True Life in Uncanny Valley, by Deb Caletti

Eleanor is obsessed with tech titan Hugo Harrison, founder of an app that allows you to rate people and the developer of Frame, an AI program.  But she's not a tech geek.  She's the illegitimate offspring of the man.  Her Mom had a relationship with Harrison years ago and Eleanor and her older sister Ros were the result.  But Harrison no longer talks to them and Mom refuses to allow Eleanor to contact him.  So, Eleanor hatches her own plan.

With a little planning and a lot of luck, she gets herself employed as a nanny in the household, taking care of her half-brother Arlo.  It's tricky to juggle stories so that neither Harrison nor her mother find out who she is and where she is working, but she mostly works that out.  But her plan to simply get to know her father better gets complicated  when she discovers that Arlo is being exploited and abused by his father.

Being a Deb Caletti novel, there's much more to the story than that.  A short list of subplots would include: an homage to Golden Age comics, a diatribe against William Moulton Marston and Aldous Huxley, a fair smattering of childcare advice, extemporizations on German etymology, an extremely toxic family, a love interest (including one botched sex scene), and a screed against social media, robotics, and artificial intelligence.  Caletti's novels are never boring!  The overall point of all of this is the attack on artificial intelligence and the way it borrows/steals its material from artists. But I found the  repulsive mother and evil elder sister (drawn straight out of Cinderella) far more compelling.  The ending is a hot mess but it's an entertaining read.

The Song of Us, by Kate Fussner

Olivia and Eden fall in love at first sight in their middle school's poetry club.  But it's not smooth sailing.  Olivia has already come out to her parents and has a supporting family.  Eden is still struggling with her identity and has a homophobic father and sick mother.  Olivia wants to announce their relationship to the entire school, but Eden insists that it be kept a secret.

At a party, Eden tries spinning the bottle and kissing boys and when Olivia finds out, cruel recriminations ensue.  But then Olivia has regrets and tries to win Eden back. But Eden is trying to fix herself by learning how to fit in with a popular clique.  Back and forth they go, sorting out their feelings about relationships and about each other through verse and song.  And while Olivia tries to win Eden back with a grand gesture, in the end the reality is that at their age important decisions will be made by others.

A beautiful and bittersweet verse novel about first love and the sorts of mistakes we make in middle school.  I didn't see the intended retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that the blurb promised, but I didn't need to. What I found was a very sweet romance and two girls willing to fight for it.  Ofttimes creative verse is an added benefit.  Delightful!

Say A Little Prayer, by Jenna Voris

Riley and her sister Hannah were raised in the Pleasant Hills Baptist Church, where she's always found comfort in Pastor Young.  But after she comes out as bisexual, the hostile reaction of the congregation and Pastor Young drives her away.  And when Hannah is expelled from the church for having an abortion, the entire family decides that they have had enough of Pastor Young.  Still, it's a small town and almost everyone she knows is affiliated with the church.  Even Riley's best friend Julia is the pastor's daughter, although they have an agreement  to never mention Julia's father.

Riley gets into a fight defending her sister at school and the principal lays out an ultimatum:  if she wants to avoid getting suspended she'll have to prove her intent to reform by attending Pleasant Hills's upcoming bible camp, led by none other than Pastor Young.  Getting suspended is not an option, so Riley buckles down and goes to camp, spending a week with her old friends and enemies.  She decides from the onset to cope with the week by subtly undermining the program, but as the week progresses she finds that harder to do.

My initial inclination was to cast this book off as the usual dig against Evangelical Christianity.  And the depiction of Pastor Young breaks no new ground.  He's your typical two-dimensional hypocrite/bad guy that YA novels like to truck out.  But the novel surprised me for its more nuanced views of the teenagers' faith and beliefs. That background, combined with a well-paced story that added humor and a small touch of platonic romance, provided a very readable story about young people hewing their own path through religion.

The City of Lost Cats, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Left with a neglectful aunt who would rather rush off every evening to work at Municipal Hall, twelve year-old Fiona wants to do something more exciting this summer than the dance class she's been signed up for.  And when she stumbles across an abandoned old mansion full of feral cats, she thinks she's found it.  The mansion, referred to as 'The City" by its feline inhabitants has provided a community for strays and abandoned cats.  Fiona, abandoned by the adults around her is sympathetic to their plight and helps care for them.  

When she discovers that a dastardly developer (who also happens to be her aunt's boyfriend) has tricked Municipal Hall into giving him the permits to tear down the mansion and put up luxury apartments, Fiona and the cats leap into action to save the city of last cats. And while it would seem a child and a bunch of abandoned cats would not have the resources, they manage to save the day with the help of their local library and some sympathetic city workers.

An amusing light-hearted adventure of brave girls, adventuresome kitties, helpful librarians, a pair of workmen who love to demolish things, and two lost parakeets that speak in verse.  All of them come together in a ridiculously overlapping series of coincidences that lead to everything turning out perfectly in the end. While lacking much seriousness, the story does celebrate community activism in an easy going way that will appeal to cat-loving middle school readers.

All the Stars Align, by Gretchen Schreiber

Within Piper's family, the women have always known their true love at first sight.  This quasi-magical trait, referred to as the Blessing, is a tradition that has ensured many happily-ever-afters for Piper's aunts and grandmother. So, it's something of a scandal that Piper's parents have divorced.  Is the Blessing's power fading?  The aunts and Piper are determined to keep the tradition alive.  This comes in two ways:  trying to get her parents to reconcile and also to make sure that she only falls for the right boy.

To most people, that would be Leo, Piper's best friend.  They've been together since they were little.  But Piper has never really felt any strong feeling for Leo.  Certainly not in the way that the Blessing should make her feel.  And instead, Piper discovers that another boy -- Forrest -- is the one.  She can literally feel it viscerally, the telltale symptoms of the Blessing.  But somehow, it doesn't quite feel right.  So, instead of happily ever after, Piper finds that fate is overrated and that even when true love is right in front of you, it may not be what you really need.

While an interesting premise, the novel was disappointing.  For a romance, the story and the characters are surprisingly lackluster.  Neither Leo nor Forrest really had much of a spark.  We get very little background on Leo, which is surprising as they allegedly have all of this history together.  And Forrest is something of a wimp.  You know it's a bad sign when the almost-kisses are more compelling than the kisses.  This is romance without passion and it all seemed bothersome.  Furthermore, Leo's attempts to sabotage Piper and Forrest came off as creepy and possessive, really turning me off to him.

In general, the storytelling is muddy, with the point of certain scenes (like the weekend at the camp) lost amidst the details.  Or the way that seemingly interesting details are introduced (e.g., Piper's disability, her father's culinary skills, Diana's costuming skills, etc.), but never fill any meaningful purpose in the story.  The details are lovely an flesh things out, but still need to come together to some meaningful effect.

Adventures of Mary Jane, by Hope Jahren

Based on a briefly mentioned character in Huckleberry Finn, Jahren has crafted the story of Mary Jane, who bravely travels down the Mississippi Rover in adventures worthy of Mark Twain's protagonist.  The story begins when Mary Jane, living with her Ma and her grandfather in fur-trapping country up north, gets summoned to help her aunt and uncle down river.  When she arrives, she finds her uncle incapacitated and the family starving.  And when the aunt and uncle die from fever, she ends up caring for her two cousins.  They are sent yet deeper south, where she encounters the sin of slavery first hand and has to use her wits to protect herself and her cousins.  All of this serves as background that fleshes out the mysterious girl that stole Huck's heart.

While stuffed to the gills with historical details that make the book feel a bit like a history lesson (and definitely like book report material), the adventures are rousing enough to make this 400-page novel an enticing read.  Some of the details at the end get confusing, but the story is enjoyable and Mary Jane is an adventuresome good-hearted heroine.

Birds on the Brain, by Uma Krishnaswami

In this charming sequel to Book Uncle and Me, Yasmin's best friend Reeni is setting out on a campaign of her own:  to get the people of her town to participate in Bird Count India.  It's not just about her town.  The bird count is world wide!  But people don't seem to care and worse, some of them don't even like birds!

While Reeni is trying to stir up interest in birds, she learns that in matters concerning the environment there can be competing priorities:  a neighborhood ironing woman who is losing her livelihood because her coal-powered iron has being outlawed, a bird's nesting site that is threatened by plans to put solar panels on the roofs.  And even between friends, Reeni and Yasmin find that their respective causes (birds and literacy) are in seeming conflict.  But as they did before, the children summon some inner courage and enlist their parents, neighbors, and teachers to take the cause to the government and make their city a better place.

Still very full of cultural and political details that show a snippet of everyday life and local politics from an Indian perspective, Krishnaswami's books show children how, wherever they live, that they can make a difference.  The sequel follows pretty close to the formula devised in the first book and so lacks the originality that made the story so remarkable, but it is no less delightful to read.

Everything I Promised You, by Katy Upperman

Lia and Beck lived a pre-ordained life.  Lia's mother, back when she was a teenager, had a fortune read to her that foretold how she would have a daughter (Lia) and her best friend a son (Beck) and the two kids would fall in love and live happily ever after.  It was a silly lark, but with the way it came true, everyone in both families grew to believe it.  

And then Beck died.

With Beck gone and the prophecy broken, Lia is cast adrift.  Despite her parents' assurances that there are no expectations, she feels compelled to hold on to her past promises, even enrolling at the college that she and Beck were going to attend together.  And when she finds herself attracted to a new boy, Lia can't acknowledge that her heart is moving on.

Good writing and an unusual family life (both Lia and Beck are army brats and spent their years growing up in various military bases) made the otherwise tired story interesting.  But it only takes things so far. For not only do we have the dead boyfriend, but the new love interest is your typical mysterious and moody boy from the wrong side of the tracks.  There's not enough new stuff here to really make for a memorable read.

13 Ways to Say Goodbye, by Kate Fussner

Much to her older sister's annoyance, Nina always wanted to tag along.  In Nina's eyes, her sister was so brave, always trying out new things and forcing herself to move forward.  Nina could only follow after.  But when her sister died, there was no longer anything to follow and Nina became even more reclusive and even less brave.

Right before her thirteenth birthday, Nina is sent to Paris to spend the summer with her aunt and study art. The most important thing she takes with her is the checklist her sister created years ago when she was in Paris.  Nina intends to follow one last time in her sister's steps and complete the checklist for herself (including the items that her sister never did).  In doing so that summer, Nina surprises herself by going much further and finally striking out on her own.

Written in verse, the story relates Nina's emergence as an individual, the flowering of her artistic creativity, and a sweet first romance (in Paris!).  Great material.  Unfortunately, the writing is merely functional and adds little to a well-trod milieu.  In the thin air of a verse novel, the characters feel undeveloped.

One Step Forward, by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Teen-aged Matilda, growing up in a radical family in Washington DC, finds inspiration supporting and eventually protesting for the Suffragists.  Told in verse, the novel traces her involvement (including her presence at the "Night of Terror") to the eventual ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.  Rooted in well-documented history, Atkins gives herself license to explore the mind of the youngest radical suffragist.

There's no faulting the retelling of historical facts, many of which may be only hazily known by readers and the idea of focusing on a teen makes the novel inspirational for young readers.  However, for a story rich with people and events, the verse format provides too sketchy of a treatment.  And while the poetry is definitely above average, it can prove distracting and distancing to the storytelling.  That frustrates attempts to understand the events of the story.  Reading a more traditional historical account alongside this novel would prove beneficial and in fact be a useful complement.

The Enemy's Daughter, by Anne Blankman

At the onset of the Great War, twelve year-old Marta and her father are caught overseas in America and must undertake a dangerous trip under false papers to return home to Germany.  Unfortunately, they choose to cross the Atlantic aboard the Lusitania and when that boat is sunk by the German Navy they narrowly survive.  On land, her father is arrested as a suspected spy and Marta flees.  Alone but sharp-witted, Marta finds her way to York where she befriends an Irish girl whose family gives her a home.  But with all Germans considered to be dangerous enemies, Marta must conceal her identity.

Torn between her love for her country and the undeniable cruelty of the German navy in sinking a civilian ship, Marta still believes that Germany is in the right.  But living amongst the English for several months, she begins to wonder if it all isn't a bit more complicated than she's learned in school.  Her Irish friend hates Germans as fervently as she hates the English, yet the two girls have nonetheless become best friends.

A lovely adventure, but with a glacial pace and the repetitive storytelling.  Its two themes ("there are no sides" and all people can be good or bad) are well-established and then driven home in again and again.  Those are fine messages but become boring in their repetition.  Some of that is of course the story's limitations.  The premise is interesting, but there isn't very much that can be done with the character.  There's only so much adventure that one can plausibly subject a twelve year-old to in a middle reader.

Aisle Nine, by Ian X. Cho

The day that multiple portals to hell opened up around the world, spewing out blood thirsty demons, everything changed.  While retail had always been hell, the opening of a gateway to Hades in Aisle Nine (homewares) of the Here For You discount store made working there even more challenging.  But some well-placed coupons and a detachment of soldiers with flame throwers kept footfall at acceptable levels.  For while there are a couple of "doomers" who have given up and live in constant despair, most people go about their business, shopping, and trying to collect points by passing a roadblock or witnessing a demon slaying.  After all, most people have their lives to live.

Jasper works at the Here For You.  Try as he might, he has no real memories of the past for Hell on Earth arrived.  There are people who seem to know him (like a trainee security guard named Kyle) and he discovered his job when he happened to walk into the store and got cornered by his manager.  However, he has the same recurring nightmare in which the world comes to an end.  And it's coming soon -- on Black Friday.  With some help from Kyle and a friendly pet demon, he plans to stop all of that, dodging crazy shoppers and bloodthirsty monsters (same thing?) and save the world.

Initially, the book is an absolutely hilarious and original farce that imagines what would happen if the end of the world came and no one cared so long as they could keep shopping.  The story loses its fun as the farce peters out about half way through and the plot turns serious (or as serious as it can, given the premise).  But while I loved the premise, I just couldn't get into the largely nonsensical story and weak characters.

Twenty-Four Seconds from Now...: A Love Story, by Jason Reynolds

At this exact moment, Neon is in the bathroom.  In his girlfriend's bedroom, she's waiting for him to return so they can have sex for the first time.  Flash back twenty-four seconds before that and he's considering what is coming up.  Flash back twenty-four minutes and he's getting to her house.  Flash back twenty-four hours....and so on.

Each chapter takes us back in time as Neon relives the moments that led to this big one.  Despite being billed as a "love story," this is not a romance so much as a story of how Neon was taught the values that go on to inform his conduct.  His parents and his sister have talked to him about sex.  His grandfather also shaped those values.  And while the story is told in reverse, it all makes sense in the end.

It's Christopher Nolan's Momento meets Judy Blume's Forever, with a Black American perspective. Lots of potential and a big gimmick, but it doesn't really pan out for me.  There are moments that shine (I particularly liked the minister's eulogy at grandfather's funeral) but much of the story is simply not that interesting.  And the reverse timeline is a difficult thing to pull off in a genre that relies so much on building on top of what we already know.  For example, it's really hard to feel much for the couple's meet cute when it happens near the end of the book.  So many of the details are known long before they happen that the usual emotional build up doesn't occur.

Book Uncle and Me, by Uma Krishnaswami

On the corner near Yasmin's apartment, an old man she calls "Book Uncle" runs a free library, offering books to anyone who comes by.  Every day, Yasmin returns a book and gets a new one from him.  She's read over 400 books from him so far.  They are always perfect choices.  When he gives her a book with an ancient Indian fable about a hunter and a group of doves.  She doesn't understand the story, but Book Uncle tells her it will make sense one day.

Then one day, Book Uncle and his cart of books are missing!  He's been ordered to close his library!  Yasmin is bereft and asks around for what she can do about it.  Everyone knows that there is a big mayoral election going on.  Maybe she and her classmates could write letters to try to convince the candidates to support Book Uncle.  They do so and find a sympathetic candidate.  But when the children help to get their pro-Book Uncle candidate elected, they discover that not all is smooth sailing.

A beautiful and short tale about the power of people to shape the world.  Yasmin's efforts to stand up for what is right is particularly inspirational.  Set in urban India, there are plenty of lovely cultural details that will be both alien and yet somehow familiar to readers.

The first of a series.

Warrior Girl Unearthed, by Angeline Boulley

Perry doesn't have much use for school and would rather spend the summer (and most school days) fishing in the lake.  But when she is forced to enroll in the Tribal Council Interns program, she finds herself paired up with the curator of the Tribe's museum.  He takes her to visit an anthropologist at the local state school, where she is shocked to learn about the way that her ancestors (and their sacred effects) are being treated by archeologists.  Boxes of dismembered body parts left in cellars, funereal items auctioned off, and an ineffectual Federal law that is supposed to prevent all of these abuses from occurring and is instead ignored.

Now committed to returning the remains of a young woman that is housed in the college's archives, Perry gets embroiled in an even bigger discovery -- a cache of bodies stolen from local graves.  But effecting the repatriation of these remains brings Perry into an even bigger issue.  Young women are being abducted across their reservation and due to loopholes in Federal and Tribal jurisdictions, help is slow in coming.  What does the one have to do with the other?  That's for the surprising climax of this mystery, thriller, and screed to reveal.

 

I struggled a bit with the complexity of the story -- numerous subplots, characters, and heavy use of Ojibwan phrases makes for a thick soup -- but it also creates a deep and immersive environment.  At least a dozen major characters, each of them have their own particular motivations, leads to a series of plot twists that keep you guessing to the end.  It's a well-crafted story and despite its complexity pays off at the end.  

While I might have enjoyed reading the first book Firekeeper's Daughter before I tackled this one, there really was no need to do so.  The novel stands up well on its own.

Where Do You See Yourself, by Claire Forrest

Effie wishes that the world would see her as the capable young woman that she feels she is.  But as the girl in the wheelchair she finds she has to fight for just about everything that comes easily to others.  From teachers to her parents, no one seems to expect much from her and she finds her wishes written off.  And that includes where she'll go to school.

When she graduates, her parents expect her to go to college somewhere nearby, but Effie has her eye on a mass media program in New York City.  Life in NYC will be challenging for a person in a wheelchair and her parents try to discourage her.  So to prove that she can handle it, she takes some brave steps to stand up for herself at her high school.  And when that goes well, her parents relent.  But when she gets to New York on a school visit, she's disappointed to find that the same old struggles for accommodation await her there.

Effie is a protagonist with an exciting voice and interesting insights on being a teen with a disability.  There's a lot of serious matters discussed here, but Effie approaches them with strength and a sense of humor that makes her a real winner to the reader.  In a time when caring for the needs of others has become so politically charged, having a bit of a grounding here is good for the soul.  And it's a beautiful story about finding out what is important in one's life and becoming the things that you want.

After Life, by Gayle Forman

Amber Crane arrives home on her bike one afternoon to discover that she's been dead for the past seven years. And while she has no memory of being dead and the last seven years have passed without her being aware of it, the world has definitely changed.  Her parents have broken up.  Her little sister and her best friend have grown up.  Her boyfriend has fallen into despair and grief.

No one has any idea why Amber has returned to the living but the fact that she has crystalizes how much damage her death wrought in all their lives.  Her family becomes convinced that they need to restart their lives, even if it means running away from their current ones.  They certainly can't stay.  After all, what would happen if the rest of the world discovered that Amber didn't really die seven years ago?  But there are lots of forces coming together and a complicated web of relationships and interactions that may well make Amber's return moot.

The novel's structure, with current state chapters told from Amber's point of view alternating with flashbacks from a variety of others creates a very dense story that relies on a combination of coincidences to make it come together.  Nothing really makes sense until the end. Yet it works surprisingly well.  The novel's message -- that the "life" of a person after their death is largely dependent upon how those whose survive them behave -- is told in a variety of fascinating ways ranging from parents, children, and even pet owners.  Ultimately, it is a very touching story that lingers with you.

I Am Not Jessica Chen, by Ann Liang

Jenna is an average student, which means she's a failure in comparison to her brilliant, talented, and beautiful cousin Jessica.  Awards and honors come easily to Jessica, while no matter how hard she tries, Jenna just never quite makes it.  When Jessica gets accepted to Harvard and Jenna has to admit to her extended family that she has not been, Jenna has decided she's had enough.  That night, when a shooting star passes by, she makes a wish that she could be Jessica instead of Jenna.

The next morning she wakes up in Jessica's bed and that she has suddenly become so.  Initially basking in the adulation of friends and teachers, Jenna-as-Jessica marvels at how much easier her life is.  But the glow quickly fades as she learns of the intense pressure Jessica is under to maintain her position as a role model and the hollowness of her fame.  Meanwhile, no one seems to know what has happened to Jenna.  And with time, they start forgetting that Jenna ever existed.  It seems that the true cost of becoming her cousin is that her own life will disappear.

While body-swapping is hardly a new idea, the theme is treated deftly by Liang, who uses the artifice to explore self-identity and how intense social pressures lead us to make trade offs.  The inevitable moment when Jenna finally realizes how flawed Jessica is combines with an urgent sense that she is quite literally losing her own self in trying to be her cousin.  A short digression into racism, while itself throwaway, drives home the shallowness of fame.  Another aside about academic dishonesty casts a shadow over Jessica's coveted narrative of success.  While both Jessica and Jenna turn out to be flawed characters, the story avoids demonizing and instead teaches that no one is perfect and that there is no intrinsic value in trying to portray yourself as such.

Marketed as YA, the material is tame and the story skews to a young teen demographic, despite its older protagonists.

Finding Normal, by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Gemma and Lucas meet as patients at an inpatient facility for children with eating disorders.  She has anorexia and he has bulimia.  Neither of them really feel like they belong there; they are simply misunderstood.  Gemma wishes that they could just go someplace and be treated as normal.  Why not a place that is normal?  Looking up in an atlas, she finds there are five cities in the United States named Normal and she becomes convinced that visiting them will somehow transform her.

The notion would have just been a whim, but when she shares the idea with Lucas, he's all in for the plan and even knows a way to find a car to get them there.  So they spring themselves from the hospital and start a desperate road trip adventure that will take them far further than they imagined to find normal.  The usual cast of odd characters and side trips to America's weird small towns ensues.

It's a fairly standard teen road trip adventure with an above average story about eating disorders. Most notably, it features a boy with bulimia.  Almost every YA story about eating is about girls so it's nice to highlight the fact that it can happen to boys as well.  But beyond that, the story benefits from applying a light touch, showing them struggling with food but focusing more on the elements of their life that got them to this point.  That in turn brings out the real strength of the road trip genre:  having two characters get to know each other better by baring their souls to each other.  Small, compact, and modest, this short novel punches above its weight. 

The Last Bookstore on Earth, by Lily Braun-Arnold

A year ago, a rain fell across the Earth that was so acidic that it dissolved whatever it came in contact with.  Those who survived the Storm had to find a way to stay alive in an anarchic world where almost all of civilization had come to a halt -- finding food and shelter where they could.  But for Liz, survival came through denial.  Ignoring the death of her family, she simply went back to work at the same  independent bookstore where she had been employed before the Storm.  For the past year, she's traded books for essentials with random people who pass through.  It's a quiet life that allows Liz to imagine that nothing has really changed.  She focuses on clearing out her overstocked books rather than worrying about her dwindling food supply.  Liz even ignores the news that another round of acid rain is on its way.  Her grief paralyzes her.

But when a young women named Maeve shows up, she challenges Liz to face the reality around them.  Maeve pushes Liz to take precautions, trying to make her care about the future, their future together.  But for Liz, who cannot accept what has happened, preparing for a repeat is far too difficult of a task to undertake.

Currently an undergraduate, Braun-Arnold seems an extraordinarily young writer to be able to create such a striking debut.  Her youth gives her a fresh insight on the foibles of her protagonists.  There's not much space here for romance, but the relationship between Liz and Maeve is full of grudges and resentments and feels authentically youthful.  She wisely stays away from writing about anyone older than their teens.

The storytelling is smooth and the action is well-paced, including an extended bloody climax full of suspense and a touch of horror.  A few improbable plot points like a bit of field surgery that goes entirely too well will raise eyebrows, but there is nothing that significantly detracts from this exciting post-apocalyptic adventure.