Again, but Better, by Christine Riccio

Shane is stuck in a life that she cannot stand. She majors in premed solely because her parents insist upon it and she struggles to make friends because she is shy.  And a boyfriend?  Forget about it.  When the opportunity arises for her to study abroad in London, she jumps on it.  A new place.  A chance to restart and be the person she wants to be.  Have friends.  Study creative writing (because writing is what she truly loves).  Because her parents would never approve of her studying anything other than medicine, she lies to them and claims to be continuing her premed program.

Once there, she does manage to come a little out of her shell and make friends with her flat mates.  And she falls head over heels for a boy named Pilot.  He sends encouraging signals but turns out to have a girlfriend already.  And after a few close encounters, he becomes cold and distant.  Eventually, her parents find out about the deception and are furious at her, forcing her to abandon the dream of writing.  By the end of the semester, nothing has worked out as Shane had hoped and she returns to the States in shame and disappointment.

Flash forward six years when Shane is ostensibly a successful doctor, but still torn apart by the unfinished business in London.  She finds herself presented with the opportunity to go back in time and re-do the whole thing.  Given how horrible it was, is this something she would really wish upon herself?  But what if, armed with the knowledge of when she made mistakes and six years to consider better choices, she could do it right?  Would it make any difference?

A little like Groundhog Day but more similar to Before Sunset, this charming story of what you might accomplish with a do-over is a crowd pleaser.  First of all, it has the adventure of impulsive youth set loose on Europe, which is always good makings for a beach read.  But when we shift to the second half,  the book shifts tone significantly and there's some wonderful opportunity for reflection on how we change as we grow up.  It's helpful to pay close attention to the first half of the book as much of it is referenced in the second half, and it is apparent that the initial run through was full of misperceptions.  So, even though you are running through much of the same story a second time, it's really entirely new.  The book's clever, but it is also no small feat to engineer a book that well.  I did think that the end comes on a bit too fast and loose ends get wrapped up entirely too neatly in a brief epilogue, but I enjoyed the book.

Somewhere Between the Trees and Clouds, by Chuck Murphree

Dylan struggles with violent behavior and bouts of self-hatred.  The recent death of his mother buys him sympathy from others but the truth is that Dylan's problems go back to when he was twelve and his uncle molested him on a hiking trip.  He's never found the strength to tell anyone besides his best friend TJ about what happened until he meets Audrey.  Audrey has just transferred to their school to get away from bullying and harassment that started when she was raped at a party and tried to press charges.  The transfer didn't help and her "reputation" has followed her to Dylan's school.  

Drawn to each other through their recognition of how much they have in common, Dylan and Audrey's relationship that should have warning flags all over it.  Two fragile people grappling with the scars of sexual assault and self-loathing and somehow helping each other seems like a very bad idea, but in this story it all works out.  Each of them finds the strength to rise to each other's aid and also rebuild their own lives.  It's depicted in a way that seems so deceptively easy.  Yes, there are some relapsing and plenty of bad days, but they are basically perfect to each other and manage to never hurt each other.  That's not how these things play out in the real world.

Beyond my reservations about the wisdom of the blatantly codependent relationship that is at the core of the story, I was put off by the writing itself.  This is a verse novel with nothing particularly outstanding about the verse.  Instead, it is more of a trick to turn a really thin story into a nearly 400-page book.  In fairness, there are some great characterizations here and I think it's great to have a book that explores the impact of sexual violence on boys (a topic that is rare in YA literature), but it's a disappointing read.

Breathe and Count Back from Ten, by Natalia Sylvester

Since she was little, Verónica has always wanted to be one of the performers in the Mermaid Cove show, to be a mermaid swimming beautifully in the water.  In reality, she's a girl with hip dysplasia, enduring multiple surgeries and the bearing the scars to show for it.  For her parents, she must be the good girl who stays away from boys and studies hard.  For her friends, she must be a brave warrior fighting the pain she lives with.  And to strangers, she must hide her scars and do anything she can to avoid their pity.  She never does anything for herself.

When a position opens at Mermaid Cove, Verónica's friends try to convince her that she should try out for the part.  Her parents are utterly opposed.  Performing in public as some sort of sex object in the water is hardly something her immigrant parents approve of (or even understand).  But Verónica is tired of never having a say in her life.  After enduring years of submitting to painful surgeries and denying herself the things she wants, it's time to take responsibility and take charge.  And with support from her secret boyfriend and from her friends, she takes the scariest step in her life.

While ostensibly the well-trod story of an intrepid first-generation teen breaking free from the bounds of her conservative parents (for heavens sake, can we have a story about permissive immigrant parents sometime?!), this novel actually avoids wallowing in that morass and finds something exceptional.  So while we do have to endure the endless refrains of "good girls don't" from her parents, the sneaking out/lying, and the inevitable getting caught, we also get treated to an strong story of a young woman rejecting ablest labels.  The parental disapproval is actually a side show to the bigger problems Verónica faces with societal judgments of her body and her capacity.

<Spoiler> The parental resistance is never truly overcome, and instead Verónica and her parents achieve an uneasy peace.  They come to mutually accept that there will always be conflicts between what her parents and what she needs and that the family can still love one another in spite of this.  So, rather than the catastrophic corner that these stories usually find themselves in (where either the parents or tghe child have to bend), Sylvester allows the characters to back away, retain their beliefs and creeds, and yet recognize that doing so doesn't mean having to give up on what is truly important:  each other.</Spoiler>

A Bird Will Soar, by Alison Green Myers

 

Axel loves birds.  The way they live, where they nest, and where they go is so easy to understand.  And for Axel, who is autistic, there is a comforting simplicity in that.  But when a tornado comes through and damages not only Axel's house, but also the nest of a local pair of bald eagles, even simple things become complicated.  Like the way his father, who he hardly ever sees, shows up to repair the house.  Or the way that everyone comes to help when they discover an abandoned eaglet. The world is full of mysteries, secrets, and things that transcend rules -- the love of an extended family, for one!

A sweet meditation on the complexities of family, depicting the way that behaviors are far from fixed, but instead can bend when needs arise.  Myers is an excellent builder of characters, creating memorable protagonists in this gentle story which is about people doing good things and helping each other.  I did find that Axel gets on my nerves from time to time, but his is a fine sympathetic portrayal that articulates his confusion as he is presented with new situations in a way that was insightful and helpful to the reader.

Before Takeoff, by Ali Alsaid

James and Michelle are two strangers, stuck at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) when their flights (and in fact every other flight) are delayed.  It's a common enough story until they discover a strange blinking button on the wall and decide to push it.  Suddenly, the laws of the universe change.  It starts snowing in Terminal B but becomes unbearably hot and humid in Terminal C, where a jungle sprouts up.  Terminal F becomes a small microcosm of the world, with passengers breaking off into national identities that match their original destinations. As the delays continue (this being Delta, no flights ever get cancelled), people start disappearing, mobs of zombies appear, and strange monsters lurk.  Terminal C's Sky Club is taken over by the Diamond Medallion frequent flyers and they set up their own oligarchy.  Earthquakes and sudden death abound.

It all eventually ends, but not in a way that is particularly satisfying or meaningful.  Cutting to the chase, I found the novel pointless and normally would never have finished it -- if it wasn't about an airport that I know like the back of my hand.  And the author seems to know it pretty well also, except for the strange decision to describe massive windows everywhere (a mistake also featured in the cover -- which looks more like Detroit).  After all, the one very defining characteristic of ATL (and indeed ATL's most terrifying characteristic under normal circumstances) is its lack of windows.  It is a terribly claustrophobic airport.  For some reason, while Alsaid spends a lot of effort making up terrors, he skips past the one that is inherent to the airport -- the lack of windows.

So, why did I read a book I hated so much?  At first, I enjoyed all the details and the pleasure of recognizing the landmarks.  Throughout, I occasionally enjoyed the clever in-jokes ("fresh" sandwiches and salads, that SkyClub takeover, the patchy airport WiFi, etc.).  As we raced through larger and larger catastrophes, I kept hoping the pointless violence and high body count would amount to some sort of clever ending, but it never comes.  Alsaid proudly calls this a "weird trip of a book" but you need something more than weirdness to create a book worth reading.  And this flat out fails to deliver.

The Wolves Are Waiting, by Natasha Friend

Fifteen year-old Nora finds herself lying on the golf course with no idea how she ended up there.  Last thing she remembers, she was attending a party and drinking a root beer.  In the aftermath, her best friend Cam urges her to immediately collect evidence and report the incident, but Nora doesn't want the attention.

In the ensuing weeks, Nora continues to resists her friend's entreaties.  Cam takes things into her own hands and starts investigating what happened and uncovers a tradition of sexual assault, which implicates Nora's own family.  Eventually, Nora comes around and testifies in the name of helping other victims.

Fictional, but based on actual events, the novel explores a wide variety of topics including toxic masculinity, slut shaming, sexting, fraternity hazing, college sports, and the ethics of college disciplinary practices.  None of the topics are particularly novel and the story does veer a bit into fantasy, but it is immensely entertaining and posits a few good talking points about addressing rape culture amongst high schoolers and undergraduates.  In an attempt to build a truly dramatic dilemma, Friend paints herself into an impossible situation at the end that she is unable to resolve, but that leaves a bit of poignant unfinished business that actually works in the story.

There were definitely parts of this story that put me on edge.  I really didn't like Cam's pushiness and her inability to respect Nora's privacy and her decisions.  That felt very much like a violation and Cam got off far too lightly for what was really a terribly selfish act of breaking confidentiality.  I also found Nora's conversion to activism unrealistic and her family's turnaround far too easy.  The ending was definitely rushed and sucked out a lot of the energy that the story had built up.  The "wolves" (a term which one presumes was supposed to refer to the public reaction to Nora's assault) are largely underplayed, depriving the story of much of its dramatic impact.  The end result is a surprisingly tame story.

The Agathas, by Kathleen Glasgow & Liz Lawson

Alice is a girl with a scandal in her past.  Last summer, she disappeared, setting off a huge manhunt, before reappearing a few days later.  Her little stunt cost her her credibility and a lot of friends. In contrast, Iris is a girl with no history.  No one notices her.  She's bright and intelligent but off of everyone's radar.  The two of them are thrown together when their guidance counselor decides that Iris would be the perfect tutor for Alice.

And then in an eerie repeat, a girl named Brooke disappears.  Brooke was once Alice's best friend but the girls were split apart when Brooke stole Alice's boyfriend.  And it is at a Halloween party, where Alice confronted Brooke that the latter girl disappeared.  But it was Iris who saw Brooke fleeing the party and was probably the last person to see her.

When Brooke's body turns up dead, Alice and Iris discover that they  share a fascination with mystery and solving crime.  And they also find that the deeper they go into investigating what happened to Brooke, the more the grownups around them seem to want to stop them.

Through a fabulous series of twists and surprises, the adventure never stops as these two teen sleuths (with an immense debt to Agatha Christie) solve true crime.  I've never been much of a fan of detective novels, but I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  I think most people will.  It's already part of a series, so there's more out there if you want it!

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire, by Joy McCullough

After Em's older sister was raped, Em supported and fought for her sister through the whole process of seeking justice.  And when the jury found the attacker guilty, she rejoiced that her quest was at an end.  But when the judge sets aside the verdict and releases the rapist with time served, Em realizes that the fight is not over and never will be.  And while her sister and her family want to move on, Em finds that she can't.  Everywhere she looks she sees the toxic masculinity that perpetuates violence against women.  So, instead, she funnels her anguish into a story she is writing about a medieval woman who seeks vengeance for the violence inflicted upon her family.  The story, meant to provide release and catharsis, instead takes over Em's life, leading to life-threatening consequences.

I loved the conceptual structure of the book, which tells the contemporary story in prose while placing the historical story-within-a-story in verse.  However, the concept eventually fell flat because the verse was simply not very good.  In fact, given the lyricism of the main character, I think I would have preferred Em's story to be in verse and her historical novel to be the part in prose.  

The story also suffers because the heroine is simply not all that compelling.  Em's character is intense, angry, and wound-up...and largely painted into a corner.  As angry as she starts off, she can undergo very little growth throughout the story, which makes her a hard sell for the reader.  The story itself was strong, though, and I particularly liked the nuanced depiction of the family members, showing how each was affected differently by the assault and the subsequent failure to punish the assailant.  McCullough writes excellent characters but made a strategic misjudgment in the portrayal of Em.

Overall, a story with a lot of promise and a tremendously important topic, but ultimately failing to deliver a story that truly moved me.

The Not-So-Uniform Life of Holly-Mei, by Christina Matula

Holly-Mei has a bad habit of speaking rashly and getting herself in trouble.  And when she gets her whole class in trouble, she makes herself persona non grata.  So, when Mom announces that she is being relocated to Hong Kong for work, Holly-Mei actually feels a sense of relief.

Sure, a new place can be strange and scary, but it will also mean a fresh start!  Holly-Mei is excited, even if she has to leave his beloved grandmother behind. It is her grandmother who warns her that moving won't be easy and she'll experience some tough times even if things work out in the end, but Holly-Mei can't imagine it will be worse than things are for her now.  

Hong Kong does provide a fascinating change of scenery, but Holly-Mei learns that kid are pretty much the same everywhere and that she still needs to watch what she says aloud.  More so, because in China, families are judged by the behavior of their members.  Now Holly-Mei's mistakes won't just be her own problem, they could also affect her parents.

The cultural details of this book are its strength. The author, who spent fourteen years living in Hong Kong, delights in sharing her favorite parts of the city and readers will enjoy learning about the fun things one can do there.  I'm less taken by the story (which felt superficial) or the characters (who seemed spoiled and privileged).  Holly-Mei and her friends are rich (in the chauffeur, private yacht, and fancy penthouse level of wealth) and while she is mildly aware of being slightly lower on the totem pole than her friends, she lives a pretty exalted life.  This isn't Hong Kong as most of us would experience it and that makes the cultural details less interesting than they might have been.

Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher

As the third daughter of the royal family of a small and weak kingdom, Marra never had much in the way of ambition beyond life in a convent. It was the eldest who was married off to the crown prince of the  neighboring Northern Kingdom.  And when she died, it was the middle daughter who replaced her on the throne. Marra might have been happy to stay where she was, embroidering tapestries and assisting the midwife.  However, after a rare visit with her sister for her niece's christening, Marra grows suspicious about her sister's situation and after the child's death she learns of the abusive nature of the marriage.

She is torn apart by the news of her sister's suffering, but can a princess in a convent do about it?  Rescuing her sister from the grasp of a jealous husband, especially one of royal blood, seems impossible.  But Marra is determined to try.  Through a series of feats ranging from reanimating a dog from its bones to shopping at a goblin market to interviewing the dead, Marra bravely tackles one impossible task after another, all to rescue her sister.  A quirky cast of characters (an old woman who talks with the dead, a fairy godmother, a disgraced warrior, a demon chicken, and others) join her on her epic adventure.

A lively and lovely horror/fantasy tale that entertains, even as it addresses the sobering topic of domestic violence.  That said, while this is feminist-inspired fantasy, the storytelling itself is too fast paced to dwell for any significant time on the topic.  In other words, we acknowledge the oppressive patriarchal structures of traditional fairy tale narratives, but then move on to the next adventure.  And that's much of the way of this novel overall.  There's some hint of a romance, but the story never slows down enough for that either.  Instead, it is mostly an endless parade of supernatural monsters and magic.  You'll like this if you enjoy stories of ghosts, demons, and the undead.

Little Bird, by Cynthia Voigt (ill by Lynne Rae Perkins)

Little Bird is a crow who has struggled because of her diminutive size to get the rest of the crows to respect her.  But when the flock's Our Luck, a human's necklace and their protective talisman, is stolen from the nest where it's kept, Little Bird vows that she'll find it and return it.  Facing unfamiliar dangers (including other crows, hostile birds, cats, and humans), Little Bird spreads her wings on a life-changing odyssey.  Crows are clever and intelligent birds and Voigt tries to capture the mixture of wisdom and bafflement with which Little Bird explores the world.

The quirky premise attracted me to this book, but its overall tone and approach of the story seemed inappropriate for its target audience.  This is a dark story that is full of animal imperilment and features a number of complex issues.  In other words, this is not a sweet animal story, but rather something fairly mature.  It isn't so much that I think it will traumatize young readers, I just can't see them really enjoying its somber mood and complicated themes.  As for myself, it just didn't have much charm.  Dana Lorentz's Of a Feather is a much better bird story and does a better job of explaining bird behavior than the rather superficial look at crows that this novel provides.

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, by Laura Taylor Namey

After Lila suffers the trifecta of losing her beloved grandmother, being abandoned by her best friend, and being dumped by her boyfriend, she's lost.  Yes, she'll always have Miami in her heart and Cuba in her soul (as well as her abuela's love of the kitchen), but none of it makes any sense.  Her family, panicked at her existential crisis, take desperate measures and send her to spend the summer with family friends in Winchester, England.

With its cold gray weather and its complete lack of Cuban culture, Lila hates England and feels even more out of place.  But she slowly rediscovers herself by introducing the people there to the fine art of Cuban cooking.  A cute boy from a local tea shop and his troubled little sister also help as well.  By the end of the summer, Lila realizes that she has the potential to be much more than she ever knew before.

Cute romance that pushes most of the right buttons, but gets fussy at points and thus misses the mark for me.  Like most books centering around food, it struggles with how to convey the glory of its cuisine.  Namey's choice is to mostly have characters gushing about how wonderful everything is.  That only goes so far before it becomes repetitive and boring.  I get the point (everything this girl bakes is amazing) but I didn't believe it.  

There are problems with the central character as well:  for all of her troubles, Lila definitely does not suffer from low self-esteem.  You know with that set up that she'll get humbled a little and do some growing from the experience, but it doesn't really happen to any serious extent.  She's just arrogant and obnoxious throughout.  

Finally, there just isn't much going on here.  There ought to be some drama (for example, in having to choose between Miami and England) but nothing really develops.  In a super happy ending, everyone else ends up accommodating for Lila.  Sure, she's calmed down a bit but she's still living the same charmed existence that she started out with.

Gussy, by Jimmy Cajoleas

Gussy has been training to be a village protector for as long as she has lived with Grandpa Widow.  It's an important but tedious job as every ritual and rite must be performed with absolute precision in order to prevent the Great Doom from reaching them.

She's still learning the practices, but she's confident she can manage to keep things together for a few weeks when Grandpa is called away.  But on the first night, Gussy allows a refugee to enter the village, opening up the gates that must never be opened at night in order to do so.  She knows it's a mistake, but the refugee is a harmless little girl and poses no threat.

After that, things start to go bad.  Objects become possessed with evil and then a force starts taking over humans as well.  The Great Doom has breached their walls and defied all of the wards and spells that protect the community.  Gussy exhausts her knowledge of magic and protection rites, but the darkness are still descending upon them. If only Grandpa would come back, but there's no sign of him and Gussy knows that she'll have to figure out a way to defeat this evil that she may of unwittingly brought upon the village.

Excellent world-building and a strong and clever heroine with a lot of mojo gives us a decent (albeit fairly predictable) fantasy novel.  The storytelling drags at points and overall it may be a bit too cerebral for its targeted middle school audience, but the tale checks off all of the right boxes.  There are some good messages about the power of good teamwork and the importance of not holding on to grudges tossed in as well.

A Girl in Three Parts, by Suzanne Daniel

Allegra feels like she is torn into three parts.  Simultaneously being raised by her two grandmothers and her Dad, she has to tread carefully because, while they all love her, they cannot stand each other.  

Her grandmothers couldn't be any more different as people.  Joy is fiercely independent "woman's libber" who helps shelter women fleeing abusive husbands.  Matilde is no less fierce, but rejects all of those notions, focusing instead on hard work, perseverance, and tradition.  Meanwhile, her Dad is a beach bum and largely out of the picture.  

Allegra tries to find balance between them and wishes they would all get along.  There's some sort of historical reason why they hate each other so much but no one will share it with her.  But in the end, the three of them all surprise Allegra when she needs them most.

A period piece set in Australia in the 1970s that explores family and the different ways that people express love and loyalty.  The burgeoning of the second wave of feminism is the backdrop, but told through Allegra's twelve year-old perspective, this is a much more intimate story about growing up.

It has a less-than-stellar opening and a rushed ending, but the bulk of the novel is actually quite good.  The slow start can be blamed partly on culture shock and the lingo, but the real problem is the lack of proper exposition.  There's really no explanation for why Allegra is floating between her grandmothers' apartments and no indication of the period (until we are nearly half way through the book).  Aussie YA tends to be a bit thick, but this is even more so than normal.  Once we got through that, I really appreciated the vivid characters.

Breathless, by Jennifer Niven

Claude is looking forward to her last summer before college, spending time with her best friend before they go their separate ways and maybe hooking up with a guy and having sex for the first time.  Those plans get thrown askew when her mother announces that she and Dad are separating.  She's taking Claude with her for a summer away at the family's ancestral home on a remote island off the coast of Georgia.  

Shell-shocked by the revelation that her parents are breaking up and that her father is abandoning them, Claude's thoughts once they have relocated are far far away from sex and romance.  That is, until she meets steamy enigmatic (and conveniently available) Jeremiah, who's working with an Outward Bound group on the island.  Miah is the perfect anecdote for Claude's broken heart, guiding her back to trust and love.  And while they will have to leave each other at the end of summer, she can't help but fall madly in love with him.

Yeah yeah, it's a formulaic romance, but a beautifully written one. An exotic setting, some steamy sex scenes, and characters with some actual meat on them.  Claude is no shrinking violet, but a fiercely independent and articulate young woman who is confident about what she wants and why she wants it.  As if to prove she's a teen, she makes a few mistakes along the way, but it's hard to not be impressed by how together she really is in the end.  Whether it is in her relationship with her separating parents, her loyalty to her friend, or her no-nonsense assertiveness with boys, she is an inspirational model of conduct.  There's no deep thought or message here, but characters to love and a story with which to fall in love -- a great New Adult romance and coming-of-age story for older readers.

Someone I Used to Know, by Patty Blount

Two years ago, Ashley was a victim of rape.  Targeted by the school's quarterback, she was simply a goal in a "scavenger hunt" organized by the school's football team.  But almost worse than the trauma of the attack or the way that her community turned against her in the aftermath was the fact that her older brother Derek, as a member of the team, participated in the scavenger hunt.

An unflinching look at rape culture, this won't be a book that anyone will particularly enjoy reading, but that is not really the point.  It's a story intended to start a discussion and a dialogue about why sexual violence is so prevalent in our society.  If that's all it was, it wouldn't honestly be all that interesting of a book, but where this novel stands out is in its broader ambitions -- looking at the impact of Ashley's assault on her family.

There's the pain and incomprehension of Ashley's parents and her oldest brother's decision to come home and try to knit the family back together.  However, it's her complicated relationship with her football-playing brother Derek that takes center stage.  Derek didn't just play along with the "game" that got his sister raped, he was an active participant.  And during the trial of the rapist, he made some unfortunate statements that hurt the case.  For rather complicated reasons, Ashley is convinced that he sabotaged the trial on purpose.  But the truth runs deeper:  the two of them have a history of buried antagonisms that the assault brings to light in the worst of ways.

Harrowing stuff!  Originally published in 2018, this was timed to take advantage of the attention on  the #MeToo movement, but the fact that it is still topical (and probably will remain so for many years to come, if not forever) is comment enough.

Don't Touch, by Rachel M. Wilson

Caddie goes to great lengths to develop ways to help her cope with events seemingly out of her control.  When her father moves out of the house, she tells herself that as long as she can manage to not touch or be touched by someone, he'll eventually come home.  But he doesn't and this story she tells herself turns into an obsession and an uncontrollable fear of touch.  She wears gloves to school and goes to great pains to avoid having physical contact with her friends.  It is a hard act to maintain but the tension also lands her a star spot as Ophelia in her school's production of Hamlet.  Ophelia's struggle with maintaining her sanity comes too close to Caddie's own fight as she falls in love with the boy playing Hamlet.

Ophelia is a popular choice to probe the subject of adolescent mental illness and a story about a high school Shakespeare production where life mirrors art is not particularly new.  But Wilson does a good job with this familiar territory by providing a complex and sympathetic depiction of obsessive compulsion.  Caddie is bright and intelligent, well aware of her problems, but often overly optimistic about her chances of overcoming them. I was less taken with her alleged friends who, with the exception of the love interest, seemed cruel or indifferent.  While it undoubtedly adds drama to the story, the overall lack of respect for personal space and consent was disturbing.  Even for a person who did not mind physical contact, there was behavior depicted in the story that I found troubling.

Overall, this story of self-discovery and struggle with mental illness doesn't cover much new ground, but  features a sympathetic and intelligent heroine who finds peace with her problems on her own terms in a rewarding way.

Everything I Know About You, by Barbara Dee

For their class trip to Washington DC, the teachers have decided to assign roommates.  It means that Tally won't be able to be with her best friend Sonnet, let only her friend Spider, a boy who she has taken under her wing to protect him from being teased and bullied.  But it gets worse: Tally's forced to share a room with Ava, the queen bee of the "clone girls." Tally and Ava can't stand each other.  Ava is always putting down Tally's refusal to follow convention.

Tally's proud of being a free spirit and considers her stalwart loyalty to Spider to be one of her most redeeming qualities.  However, the trip forces her to confront certain uncomfortable truths about herself as her friends start making new friends.  When Spider starts branching out and befriends a former tormentor, Tally's concern becomes possessive and smothering.  And her free spiritedness comes with a judgmental thread (which comes out when she finds Sonnet starts befriending some of the "clone girls").  Harder still is Ava, who turns out to have a nice side and reveals to Tally that she has an eating disorder.  Tally finds herself in a bind between being loyal to Ava and obeying her conscience which is leading her to tell an adult about the situation.

Barbara Dee writes really nice middle grade books.  The topic here is pretty standard Afterschool Special material, but that doesn't make the story any less enjoyable.  The kids are pitch perfect and the sermon (about getting a grown-up involved when someone's in real trouble) is kept low-key.  The stand out part is Tally herself -- a wonderfully rebellious free thinker in the classic footsteps of Anne Shirley.  How can you go wrong?

How We Ricochet, by Faith Gardner

Life changed forever for Betty, her sister Joy, and her mother when an angry young man opened fire at the store where they were shopping in the mall.  None of them were physically injured, but Joy was nearby the shooter as he turned his gun on himself.

Driven by anger, Mom throws herself into activism, proving to be a charismatic and articulate advocate for the gun control movement.   As she gains attention, she drifts away from her family.  Joy, on the other hand, withdraws into her room, becoming a substance-abusing agoraphobe.  In between, Betty tries to hold the family together.  

Trying to make sense of the whole thing, Betty becomes drawn to the shooter's younger brother, Michael (she vaguely knows him from school as they shared a class or two, but they were never friends).  Without letting on that her family were victims of his brother, she befriends Michael and (this being YA) the friendship starts to become romantic.  But becoming close with the shooter's family simply complicates the narrative she trying to form.  There are no explanations, just regrets and lost lives.

A sometimes dreary but ultimately positive story about making the most of what we have and letting go of the past.  The characters are all lessons:  parents who abandon the things that matter, a sister who destroys herself by refusing to let go of the past, and the child who achieves redemption by finding the good in the present and using it to build a better future.  The novel is well-written but it's not particularly inspiring except as a series of cautionary tales about how not to deal with problems.

The Sea Knows My Name, by Laura Brooke Robson

Thea was named by her mother Clementine after the goddess of reason.  Her hope was that Thea would avoid all of her mother's mistakes and set out to conquer the world on her own terms.  Clementine had once been a brilliant scientist, but when she predicted the volcanic eruption that destroyed their civilization, no one believed her until it was too late.  After all, she was only a woman and what would a woman know about science?  In the aftermath, men of violence took over and women quickly became nothing more than "commodities of reproduction." Angry at how patriarchy essentially had destroyed their world, Clementine made a pact to exact revenge.  She turned to piracy, sent Thea to a boy's school to get the only education worth having, and determined that Thea would be part of her plan.

But Thea doesn't carry her mother's skills or her anger.  She's soft, afraid to fight, quick to flee, and the opposite of her fiery mother.  She wants to be as strong of a person and earn her mother's respect, but her mother's ways are not her own.  And when she attempts to stand up to her mother, a tragedy strikes that causes her to question her self-worth altogether.  Between her fears, the certain knowledge that she's a disappointment, and her anxious desire to prove that she can be her own person, she sets out on one last voyage to fix everything that has gone wrong.

A beautifully written fantasy novel that is more of a metaphor for the adolescent search for identity.  Not every teenage girl will have a pirate queen for a mother or will fight off boys with guns and swords, but Thea's struggle with her Mom over her future and her frustrations with being objectified and marginalized by men will resonate with many young readers.  This is an unusual fantasy novel.  It's a very dark story with a slow pace and it won't appeal much to people who want action and adventure. Much of the story is really about Thea's physical survival and her ruminations about how she got to this point  However, as a coming of age story, this is really an extraordinary read with a lot to say about growing up female.  Highly recommended.