced novel that works on many layers.  Obviously, the magic makes this a fantasy, but I would decline to classify this in YA Fantasy since it is really about the nature of human interaction and the inherent impossibility of protecting hearts from pain and uncertainty.  It is also about the way that well-meaning efforts to protect others will tragically hurt them far more.  In the end, it is about accepting that living and loving is risky and that there is no magic potion to help with that.

Every Last Word, by Tamara Ireland Stone

Samantha struggles to hide her obsessive compulsive disorder from her friends (a fiercely competitive group of popular girls).  But when a shy girl at school introduces Sam to a secret poetry society, the association (along with her friend's encouragement) cause Sam to transcend her condition and consider alternatives to the way she's been living her life.  But she still lives in fear of what will happen when people discover she isn't normal.

A touching story about struggling with mental illness that takes a surprising turn towards the end that amps up the stakes of the story dramatically.  The poetry (and the secret poetry society) seemed a bit gratuitous to me, but the story overall was moving.  Samantha is an intriguing and sympathetic protagonist.  The romance with AJ was a bit forced, but is ultimately touching on its own.  In general, the characters in this personality-driven story are effective and memorable (and even the "mean girls" elicit some sympathy!).

I, Emma Freke, by Elizabeth Atkinson

At nearly six feet tall, Emma literally stands out from the others at the age of twelve.  Combined with her awkward name, she's had terrible trouble fitting in.  And when her Mom tells her she doesn't have to go to school anymore, she's overjoyed.  But Emma's mother has a habit of messing things up and Emma soon finds herself in a ton of trouble.  This is the way things usually go for her!

When the summer arrives, Emma receives an invitation to attend a Freke family reunion.  She's stunned.  She's never met her father and knows nothing about his family.  And from what she can tell, the Frekes are totally organized and responsible people (the complete opposite of her mother!).  So, with a bit of adventure, she heads to Wisconsin for a weekend with her father's folks -- seeking to find out more about the rest of her family.

A sweet tween read with some predictable messages about family and finding oneself.  Along the way, Emma has some pretty fun adventures.  But up until the end, she also experiences a lot of neglect.  I realize that adult absentmindedness is a popular trope in tween reads, but it always seems a bit mean to leave small children in a lurch and fending for themselves.  That Emma is able to persevere shows her fierce independence, but seems unnecessary to telling a good story.  That twitch aside, the book is full of many lively characters and made for a brisk read.

Like It Never Happened, by Emily Adrian

Rebecca and her four friends make up the "Essential Five" -- a group of high school juniors who get all the best parts in their school's plays.  They work hard and bond over their talents and dedication. Together, they decide to form a pact to stand together and never date each other.  But it's a promise made to be broken and, once broken, petty jealousies and ancient rumors resurface with devastating impact.  Meanwhile, back home, Rebecca must deal with her estranged older sister's reappearance after many years.

I have a strong mixed reaction to this novel.  There's a lot going on here and the subplot about the sister never quite gelled with the rest of the story.  Other subplots (like Rebecca's reputation and even her romance with Charlie) hung loosely.  The story seemed cluttered and busy.  On the other hand, I really like Adrian's ability to create a story without a clean resolution.  As well as can be imagined, the good guys carry the day, but the real truth remains buried in the end (all pointing to the protagonists' reluctance in the end to let it all out).  That complexity and nuance leaves this story with a novel tension that seemed brilliant in the end.

In a similar way, there were so many characters in this story and little time to effectively develop them all, but here Adrian's ability to distill the important contribution that each one is to make to this story creates a pleasing tapestry.  I might be able to forgo an extraneous teacher or the older sister's girlfriend, but no one really seemed superfluous.  And in the amazing web of conspiracy and denial that the story tells, everyone has their particular critical part to play.

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids, by Sarah Ockler

After a boating accident, Elyse flees her native island of Tobago for the cold north of coastal Oregon.  She's lost her ability to speak, which is a tragedy for a lively Caribbean girl who had a bright singing future in front of her.  In Oregon, she befriends Christian, a boy with a dream of winning a boat race (and saving his town) and his younger brother Sebastian, who dreams of mermaids -- both boys suffer in the silence imposed by their tyrannical father.  Collectively, of course, they find their voices during a summer of healing and rebirth.

Ockler has crafted a complex story that worked best for me when it was its most down-to-Earth, dealing with the boy, the race, and the conflict with the father.  But there's a lot more to the novel -- memories of Tobago, mermaid lore, mysticism tied to the ocean, as well as a lot of character back story.  Some of this was hard to follow and I found the book really hard to get into at first.

What I really did like was Elyse's strong character.  While she wasn't always good at expressing herself (especially with the men in her life), she was great at standing up for herself and what she wanted.  The romance that develops between her and Christian was particularly hot, in no small part thanks to that agency she exhibits.

The Night We Said Yes, by Lauren Gibaldi

Falling in love is often a story of regrets.  This story traces that well-worn path with a novel approach.  It tells the story of two evenings in parallel.  The earlier one where Ella and Matt first met and the second one when they were reunited a year later.  We learn along the ways that, halfway through the year, Matt mysteriously disappeared.  Learning why he did so is an interesting part of the present-day track.  The novel, however, shifts us back and forth between past and present to do something far more interesting:  show how the two of them have remained the same and how they have changed as a result of their relationship and the separation.

I liked the literary device, which while slightly gimmicky, became a beautiful way of telling a story that is a lot about fond memories and nostalgia.  It was a very effective way to provide backstory to a romantic story with a lot of regret packed in.  It works best in the beginning, but wears out as the relationship matures in both timeframes.  By the point that we know what is going to happen to them (in the present, in particular), the flashbacks lose their urgency and I tired of them.  But I still think it was an effective approach.

Emmy & Oliver, by Robin Benway

Ten years ago, Emmy and Oliver were next door neighbors and good friends.  But then Oliver was abducted by his estranged father and he disappeared.  In the aftermath, Oliver's mother remarried and raised two new children.  Emmy's parents, traumatized by their neighbor's loss, grew protective of their only child.  And Emmy was left wondering what had happened to her friend and, as she grew older, also wondering how she was ever going to spread her wings within her parents' tight confines.  Then, one day, during Emmy's senior year, Oliver comes home....

The set up is a bit melodramatic and the ending exploits some of that potential, but overall the book is a lot more thoughtful than one would expect.  The strength of Benway's storytelling is in realizing that both Emmy and Oliver have compelling stories to tell, which are interrelated but different enough to make the reading interesting.    I enjoyed the process that the kids went through, though, growing an understanding of what the ten year gap meant to them.  But the book didn't really seem to me to reach its potential.  Having recognized the potential of the material, Benway doesn't seem to know where to take it.  Lots of great ideas are introduced, but simply lie there.  And, as often is the case in YA, the parents, who fill the usual antagonist roles here, are underutilized and perfunctory.

45 Pounds (More or Less), by K. A. Barson

Ann has tried plenty of diets, but they never seem to stick.  Whatever weight she loses, she manages to put back on.  But this time will be different.  Her aunt is getting married and Ann is committed to the idea of losing 45 pounds before the wedding, so she can fit in a decent dress.

What emerges is a story about Ann's relationship with food, how it serves as a surrogate for love, how it defines not only her health but her self-image, and all of the ways that popular culture both shames the overweight while also encouraging people to over indulge.  Along the way, Barson shoehorns in messages about anorexia and other eating disorders, and examines how even young children are susceptible to unhealthy messages about eating.  It's a lot to fit into a book and the results can at times become preachy.  That's a bit of a shame since Ann makes a very appealing protagonist and her struggles are easy to relate to.