tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91893612220433282392024-03-12T18:39:57.670-06:00Girl to the RescueGirl to the Rescue is a literary blog written by Amy Bright that reviews mostly young adult literature, children’s books, graphic novels, and fantasy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-50911428498135921172020-03-09T22:09:00.001-06:002020-03-09T22:11:38.331-06:00Books Read December 2019-March 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>The Female Persuasion </i>by Meg Wolitzer</div>
<i>Disappearing Earth </i>by Julia Phillips<br />
<i>Rabbits for Food </i>by Binnie Kirshenbaum<br />
<i>Trust Exercise </i>by Susan Choi<br />
<i>The Yellow House </i>by Sarah M. Broom<br />
<i>Olive, Again </i>by Elizabeth Strout<br />
<i>Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs </i>by Caitlin Doughty<br />
<i>The Institute </i>by Stephen King<br />
<i>Magnetic North </i>by Jenna Butler<br />
<i>Children of Blood and Bone </i>by Tomi Adeyemi<br />
<i>The Education of an Idealist </i>by Samantha Power<br />
<i>Friday Black </i>by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah<br />
<i>Small Fry </i>by Lisa Brennan-Jobs<br />
<i>The Incendiaries </i>by R. O. Kwon<br />
<i>Bunny </i>by Mona Awad<br />
<i>Catch and Kill </i>by Ronan Farrow<br />
<i>French Milk </i>by Lucy Knisley<br />
<i>An Age of License </i>by Lucy Knisley<br />
<i>Displacement </i>by Lucy KnisleyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-11528804660237588992016-07-06T10:00:00.000-06:002016-07-06T10:00:08.320-06:00Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nanette O'Hare is the protagonist of Matthew Quick's newest YA novel, <i>Every Exquisite Thing </i>(near the end of the novel, the title is revealed to be a quote from <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>), and the novel begins when her favourite teacher gives her a copy of the out-of-print cult-classic <i>The Bubblegum Reaper </i>by Nigel Booker. After devouring the book, Nanette reaches out to Booker, discovering that he lives only a few blocks away from her. She is quickly folded into Booker's life, and introduced to other Booker acolytes, including teenage poet Alex (his poems are scattered throughout the novel). Booker gets them together for dinner and then immediately disappears into his house, causing Nanette and Alex to have the following exchange:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I said, "Do you think it's weird that Booker tricked us into going on a blind date and yet neither of us seems mad or upset? I'm not upset. Are you? I mean, you could be pretending. But you seem pretty okay with tonight."<br />He blinked a few times as if he was surprised by my words, and then the sentences that came out of his mouth were both wonderful and sad. "Honestly? This is the best night I've had in years. Maybe in my entire lifetime."</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The book at the heart of <i>Every Exquisite Thing </i>is fictional, and the way it influences and impacts Nanette's life is reminiscent of Hazel's reading of <i>An Imperial Affliction </i>in John Green's <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i>. But while I had absolutely no interest in the plot or characters in Green's fictional book, I read <i>Every Exquisite Thing </i>wishing there was a way to read the parallel narrative, and that <i>The Bubblegum Reaper </i>was a real book, rather than one invented to suit the purposes of the novel (although the fictional cover art for <i>The Bubblegum Reaper </i>exists under the dust jacket, and it will be interesting to see how the paperback release incorporates that art into a redesign). What I mean to say is that <i>The Bubblegum Reaper </i>makes a much more compelling fictional book than <i>An Imperial Affliction</i>. There's even a nod to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's <i>The Shadow of the Wind</i>, a book about an author who buys up all of his books to keep anyone from reading them; there's a rumour that Booker does that, too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel explores the way that books can impact teenagers' lives, especially the ones they find in high school. While Alex is impacted utterly by the protagonist of <i>The Bubblegum Reaper</i>, a Holden Caulfield-esque character named Wrigley, Nanette's life is changed in more subtle ways. Wrigley's repetition of wanting to quit (Nanette isn't sure what he wants to quit, exactly) is the permission and insistence she needs to quit her high school soccer team, even if it could lead to a scholarship and college acceptance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think <i>Every Exquisite Thing </i>is my new favourite Matthew Quick book. It offers compelling and flawed characters trying to find their place in the world, even if their choices aren't conventional or expected; even if they are both of those things. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-60466480848865016822016-07-04T10:00:00.000-06:002016-07-04T10:00:28.147-06:00Dumplin' by Julie Murphy <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Willowdean Dickson, the protagonist of <i>Dumplin'</i>, met her best friend Ellen because of Dolly Parton, back when they were kids. Will's aunt Lucy - a Dolly Parton devotee - bonded with Ellen's mom, Mrs. Dryver - a Dolly Parton impersonator - and now Dolly Parton is like the connective tissue of their friendship. Even Will's car is reflective of this theme: it's a 1998 cherry-red Pontiac Grand Prix named Jolene. The book begins with a Dolly Parton quote and describes Will to a T: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." Will lives her life confidently and fearlessly.<br />
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Will lives with her mom, a health care aide by day who is devoted to running and organizing the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant every year, which has been running since the 1930s. Will's aunt Lucy - her mom's sister - used to live with them, too, but now her room is being cleaned out and Will feels lost without her favourite person in the house.<br />
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Will works at a local fast food restaurant called Harpy's, and her classmates crowd in most weekend nights just before midnight to order fries and burgers. She works with Bo, the incredibly attractive guy in the back kitchen. She reflects, "I've had this hideous crush on Bo since the first time we met. His unsettled brown hair swirls into a perfect mess at the top of his head. And he looks ridiculous in his red and white uniform. Like a bear in a tutu." This summer, Bo kisses her outside of the restaurant one night, and they spend the next few months secretly driving to an abandoned parking lot to make out. But Will is increasingly uncomfortable with the way that Bo is keeping her a secret. And Will, who describes herself as a fat girl, hates the feeling of his hands on her body, afraid that he can feel her skin spilling over the sides of her clothing. She breaks it off, and eventually quits her job at Harpy's to cross the street to get a job at the local chilli place.<br />
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Fast forward to the beginning of the school year, and Will finds out that Bo has left his private school and now attends her public school, and this time, Will's not the only person who is interested in him. When she decides to enter into the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant, her friendship with Ellen begins to change, and she finds herself more alone than she has ever been before.<br />
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Enter three other girls who are inspired to enter the pageant alongside Will - Millie ("Millie is that girl, the one I am ashamed to admit that I've spent my whole life looking at and thinking, <i>Things could be worse</i>"); Amanda; and Hannah. They become a group worth rooting for as acclaimed author Julie Murphy weaves an incredibly funny, real, and fabulous story with a heaping scoop of romance.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-72461440079987662812016-07-01T10:00:00.000-06:002016-07-01T10:00:05.023-06:00More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Adam Silvera's debut novel <i>More Happy Than Not </i>is billed as a cross between the movie <i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind </i>and <a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2013/05/aristotle-and-dante-discover-secrets-of.html"><i>Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe </i>by Benjamin Alire Saenz</a>. Protagonist Aaron Soto lives in a one-room apartment in the Bronx with his mom and brother Eric. There's little privacy in the living room that Aaron and Eric share for a bedroom, especially when Eric is up all night playing video games. Aaron spends most of his time in the street with his friends, playing games like Manhunt, which involves chasing each other up and down staircases, through buildings, and down alleys. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel starts when Aaron's painter girlfriend Genevieve decides to go away for a three-week art camp during the summer, leaving him alone. Genevieve has been Aaron's life line, getting him through the period after his father committed suicide, and after he got his own happy-face shaped scar on his wrist. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even though Aaron has a group of friends on his block, his sort-of-best-friend, Brendan, is busy with other things this summer. Enter Thomas, a kid who lives nearby, who walks into Aaron's life and causes him to question his happiness, and the in-between state he's been living in. Thomas fills an important gap in Aaron's life when his girlfriend is away, and they're inseparable even when she's back. One of the highlights of the novel is the concept of "Trade Dates." Aaron describes them as something Genevieve came up with: she takes him to a place that she knows he'll like, and he takes her to a place that he knows she'll like. Aaron's place is a local comic book store, Comic Book Asylum, which exists behind a door painted to look like a telephone booth. Aaron and Thomas do something like a "Trade Date," too; but because they don't know each other as well, they each show the other a place that matters to them immensely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As Aaron and Thomas grow closer, Aaron discovers things about himself that make it very difficult to continue to date Genevieve, and to be only just-friends with Thomas. Aaron decides that there are two sides to this discovery: Side A is that he likes guys instead of girls and Side B is that he likes one guy in particular - Thomas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When things fall apart - first with Genevieve, and then with Thomas - Aaron seriously considers getting a new memory treatment offered by the Leteo Institute. It guarantees erasing certain memories that are too difficult. Aaron even knows someone who has had it done. But is it possible to erase Thomas? And what does Aaron lose by excising those memories and pieces of himself?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>More Happy Than Not </i>pairs a fascinating idea - the existence of the Leteo Institute, whose services are similar to those offered in <i>Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind </i>- with deft character development. The book continues to built towards Aaron's decision before pausing in the narrative, and exploring where Aaron has been before, and the choices he has made. I read <i>More Happy Than Not </i>almost in one sitting - it's incredibly hard to put down. I highly recommend Adam Silvera's debut novel, and appreciated the preview of his next novel, <i>History is All You Left Me</i>, that is added to the back of the paperback edition. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-23381724798861095662016-06-29T10:00:00.000-06:002016-06-29T10:00:24.766-06:00Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAuj3GYCQsI/V27les64ZEI/AAAAAAAAA4M/0VZv_XGl_osjpMNm0izFqyEbV1yk-6AzwCLcB/s1600/9780553496642_p0_v2_s1200x630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAuj3GYCQsI/V27les64ZEI/AAAAAAAAA4M/0VZv_XGl_osjpMNm0izFqyEbV1yk-6AzwCLcB/s320/9780553496642_p0_v2_s1200x630.jpg" width="214" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Nicola Yoon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything, Everything </i>focuses</span> on eighteen-year-old Madeline Whittier. She has severe
combined immunodeficiency (SCIDS, for short. She describes herself as being on SCID row), meaning she is allergic to the outside world. The
house she shares with her mother and her nurse is her entire world, and an
illustration that depicts her as an astronaut floating above the earth (81) is
one of the most affecting in the novel. <i>Everything, Everything </i>is illustrated by Yoon's husband, David Yoon, who creates hand drawn illustrations of various size throughout the novel. The novel also includes graphs that chart her
hourly breaths per minute, IM transcripts, website screenshots, and
ticket stubs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When new neighbours move in next door to Madeline's house, she begins to want more than her small world provides her with. This is specifically influenced by her neighbour Olly, a teenage boy her age who teaches her that life is more than what she can read about in books. Madeline reads often and reads widely. Because she is homeschooled, her reading list is mostly self-selected. Yet, she still chooses to read the types of books that we would define as canonical, including titles such as William Golding’s <i>The Lord of the Flies</i>, Lewis Carroll’s <i>Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</i>, Daniel Keyes’s <i>Flowers for Algernon</i>, Ralph Ellison’s <i>Invisible Man</i>, Albert Camus’s <i>The Stranger</i>, Samuel Beckett’s <i>Waiting for Godot</i>, and <i>Nausea </i>by Jean-Paul Sartre. She writes short, one-sentence reviews of these books under the caption “Life is Short: Spoiler Reviews by Madeline,” which reviews <i>Invisible Man </i>as “<i>Spoiler Alert</i>: You don’t exist if no one can see you” (246). Like in Stephen Chbosky's <i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower </i>and Jon van de Ruit's <i>Spud</i>, the books she reads (and her interpretations of them) mirror events in her life, and provide her with a literary lens through which to interpret her experiences.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The text itself also engages with a different kind of focus on
graphics and images, one less explicit that that provided by David Yoon's illustrations. This occurs specifically when Madeline describes the silence between
her and Olly in the following way: “We are awkward together for a few moments
unsure what to say. The silence would be much less noticeable over IM. We could
chalk it up to any number of distractions. But right now, in real life, it
feels like we both have blank thought balloons over our heads” (73).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Everything, Everything </i>follows Madeline's self-discovery, and especially her journey to live her life to its fullest .</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vrY8_hSlA6A/V27iR22N0oI/AAAAAAAAA34/xheY1o2EDUYgzaMFurIgm0mj2JULSJjhQCLcB/s1600/Cover-of-The-Crossover-by-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vrY8_hSlA6A/V27iR22N0oI/AAAAAAAAA34/xheY1o2EDUYgzaMFurIgm0mj2JULSJjhQCLcB/s320/Cover-of-The-Crossover-by-001.jpg" width="228" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span lang="EN-US">The
Crossover </span></i><span lang="EN-US">(2014) by Kwame Alexander is a Newbery-Award
winning novel told in verse that experiments with typography and visual poetry.
12-year-old Josh Bell is a junior high basketball superstar, and he plays alongside his twin brother Jordan on the school team. Like Sharon Creech's <i>Love that Dog</i>, Karen Hesse's <i>Out of the Dust</i>, or Jacqueline Woodson's <i>Brown Girl Dreaming</i>, the novel is communicated in short, poetic sections, some of which rely on internal rhymes and other times on end rhyme. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When Josh plays basketball, the pages of the novel come to life
and animate, immersing readers in the movements of basketball. Rhymes are
emphasized by changes in typography: words are capitalized, indented, falling
diagonally across the page. The rhythm and motion of the game is physically
explored on the page. This animation occurs only when Josh plays basketball, when the language really comes alive: "He <i>dribbles / fakes / </i>then <i>takes / </i>the ROCK to the / <i>glass, fast, </i>and on BLAST" (10). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel focuses on Josh and his twin brother Jordan - JB - as they have to navigate their changing relationship in junior high. The dynamics largely shift when JB starts dating Alexis, who Josh nicknames "Miss Sweet Tea." Josh finds himself alone, and after a moment of frustration on the court, suspended from the basketball team. Complicating this already difficult year of school is the emerging health condition their father is now exhibiting signs of. He's a former basketball superstar who has nurtured his sons' talents. These tensions thread through the novel, the poetic language moving them from background to forefront as it progresses. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've had a copy of <i>The Crossover </i>for a few years, and read in advance of picking up Alexander's latest novel <i>Booked</i>. The language practically vibrates off the page, and I intend to pick up the audiobook version of <i>The Crossover </i>next. </span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-90585645576616345662016-06-13T10:00:00.000-06:002016-06-13T10:00:15.219-06:00The Fireman by Joe Hill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-quAIOmmJo5c/V1M1O7YHOEI/AAAAAAAAAxQ/VT5UwqO0_aAn47_tY--sROtY5lSiTTA8QCLcB/s1600/the-fireman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-quAIOmmJo5c/V1M1O7YHOEI/AAAAAAAAAxQ/VT5UwqO0_aAn47_tY--sROtY5lSiTTA8QCLcB/s320/the-fireman.jpg" width="211" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Joe Hill begins <i>The Fireman </i>by citing J. K. Rowling as an influence on the novel, stating that her "stories showed me how to write this one." Certainly it's not a <i>Harry Potter </i>novel, but I read it like one - I bought it on release day and read it almost all the way through. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've written about all of Joe Hill's books on this blog before, notably his <i><a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2013/10/locke-and-key-by-joe-hill.html">Locke & Key</a> </i>comics series, and novels <i><a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2013/10/heart-shaped-box-by-joe-hill.html">Heart-Shaped Box</a></i>, <i><a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2013/11/horns-by-joe-hill.html">Horns</a></i>, and<i> <a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2013/05/n0s4a2-by-joe-hill.html">N0S4A2</a></i>. I also recently picked up and read his short story collection <i>21st Century Ghosts</i>, and the first story, "Best New Horror," ranks high as one of the most terrifying short stories I've read. I consistently look forward to his new writing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Fireman </i>focuses on Harper Grayson, a kind-hearted school nurse who witnesses a new disease - <i>draco incendia trychophyton</i>, or <i>Dragonscale</i> - set a man on fire on school property while she is treating a younger student. It is not an isolated incident - most of the world is going up in flames as people contract Dragonscale at higher and higher rates, and the result is always a type of internal combustion. Eventually, it is Harper's turn to contract the deadly disease while working in a hospital; even though she is zipped into a full body hazmat suit, she can't avoid it forever. When a chain reaction of combusting Dragonscale-infected patients causes the hospital to go up in flames, Harper goes home to her husband to deal with her own case of dragon scale privately, impacted utterly by the fact that she is pregnant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But Harper's husband Jakob has a disease of his own, and it has nothing to do with dragon scale. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With the help of the Fireman, an elusive man who dresses in a fireman suit and has the ability to control his strain of Dragonscale, Harper gets away from her husband. Harper escapes with the Fireman to Camp Wyndham, a summer camp that is stocked with enough food for the one hundred or so adults and children who have taken refuge there to make it for a few months. Hill largely explores the effects of mob mentality in the tiny camp community, especially when that community feels increasingly threatened by everything that is happening outside of their camp. This includes the rise of cremation crews, groups of non-infected individuals who travel killing and burning those with Dragonscale. Unsurprisingly, Harper's husband has joined this crew. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Fireman </i>is stuffed full of references to pop culture - they are constant, reminding readers about the world around them. <i>The Fireman </i>is also the first Joe Hill book that has felt like stylistically a Stephen King novel. Like always, I'm already looking forward to the next Hill novel, although I might return to <i>The Fireman </i>with the audiobook version, which, like the <i>N0S4A2 </i>audiobook, is narrated by the fantastic Kate Mulgrew. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-11723775919407364792016-06-10T10:00:00.000-06:002016-06-10T10:00:30.595-06:00Vicious by V. E. Schwab<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ5-DBISG4Y/V1JfHh2LSuI/AAAAAAAAAwM/DKd3fyq1gps-E7JLiNTC7GrXdqRfyQI8gCLcB/s1600/13638125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ5-DBISG4Y/V1JfHh2LSuI/AAAAAAAAAwM/DKd3fyq1gps-E7JLiNTC7GrXdqRfyQI8gCLcB/s320/13638125.jpg" width="214" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I first read V. E. Schwab's work after my friend, <a href="http://bettyliang.tumblr.com/">comics artist Betty Liang, </a>recommended the first book in her fantasy trilogy, <i>A Darker Shade of Magic. </i>She described it as reading like YA, and it does - the characters are young, on the cusp of adulthood, ranging, I think, between nineteen and twenty-one. The series is fantastic - Schwab is currently writing the final book in the trilogy, <i>A Conjuring of Light</i>. I also recently picked up an ARC for her novel <i>This Savage Song</i>, which will be released in a little over a month from now. She's a fantastic - and prolific - author. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Vicious </i>focuses on characters who are transitioning out of young adulthood into adulthood. Victor and Eli are college seniors tasked with creating a final original research project that they will be evaluated on. Both share similar interests, but Eli takes those interests a step farther. While Victor wants to focus his research on adrenaline, Eli is interested in EOs- ExtraOrdinary people - who have enhanced abilities that other people do not. Together, Victor and Eli begin a series of experiments on themselves based on the question: what if adrenaline - our fight or flight impulse - can trigger ordinary people to gain extraordinary powers? What if a near-death experience can create new abilities? (A query that is somewhat central to Ryan Reynold's new <i>Deadpool </i>movie.) Victor and Eli put themselves through near-death experiences in order to trigger the abilities they didn't know they had. In Victor's case, the ability to control pain levels. In Eli's, a brand of immortality.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel flashes backwards and forwards between Eli and Victor's time in college to ten years later, when Victor escapes from prison and goes in search of Eli to exact revenge. He's joined by a young EO girl named Sydney, and his cellmate Mitch, who has abilities of his own. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout the novel, Victor's penchant for defacing books makes for an interesting character trait. He uses a black Sharpie to wipe out words on borrowed library books in order to create his own borrowed poetry, perhaps reflecting the purpose of books such Tom Phillip's <i>A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel</i>, which creates a new text by drawing over the original text of the Victorian novel, and partially deleting words (the title <i>A Humument </i>comes from a partial deletion of the title of the origin work, <i>A Human Document </i>by W. H. Mallock). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's a compelling novel, very Neil Gaiman-esque at times, especially in the opening scenes. I like the way that Schwab works with characters straddling their teens and twenties, a kind of new adult category. I'm looking forward to reading <i>The Savage Song </i>next, which she writes as Victoria Schwab, rather than V. E. Schwab. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-2348017352525846732016-06-08T10:00:00.000-06:002016-06-08T10:00:09.182-06:00The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HInifhf6cgk/V1JluMn4YLI/AAAAAAAAAwc/aADrxSGfD28DzFPwzTRpgfAGxT8q2s3pwCLcB/s1600/132556.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HInifhf6cgk/V1JluMn4YLI/AAAAAAAAAwc/aADrxSGfD28DzFPwzTRpgfAGxT8q2s3pwCLcB/s320/132556.jpg" width="206" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Between <i>The Royal We </i>- a fictionalized version of Prince William and Kate Middleton's love story - and <i>Eligible </i>- a modern day retelling of <i>Pride and Prejudice </i>- the books I have been reading lately largely rely on some form of source material. The same can be said of Matt Haig's <i>The Dead Fathers Club</i>, which draws heavily on <i>Hamlet. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Philip Noble's father has recently died in a car accident, although his family can't comprehend how he crashed into a bridge in the middle of the day. Philip's father, however, sets the record straight when he comes back as a ghost and tells his son that his brother - Philip's uncle - tampered with the brakes, causing the accident. His father entreaties Philip to kill his Uncle Alan and avenge his death in a timely fashion. Otherwise, Philip's father is going to be taken over by the Terrors, a horrifying prospect. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For eleven-year-old Philip, this is a lot to take in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Uncle Alan moves in on his brother's abdicated territory with a disturbing speed, moving into the house, bribing Philip with a PlayStation, and proposing to his mom in a very short time frame. Philip's panic and sense of responsibility to his father is heightened by his childish and frank narration, which, in part, is conveyed through stream-of-consciousness and a sense of dissociation. It also very much reflects its time of publication, especially evident in the pop culture that Philip has to draw on. For example, when the ghost of his dad tries to convince Philip to steal a van and drive home from his overnight school field trip: "Dads Ghost looked at me with the most serious face I had ever seen like Norman Osborn in the first Spiderman when he has the nerve gas before he becomes the Green Goblin and he said By his phone were some keys." This narration has been compared in other reviews to that of protagonist Christopher in Mark Haddon's <i>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The more modern the retelling of a canonical or classical story is, the more likely it is to replace the previous version that I've read. For example, I remember that when I read Curtis Sittenfeld's <i>Eligible</i>, I compared her version of the characters not to those written by Jane Austen, but instead as they appear in the Bollywood-style movie adaptation of the novel in <i>Bride and Prejudice</i>. Now, Sittenfeld's twenty-first century version - complete with a reality show ending - has usurped that version. Similarly, Haig's version is now much more relevant and memorable, and Uncle Alan is much more recognizable than the type introduced by Hamlet's uncle Claudius. I enjoyed Haig's novel immensely, especially the style he uses to craft Philip's distinct voice. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-44360067393487812852016-06-06T10:00:00.000-06:002016-06-06T10:00:13.367-06:00Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OuZdIk2n8t8/V1JIMLycyXI/AAAAAAAAAv0/Ji_R_GvaoKM2MH-Fri7hSnOsgF-VnZ0UQCLcB/s1600/eligible-curtis-sittenfeld-excerpt-book-02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OuZdIk2n8t8/V1JIMLycyXI/AAAAAAAAAv0/Ji_R_GvaoKM2MH-Fri7hSnOsgF-VnZ0UQCLcB/s320/eligible-curtis-sittenfeld-excerpt-book-02.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of <i>Prep</i>, the 2005 novel that largely appealed to both teenage and adult readers. I loved <i>Prep</i>, one of the first boarding school books I'd read that actually covered the four years from freshman to senior year in one book. Others, like Jon van de Ruit's <i>Spud</i>, E. Lockhart's <i>The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks</i>, Robyn Schneider's <i>Extraordinary Means</i>, and Stephenie Perkins's <i>Isla and the Happily Ever After </i>take place over just one year of boarding school rather than all four. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sittenfeld's <i>Eligible </i>is a much different book from <i>Prep</i>, and is, as the cover suggests, "a modern retelling of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>" and presents a twenty-first century version of the Bennet family, one that circles around cross fit and yoga, social media and reality TV. Liz Bennet is a magazine writer in her late thirties living in New York and she has just returned home after her father's surgery to help her family with his care. Her older sister Jane, a yoga instructor, goes home with Liz to Cincinnati, a city much slower and quieter than the New York that they've called home for the last few years. The dwindling family inheritance previously supported their interests: "Jane and Liz had always held jobs, but even for them, a certain awareness of the safety net below had allowed the prioritizing of their personal interests over remuneration" (11). Meanwhile, middle sister Mary is taking her third Masters degree online, while younger sisters Lydia and Kitty have joined the cross fit culture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this version of the classic story, Chip Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy are doctors - Darcy is a neurosurgeon. Bingley is fresh off of a stint on <i>Eligible</i>, a <i>Bachelor</i>-like reality show on which he did not find love, and he is no less eligible than he was when he was on the show. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Eligible </i>is a fantastic retelling of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>; it becomes much more than that by stridently commenting on twenty-first century dating culture and values. It's possible that Sittenfeld mined books such as Rebecca Traister's <i>All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Woman and the Rise of an Independent Nation </i>and Kate Bolick's <i>Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own </i>for Liz and Jane's experiences. At one point, Liz insists that she doesn't want children. She tells Darcy,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you want, I'll give you possible ways to respond and you can choose the one you like best. A) Oh, Liz, you'll change your mind - you just haven't met the right person... B) But who will look after you when you're old?... C) Yeah, I bet you don't want children, you selfish East Coast narcissist...D) Wow, you childhood must have <i>sucked</i>. Or...E) You just have no idea how rich and wonderful parenthood can be. In fact, you haven't really live until you've wrestled a shrieking four-year-old to the ground at Target. Now, keep in mind, Fitzwilliam Darcy, that you <i>can </i>choose all of the above. (262)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Eligible </i>is an incredibly humorous novel, and thoroughly re-invents the source material for a twenty-first century context. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-77978164469963713172016-05-24T10:43:00.000-06:002016-05-24T10:43:02.429-06:00The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The biggest upside of enjoying Morgan Matson's books is that she routinely publishes every year under her name and also under the name Katie Finn. This month, Matson's <i>The Unexpected Everything </i>and Finn's <i>Hearts, Fingers, and Other Things to Cross </i>were published, and while I picked them both up, I read <i>The Unexpected Everything </i>first. </span><div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Teenage Andie has her entire summer already planned out. She's going to attend a prestigious summer program at John Hopkins that will set her up for pre-med and her projected career as a doctor. She's so sure about her own plans, that she feels stressed on behalf of her on-again/off-again Topher, who forgot to secure anything and is going to intern for his father instead. Andie sees the summers between high school as the time to build her resume and the credentials she needs to plan her future. This planning impulse might be an influence of her dad, who is local congressman Alexander Walker. But when a scandal means the congressman has to step down, and the doctor who acted as Andie's referee for the program rescinds his letter, Andie realizes she's going to have to make other plans. She just doesn't expect those plans to be becoming Stanwich, Connecticut's resident dog walker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Friendship largely shapes the novel, as Andie's tight knit group of friends - Palmer, Toby, and Bri - are together for the entire summer for the very first time. And then there's Clark, named after a superhero and with the same, chunky glasses, who is living in Stanwich for the summer and taking care of Bertie, the dog that comes with the house he's staying in. Clark writes a bestselling series of fantasy novels, and although he's only nineteen, he's achieved a George R. R. Martin level of success, and readers are clamouring for his next novel in much the same way. When Clark and Andie find their lives colliding, they leap into a summer romance, one that is nuanced and exciting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I flew through <i>The Unexpected Everything</i>. Matson knows how to write YA novels set in the summer, and characters from her other summer novels - <i>Second Chance Summer </i>and <i>Since You've Been Gone - </i>make cameos here. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-77636809143988206012016-04-10T14:03:00.002-06:002016-04-10T14:03:36.256-06:00Slade House by David Mitchell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tIUdJaqOaAQ/VwqxJbZB2lI/AAAAAAAAAmI/HgmJyvqpbWYmu8vKarc4csAITWY3Iq54Q/s1600/SladeUpright-xlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tIUdJaqOaAQ/VwqxJbZB2lI/AAAAAAAAAmI/HgmJyvqpbWYmu8vKarc4csAITWY3Iq54Q/s320/SladeUpright-xlarge.jpg" width="198" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Slade House </i>by David Mitchell is a fantastic work of horror set between the 1970s and the present. Although I've never read <i>The Bone Clocks</i> (the only other Mitchell book I've read is <i>Black Swan Green</i>), <i>Slade House </i>is meant to be a companion novel, and <i>Guardian </i>reviewer Liz Jensen writes, "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Think </span><em style="color: #333333;">The Bone Clocks</em><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;">’s naughty little sister in a fright wig, brandishing a sparkler, yelling 'Boo!'" I read <i>Slade House </i>a couple of months ago, but only thought to write about it now. Last night I was reading Kenneth Oppel's new middle grade novel, <i>The Nest</i>, a gothic horror story, and it reminded me so much of <i>Slade House</i>. I remember thinking that <i>Slade House </i>read a lot like YA, and then it turned out that a middle grade novel jogged my memory of it. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Mitchell's latest work is a ghost story, one set in the gothic Slade House, an aging mansion that only appears once every nine years. Interconnected stories take place in 1979, 1988, 1997, 2006, and 2015, and focus on characters such as a young boy, a police officer, a female college student, and a reporter. <i>Slade House </i>lures in a new victim through its small iron door that branches off of Slade Alley. It's only discoverable when it needs to be, and when its time for someone new to come inside. Two ghosts, twin siblings, orchestrate elaborate fantasies inside Slade House, choosing a narrative that is most likely to draw in the person they are looking for. The stories offer the reader a variation on a theme, and while the first story seemed very Neil Gaiman-esque, the tone changes with each nine-year cycle. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">While I always associate October with horror - and it's probably when I read most of the horror novels I stock up - <i>Slade House </i>is the kind of book to read on a summer night, when you're sunburned and tired and mosquito-bitten, and it's dark outside later and later. It's also often a very funny novel, taking comedic turns and engaging with references, a combination that makes the novel extremely readable. </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-3571670536105654222016-04-05T17:07:00.005-06:002016-04-05T17:11:56.347-06:00The Haters by Jesse Andrews<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Somehow, my branch of Canadian bookstore Chapters had a copy of Jesse Andrews's new novel <i>The Haters </i>last week, despite the fact that it's "book birthday" is today. But I didn't have an opportunity to start reading it until last night, and when I did, I read it all the way through, in-one-sitting style. <i>The Haters </i>is Andrews's sophomore novel, following up on the incredibly popular <i>Me and Earl and the Dying Girl </i>(and like <i>Me and Earl and the Dying Girl</i>, <i>The Haters </i>already has a cinematic quality to it, and also experiments with the screenplay dialogue throughout. It's easy to imagine <i>The Haters </i>in<i> </i>movie form). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Haters </i>focuses on best friends Wes and Corey, who are attending a two-week summer Jazz Camp. Chapter One is entitled, "We Didn't Know Jazz Camp Would Be This Many Dudes" and shows jazz camp orientation from Wes's perspective,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dudes were trying with all their might to be mellow and cool. Everywhere you looked, a dude was making a way too exaggerated face of agreement or friendliness. And every ten seconds it was clear that some dude had made a joke in some region of the auditorium, because all the other dudes in that region were laughing at that joke in loud, emphatic ways.<br />They were trying to laugh lightheartedly but it was unmistakably the crazed, anxious barking of competitive maniacs. (1)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jazz camp attendees have to audition for one of five bands that are ranked from most skilled to least skilled: the Duke Ellington band, the Count Basie band, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band, the Woody Herman band, and the Gene Krupa band. Wes and Corey make Gene Krupa, along with one of the only girls at the camp. Ash (short for Ashely) is a guitarist, and Wes is immediately into her. Also in Gene Krupa is Tim, an annoying guitarist who Wes watches do a brilliant solo: "The most sensitive, brilliant mind in the room seemed to belong to an unignorable scumbag. But that should not have been surprising. That's just how the music world works a lot of the time" (30). Wes and Corey love music, and they love to hate on it. Wes's memory of Corey hating on <i>Kool and the Gang </i>is kind of heartbreaking; when Corey doesn't like the band that Wes absolutely loves, it kind of ruins his own love of it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Later, Wes and Corey leave the jazz camp campus with Ash to get high-end sushi after a successful jam session, and the three immediately get in trouble with the camp staff. After that, Ash has no trouble convincing Wes and Corey to leave with her and tour as a band across the southern states. Her rationale? "I do like jazz some of the time. But I don't think any of the jazz I like was played by someone who went to jazz camp" (37). They leave their phones behind at camp (so they can't be traced by GPS) and set off in Ash's mom's car looking to book a gig. What follows is their road trip into the southern states, and pages are crowded with their conversations. They debate band names (Air Horse, Thundergarment) and try to come up with a slogan ("work hard, play hard" is vetoed after Ash describes it as "the philosophy of being a relatively high-functioning alcoholic"). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like <i>Me and Earl and the Dying Girl</i>, Andrews experiments with form and style. Dialogue between Corey's mom and dad and then Wes's mom and dad duels on several pages. A "Courtship Initiation Sequence Checklist" occurs on page 261. Screenplay dialogue appears frequently, and these back-and-forths between Wes and Corey (and also Ash) are some of the funniest in the novel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Haters </i>is the perfect read for when you're up late at night, and a little bit tired, so that all of the jokes and funny moments hit harder than they would in the daytime. <i>The Haters </i>is a really funny book, with laugh-out-loud moments as good as those Louise Rennison consistently delivered in her Georgia Nicolson series. I didn't know I was looking for a YA book about a band tour until Andrews wrote one. Other YA band books that come to mind are Don Calame's <i>Beat the Band </i> and K. L. Going's <i>Fat Kid Rules the World</i>, but <i>The Haters </i>is a much different book from those. The music references are endless and cover a wide range of genres and styles, and many serve to root the contemporary setting. <i>The Haters </i>is a fantastic book, completely funny and entertaining. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-51036771380140852962016-04-04T10:00:00.000-06:002016-04-04T10:00:08.215-06:00The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Serpent King </i>by Jeff Zentner rotates between three primary characters - Dill, Lydia, and Travis. Dill's father is a local preacher who handles poisonous snakes and drinks arsenic with his congregation. He's recently been imprisoned; not for these unconventional practices, but instead for possession of child pornography. Dill is living in the aftermath of his father's crimes, saddled with the name of his father and the legacy of his grandfather, known as The Serpent King. While the novel is told from an omniscient point of view, Dill's story is the one that continuously comes into focus, and roots the direction of the narrative. At the beginning of the novel, he seems content to continue living in his small town for the rest of his life, paying down his parents' legal debts. But his aspirations soon grow wider, aided by Lydia's belief that he should attend college. When this new path is opened for him, he understands "nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed" (82). Dill is hemmed in by the inescapable pressures of religion, and especially as embodied in his family. His mother doesn't want him to go to college and when Lydia asks him how it went when he finally tells her, he says, "And how do you think? She went, '<i>Sure, Dill, go off to college and have fun and learn about evolution and pay tuition and go to class instead of working, and I'll hold down the fort here and it'll be cool</i>.' No. She crapped herself, obviously" (179). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lydia is ready to escape small-town Tennessee. Her dad is a dentist and she lives in one of the nicest houses in town, and has always had aspirations to leave the South behind her. Lydia spends much of her time working on her blog, <i>Dollywould</i>, which focuses on fashion and vintage clothes. Her interests are much different than those of her classmates. For example, she has a copy of Donna Tartt's <i>The Secret History </i>in her Prius, a car that she's nicknamed Al Gore. Later, she buys a secondhand copy of her favourite book, Patti Smith's <i>Just Kids</i>, at Riverbank, their favourite used and new bookstore. She reads <i>The Diary of Anais Nin</i> at their high school cafeteria table. Her path in life and her personal convictions are strengthened by viewing everything she knows she does not want out of life in the town that she was raised in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Travis was my favorite character. He reads to escape his small town and is obsessed with a <i>Game of Thrones </i>knockoff series called <i>Bloodfall</i>. He spends time on message boards dedicated to the series, and it's here that he meets a teenage girl named Amelia, who is as into the books as he is. Travis is an imposing teenager at 6 feet 6 inches and 250 pounds, and wears the same outfit nearly every day. Dill watches him leave his house to join him and Lydia on a trip to Nashville, observing, "He wore his signature black work boots, black wranglers, and baggy black dress shirt buttoned all the way up. Around his neck, he wore a necklace with a chintzy pewter dragon gripping a purple crystal ball - a memento from some Renaissance festival." He also carries a staff, which Lydia is constantly on his case about. He has a devastating home life; his brother Matt was killed in an explosion while serving in the U.S. Army and his father has become even more abusive since Matt's death. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Serpent King </i>is an unexpected novel, one that gives readers characters to care about. Heartbreaking moments are mixed in with truly satisfying moments, as Dill, Lydia, and Travis consider what their lives will look like when they aren't trapped by their small town high school. It's been a while since I've read a novel the whole way through in one sitting, but that's what I did with <i>The Serpent King</i>. It's Zentner's debut novel, and I'm looking forward to watching for his next publication. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-53411889759786196922016-04-03T12:00:00.000-06:002016-04-03T12:00:12.267-06:00I Crawl Through It by A. S. King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A. S. King's <i>Please Ignore Vera Dietz </i>is one of my favorite books, and I've tried to stay current with King's subsequent publications. The last one I read was <i>Glory O'Brien's History of the Future</i>, where protagonist Glory can see into the future after digesting a mummified bat. King's YA novels are stand-outs in this category of literature, and her newest novel, <i>I Crawl Through It </i>(2015) is no exception. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Four characters are suffocating under anxieties associated with over-testing, bomb threats, school drills, and loss. There's Gustav, who is building an invisible helicopter in his garage, built from a $50,000 kit gifted to him by a character called the bush man. Stanzi is obsessed with dissections, and the book even includes a hand drawn diagram of a recent frog dissection that she's completed. She wears a lab coat every day, and is hopelessly in love with Gustav. China has recently turned herself inside out. She's a walking, talking organ, trying to figure out her life after being raped by her ex-boyfriend. Lansdale tells lies constantly, and her hair grows longer with every lie she tells (King describes it as the Pinocchio of hair). Her father keeps acquiring new wives (and stepmoms for Lansdale) and it's getting to be too much. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">King's novel dives into surrealism, as characters take on the metaphorical qualities of their anxieties and pressures. However, it is also deeply rooted in the reality of over-testing and high school violence and shootings, and King shows police dogs entering the school, alarms sounding, and students streaming out the building on a daily basis. For vacation, Stanzi's parents take her the sites of major violence, for example, to Columbine and Sandy Hook. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">China is a budding poet, and it's her poetry that also roots the novel in realism. When she thinking about Irenic Brown, the boy her raped her, she writes a poem called "Some Boys Have Tricks":</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We believe them like<br />we believe the weatherman<br />when he predicts snow<br />and when he's wrong, we shrug<br />and blame ourselves for ever believing him. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When the novel becomes overly surrealist, its teenage characters make comments that remind readers of their stark reality, and what it's like to be a teenager. Stanzi's parents, for example, are largely absent from the first three quarters of the novel. When Stanzi returns home from school, it's to the same note left for her in the kitchen: "<i>Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights</i>." But her parents aren't really in bed. Stanzi doesn't reveal the reality of their location until a third of the way into the novel. She says, </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">More specifically, they're at Chick's Bar, which is just down the street from our house. Two hundred and twelve steps, to be exact. Architects built the community this way. With bars. And playgrounds. They're near each other so parents can watch their kids fall off the swing set from their barstool and then try to sober up on the way to the hospital for clavicle X-rays.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">King's novels are always surprising, innovative, and interesting, and I'm excited to see the follow up to <i>I Crawl Through It.</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-81307778071867914972016-04-02T13:24:00.001-06:002016-04-02T13:24:36.466-06:00How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first time I encountered writing by author Kekla Magoon, it was through her collaboration with Ilyasha Shabazz on <i>X: A Novel</i>, a YA novel based on Malcolm X's teenage years. <i>X </i>was a featured audiobook through <i>Audiobook Sync </i>last year, a program that pairs a YA and required reading title every week between May and August, and provides them free of charge for download. I enjoyed listening to <i>X</i>. It was an immediate story with language that was evocative of the time period - through the Great Depression and WWII. <i>How It Went Down </i>is the first novel I've read that is solely authored by Magoon. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>How It Went Down </i>balances the perspectives of eighteen characters who are somehow affected by the shooting death of sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson by a white man, Jack Franklin. In the Reader's Guide at the back of the novel, Magoon noted that she initially had written from about thirty viewpoint characters, but limited these to eighteen as the drafts progressed. While some of the characters witnessed the shooting, no two perspectives are alike, and media reports further distort the differing versions of events. The novel was very reminiscent of other multiple perspective books like Siobhan Vivian's <i>The List </i>- which is related by eight high school girls who appear on a list posted at their school - or Karen Hesse's <i>Witness - </i>a verse novel that explores racism in a Vermont town in 1924, and the ways the townspeople are implicated in one way or another. <i>How It Went Down </i>is very contemporary in terms of its focus, and Magoon has stated that is does have a "ripped from the headlines quality to it." She continues, "Tariq Johnson's fictional death certainly bears similarity to Trayvon Martin's real-life murder, as well as dozens of other wrongful or controversial shootings have have occurring in recent years."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The novel focuses largely on a handful of teenage characters who knew Tariq. There's Jennica, who witnesses the shooting and attempts to resuscitate Tariq using CPR. Tina is Tariq's younger sister, who has a developmental disability, and relates her observations in verse. Tyrell is Tariq's best friend, who worries Tariq has recently joined the Kings, the neighbourhood gang who has been trying to recruit him for years. Reverend Alabaster Sloan has been waiting for an opportunity to advance his political career, and Tariq's murder is the platform he chooses to stand on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Magoon balances her character perspectives, and each voice is distinct from the others. The characters consistently interact with another as Magoon reveals their complicated relationships, background, and present contexts. <i>How It Went Down </i>is an incredibly powerful book, and I look forward to searching out Magoon's other novels.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-57526353431093795512016-04-01T15:35:00.001-06:002016-04-01T15:35:20.806-06:00The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, of fashion blog <i>Go Fug Yourself</i>, wrote two YA novels between 2011 and 2013: <i>Spoiled </i>and <i>Messy</i>. Both focus on teen protagonists and Hollywood culture, and were published to great acclaim. Their newest collaboration is a little less YA and a little more NA (New Adult), and rather than focusing on Hollywood celebrity, they focus instead on royal celebrity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Royal We </i>is a thinly veiled fictionalization of the real-life relationship between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Here, they are Nick and Rebecca Porter (Bex), and the novel begins with their meeting at Oxford and carries them through to their eventual engagement. The engagement is not a surprise. In fact, the novel opens with Bex stating, "If you believe my unauthorized biography, <i>The Bexicon</i>, Nick fell in love with me at a pub on my first night at Oxford, and angels burst into song while rose petals fell from the sky." She is already deeply entrenched in royal celebrity at the beginning of the book, and the focus of the story is instead on building the ups and downs of their relationship, which spans from their auspicious meeting in an Oxford dorm to several years later, when they're in their mid-twenties. Bex has just traveled to Oxford to attend Pembroke College for a term, leaving her family back home in Iowa. Her family has achieved some success through her dad's invention of the Coucherator, a couch with a refrigerator in the bottom. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">While Cocks and Morgan stay fairly close to the real-life material they have to work with - Bex has a sister named Lacey, who is also in the headlines, while Nick's younger brother is Freddie - they do also take opportunities to invent new material and context for the romance narrative. It's also a fascinating look at royal celebrity, both the lifelong scrutiny Nick has received, and new fame Bex experiences by association. For example, Nick tells her, "I feel like I have to be so careful all the time. I have a non-hilarious conversation just once, and then the next day the papers write that I'm 'Nick the Prick,' because I wasn't grinning like a madman. But if I'm having too much fun, I'm a drunken lout." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nick and Bex start out as friends; everyone tells Bex that he'll never marry an American. But slowly their romance develops and Bex is whisked into a new world, where she has to worry about paparazzi and gossip blogs. And if Nick really won't marry an American, what happens to the years she's investing into dating him secretly?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Royal We</i> is an incredibly fun book, not just for the way it mirrors the real-life relationship of Will and Kate, but also as it invents new material and fleshes out secondary characters. But for anyone with any familiarity with the way Will and Kate's relationship tracked from college to the wedding, the novel creates a lot of entertainment by presenting a series of references that do have real-life significance. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-55269861705394586662016-03-31T10:00:00.000-06:002016-04-04T16:02:13.530-06:00Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've passed by the bright red cover of Becky Albertalli's <i>Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda </i>several times while at Canadian bookstore Chapters, but didn't pick it up until now. I <i>really </i>regret not reading it until almost a year after it's April 2015 publication.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Protagonist Simon Spier begins the book by observing, "It's a weirdly subtle conversation. I almost don't notice I'm being blackmailed." The blackmailer in question is Martin Addison "a little bit of a goobery nerd, to be honest," who logs into Gmail after Simon vacates the library computer. Unfortunately, Simon has left himself logged in to his secret email account, the one he is using to email Blue, a gay teenager at his high school. Neither has shared their real identity with the other and the emails provide a place for them both to communicate about their experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Martin takes a screenshot of the emails and threatens to post them to the school's Tumblr, The creeksecrets: "ground zero for Creekwood High School gossip." Simon is not openly gay, and if Martin shares the emails on creek secrets, the school will know immediately. And there's also the fact that Blue will be involved, a relationship Simon doesn't want to jeopardize. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Simon's narrative voice is so compelling. He's a keen observer. The book bounces back and forth between Simon's narration and the emails he and Blue are sending back and forth to one another, providing readers with "first impression" observations, and also those that are more carefully curated in order to send to Blue. High school drama plays also plays a role, since Simon (and Martin) are involved in the school's production of <i>Oliver! </i>(a play that Jon van de Ruit's <i>Spud </i>also took up). During an early showing of the play to the high school classes, Albertalli's writing becomes so evocative of the high school experience and atmosphere. Her description of a teacher trying to lecture an auditorium filled with high school students took me right back to that experience:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There's this drone of quiet conversation and denim rustling against seats. Someone shrieks with laughter, and someone else yells, "QUIET!" So then a bunch of people start giggling.<br />"I'll wait," Ms. Albright says. And when the laughter dies down, she holds up the notebook. "Does anyone recognize this?"<br />"Your diary?" Some asshole sophomore.<br />Ms. Albright ignores him. "This is the Creekwood handbook, which you should have read and signed at the beginning of the year."<br />Everyone immediately stops listening. God. It's got to freaking suck to be a teacher. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As a reader, I was so invested in finding out Blue's real name alongside Simon, but throughout the process, Simon's sense of finding himself takes precedence. Simon's family is just as interesting, and their balance of being both supportive and also over-interested in Simon's life is a strong addition to the novel. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda </i>was such a fantastic novel, and after finishing it, I found a December news article reporting Fox 2000 acquired the rights for a movie adaptation. Simon's compelling observations and wry narrative voice aren't quite over with the end of the book, and I'm looking forward to seeing this novel adapted into a visual format. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-41532598615240671972016-03-30T11:11:00.000-06:002016-03-31T10:57:54.505-06:00Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am always on the look-out for a new middle grade novel by Kathi Appelt. Her Newbery Award-winning <i>The Underneath </i>told the story of a dog named Ranger and a small cat family who inhabit "the underneath," the space beneath the porch of an angry man named Gar Face. <i>Keeper </i>is a whimsical book about<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> a blue moon, mermaids, and a seagull called Captain. <i>The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp </i>follows Bingo and J'miah, two </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">raccoons who are trying to save their swamp. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>Maybe a Fox </i>is a collaboration between Appelt and author Alison McGhee. YA expert Teri Lesesne posted about her tear-stained copy of <i>Maybe of Fox </i>a few weeks ago, and it was a reminder for me to pick up the newest Appelt novel. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Appelt and McGhee write about two sisters named Sylvie and Jules who live with their father in a wooded area of Vermont. Their mother died of a heart defect before the book begins, and now Sylvie and Jules have a more active role in taking care of themselves. This involves a new arrangement, where they are responsible for catching the school bus alone, and after their dad leaves for work at the lumber mill. They also live by their dad's four rules: "<i>Do not </i>get of earshot of the house. <i>Do not </i>mess with wild animals. <i>Do not </i>miss the bus<i>. Do not</i>, under any circumstances, go near the Slip." The Slip lies in the woods that border their house, and, </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">According to Sam's dad, who was a forest ranger, it was a freak of geology, the result of a seismic shift, a small earthquake that forced the river's bed to disappear into a large cavern that was hiding there all along, opened up by the shifting earth.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">But they do go near the Slip sometimes, a place where both girls - and their best friend Sam - cast wishing stones. Sam, for instance, wishes for his brother Elk to come home from Afghanistan, where he is serving with his best friend Zeke. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">One morning, instead of running to catch the bus like they usually do, older sister Sylvie takes a wishing stone into the woods and doesn't come back. But on the day she disappears, a new fox kit is about to be born, a <i>Kennen </i>fox named Senna. The paths of Senna and Jules continue to cross throughout the novel, winding a path towards its conclusion. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>Maybe a Fox </i>is a beautiful book, best read in a single read. Appelt and McGhee's collaboration is seamless, and their voices merge into one authorial voice. I absolutely loved this book. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-58164108514005550052016-03-29T15:28:00.002-06:002016-03-29T15:28:42.480-06:00Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">22-year-old army veteran Atticus Turner has just recently returned home from the Korean War, and is traveling from Florida to Chicago after receiving an urgent message from his father, Montrose. While driving north, Atticus consults <i>The Safe Negro Travel Guide</i>, a map created by his uncle George that lists the restaurants, hotels, and gas stations that will serve African Americans across the United States. The trunk of his car is filled with paperback copies of Ray Bradbury's <i>The Martian Chronicles</i>, and Atticus has read widely across the genre; some of his favourite authors include Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. P. Lovecraft. His reading falls into mainly white-authored genres, causing discord between him and his father. For example, when Atticus reads Edgar Rice Burroughs, who writes about a protagonist named John Carter - a U.S solider turned Martian warlord - Montrose comments, "A Confederate officer?...That's the hero?...<i>Ex</i>-Confederate? What's that, like an ex-Nazi? The man fought for slavery. You don't get to put an 'ex-' in front of that!" </span><div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The opening pages contextualize the United States in 1950s, and what it means to be a black man in Jim Crow America. When a police sheriff pulls Atticus over and rifles through his books, spilling the paperbacks out onto the road, this violation of privacy prefaces the horrors of being a black man in American in the 1950s. Later, Atticus encounters much worse. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When Atticus gets to Chicago, however, his father isn't there. He's in Ardham, Massachusetts (which is very similar to Arkham, where many of Lovecraft's monsters are located), and Atticus sets off with his uncle George and his childhood friend Letitia to find him. <i>Lovecraft Country </i>is told through a series of episodes, each of which focuses on a character from Atticus's family: a focus on Atticus begins the novel, followed by a focus on Atticus's father Montrose, his uncle George, his friend Letitia, Letitia's sister Ruby, and George's wife Hippolyta, and their son Horace. The episodes are supernatural in nature: Atticus learns that his heritage connects him to a secret society to which he might just be the key; Letitia buys a haunted house; Hippolyta wanders into a portal that takes her to another planet, one that guarded by a creature called Scylla. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Lovecraft Country </i>is an incredible look at racism in the United States, merged with the uncanniness of sci-fi and fantasy. It's a rich and compelling read and one of the most surprising books I've read in 2016. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-16487755701220579202016-03-28T22:40:00.003-06:002016-03-28T22:40:55.032-06:00Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meg Medina, author of <i>Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass</i>, recently released her new YA novel. <i>Burn Baby Burn </i>is set in New York during the summer of 1977, notorious for sky-high temperatures, arson, and serial killer the Son of Sam. 17-year-old Nora Lopez is in her final year of high school and working part time at Sal's deli to cover the costs of living at home with her mom and brother Hector.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nora's brother Hector has started to go off the rails, although her mother blames it on hormones and puberty. She tells Nora, "Boys go through these things...Then they become good men, believe it or not. He'll meet a good woman one day who will straighten him out." These comments contradict Nora's feminism, highlighted by a Woman's Day march, a focus on the National Organization of Women, and the name bestowed on Nora's best friend's hamster (Gloria, named after their favourite feminist, Gloria Steinem). Hector becomes more and more abusive at home, his behaviour escalating as New York is plunged deeper into uncertainty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nora is Cuban-American, and Spanish dialogue punctuates many of the exchanges between Nora and her mother. Nora is a vibrant character, no-nonsence, and practical. When she describes her past boyfriend, Angel, she is straightforward and pragmatic,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I blame it on the fact that he has the same puppy eyes as Freddie Prinze, may he rest in peace. But Angel is nothing like the character I fell in love with on <i>Chico and the Man</i>, all kindhearted and sexy. Nope. One minute we were kissing in Angel's room, and a little while later he was driving me home, my shirt buttoned wrong and a wad of toilet paper in my underwear to catch the blood. I cried to Kathleen that whole night, worried about babies and all the scabby diseases Miss Sousa covered with great gore during Heath and Hygiene. But mostly, I already knew in my gut that Angel had used me, and sure enough, he spread the word to anybody who would listen. I was easy.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet, she is also ambivalent about her future, anxious to graduate high school and move out on her own. She expresses interest in shop and woodworking, and demonstrates her carpentry abilities several times throughout the novel. Her neighbor, Stiller, encourages her to take on this non-traditional type of work for women, and Nora also has supportive teachers who reinforce her interests. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nora goes to the movies often in <i>Burn Baby Burn</i>, sometimes with her best friend Kathleen, and other times with her new boyfriend Pablo, and 1977 becomes as famous for its run of films as it does for the other social events that form the novel's background. Nora sees or references <i>The Omen</i>, <i>Rocky</i>, <i>Carrie</i>, and <i>Star Wars </i>over the course of the novel, as the movie theatre becomes the place for socializing, especially during the heat wave. The movie references fall in line with an article by Cheryl Eddy for <i>io9.com </i>titled <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-was-1976-such-an-amazing-year-for-horror-movies-1766938357">"Why Why 1976 Such an Amazing Year for Horror Movies?" </a>Although Nora is viewing these fi;ms at the end of the winter/early spring of 1977, it's apt to view the horror of arson, unrest, and abhorrent murders against the horror of popular films.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Burn Baby Burn </i>is another exciting and surprising book by Medina, presenting a strong teenage voice and a compelling historical context. </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-52941345859894970762015-06-13T10:00:00.000-06:002015-06-13T10:00:10.758-06:00Bone Gap by Laura Ruby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Laura Ruby's <i>Bone Gap </i>is another recent publication with a blurb from E. Lockhart, whose Ruby Oliver series, Printz Award-winning novel <i>The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks</i>, and latest hit <i>We Were Liars </i>make her a trusted voice in YA fiction. I did not know what to expect from <i>Bone Gap</i>. It was a recommended title on Amazon, and I ordered it along with preorders for May publications by Sarah Dessen, Jenny Han, and Robyn Schneider. It was completed unexpected: the gripping narrative, magic realism, and compelling characters. I read it in almost one sitting and wanted to share it with everyone I know who reads YA lit right after. </span><div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bone Gap is a town full of gaps. Things slip through the cracks, and so it's no surprise to the residents of Bone Gap when Roza disappears. She's not from there after all; she showed up one night, and no one thought she would stay. Teenager Finn O'Sullivan knows Roza well. She's been living with him and his older brother, Sean. Finn feels implicated in Roza's disappearance: he was the last person to see her, and he knows his brother can't forgive him for not trying harder to make her stay. But Finn is convinced Roza was kidnapped by a man who moves like the corn. No one believes him, especially because he can't describe him in any tangible way: "The people of Bone Gap called Finn a lot of things, but none of them was his name. When he was little, they called him Spaceman. Sidetrack. Moonface. You. As he got older, they called him Pretty Boy. Loner. Brother. Dude." He's strange, weird, and a little distracted. Ruby writes, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Eventually, though, they found out that there was a good reason for Finn's odd expressions, his strange distraction, that annoying way he had of creeping up on a person. A good reason he never looked anyone in the eye.<br />But by then it was too late, and the girl they loved most - and knew least of all - was gone.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although the novel starts from Finn's point of view, it shifts slowly over the course of the novel. The reader finds Roza where Finn cannot, in a strange, shifting world that she's been taken to before. The novel unravels slowly, moving back and forth between the real and the unreal, slowly becoming more than a work of YA fiction. It rewrites Greek mythology, especially Persephone and Demeter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The characters are extremely compelling, especially a girl named Petey, who Finn falls for. Her mom owns several bee hives and has a honey company. She's the strangest looking girl in Bone Gap, but Finn doesn't know that. Small town America starts out realistic, but then becomes strange, and different, and mythical. Ruby's novel is one of the best I've read in a while, as mythology is layered across contemporary young adult experience.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-75172080832074716022015-06-12T10:00:00.000-06:002015-06-12T10:00:04.716-06:00P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The follow-up to Jenny Han's <i>To All The Boys I've Loved Before </i>was published at the end of May, and has the same fantastic cover art, design, and story as the first book. <i>P.S. I Still Love You </i>picks up right where <i>To All The Boys I've Loved Before </i>left off, over the Christmas holidays at the Covey household. Protagonist Lara Jean has just decided to try to have a real relationship with Peter Kavinsky, after pretending to date him for months. Lara Jean's younger sister Kitty had sent out five love letters that Lara Jean had written to guys she'd previously crushed on. One of them included her sister's not-so-ex-boyfriend. As a way to convince him she had a crush on him in the <i>past</i>, and not the present, Lara Jean starts a fake relationship with Peter, who has also received one of her love letters. But instead of creating awkwardness between them, Peter sees potential instead. Plus he's just broken up with his girlfriend Gen, Lara Jean's former best friend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lara Jean and Peter decide to date for real, but they still come up with a handful of rules and make a contract to guide their relationship:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Peter will not be more than five minutes late.<br />Lara Jean will not make Peter do crafts of any kind.<br />Peter doesn't have to call Lara Jean before he goes to bed at night, but he can if he feels like it.<br />Lara Jean will only go to parties if she feels like it.<br />Peter will give Lara Jean rides whenever she wants.<br />Lara Jean and Peter will always tell each other the truth.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The contract mimics the one they made to guide their fake relationship, when Lara Jean was bound to attending a certain number of parties with Peter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But things don't run as smoothly in their real relationship. Not like in their fake one, when neither was as invested in the other. Now, someone has posted a video to Instagram of them in the hot tub on their school ski trip, and it's much more suggestive than Lara Jean would like it to be. It's become a meme, it's been sped up and slowed down, it's been mashed up with scenes from <i>The Little Mermaid</i>. Lara Jean is mortified, although she has a sneaking suspicion she knows who took the video in the first place. Peter's ex-girlfriend, Gen, who can't let him go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lara Jean is incredibly insecure about Peter's relationship with Gen, which seems to be ongoing, even though he's with Lara Jean now. He texts her, hangs out at her house, and embraces her in public. It's not until near the end of the novel that Lara Jean realizes, "I want to say, <i>I never cared about your past. </i>But that isn't true. It's only then that I realize: Peter wasn't the one who needed to get over Genevieve. It was me. All this time with Peter, I've been comparing myself to her, all the ways I don't measure up. All the ways our relationship pales next to theirs. I'm the one who couldn't let her go. I'm the one who didn't give us a chance."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the middle of her turmoil with Peter, in steps John Ambrose McClaren, the last recipient of one of Lara Jean's love letters. He isn't at all like she remembers. She tells him he's changed the most out of all of their childhood friends. There is major potential between Lara Jean and John, and their connection was more interesting than Lara Jean and Peter's in the novel. There is a fantastic party at the retirement home that Lara Jean works at, where her and John come dressed in costume for a USO themed party - by far the highlight of the novel. And back are the generous descriptions of the cakes, cookies, and cherry turnovers that Lara Jean bakes for Peter and her family.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jenny Han has said there won't be a third book to follow <i>P.S. I Still Love You</i>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To everyone who's sad there won't be a 3rd Song Girls book, just know that I am working on something new and I think you will love it too!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">— Jenny Han (@jennyhan) <a href="https://twitter.com/jennyhan/status/608643591511138304">June 10, 2015</a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The book ends slightly indecisively, presenting a conclusion for the present and perhaps a difference conclusion for the future. Jenny Han writes an excellent YA romance, and I enjoyed getting to follow Lara Jean's story for an additional book.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-23619147354127554892015-06-11T10:00:00.000-06:002015-06-11T10:00:01.446-06:00Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Vanishing Girls </i>is the first novel I've read by Lauren Oliver, although my sister has read and enjoyed her <i>Delirium </i>trilogy, which was published a few years ago. <i>Vanishing Girls </i>is a YA thriller with a twist, which is hinted at by the presence of a blurb by E. Lockhart on the front cover of the book. Lockhart's recent novel, <a href="http://girltotherescue.blogspot.ca/2014/06/we-were-liars-by-e-lockhart.html"><i>We Were Liars</i>,</a><i> </i>is another book with a remarkable twist.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Vanishing Girls </i>tells the story of Nick (Nicole) and Dara, sisters who are trying to find their way back to normal after a horrible car crash that left them damaged enough to necessitate months of recovery in the hospital. When they return home, they find themselves in the middle of a major event that is affecting their home town, Somerville: a nine-year-old girl named Madeline Snow has gone missing, vanished from the back of her sister's car while parked out front of an ice cream parlour. The stories are interwoven, presented by a variety of sources. Nick and Dara offer their own perspectives in chapters that alternate between "Before" and "After" the accident. There are also entries from Dara's diary, online articles about the missing Madeline Snow, photographs, and notes. These all work towards piecing together the mystery of Madeline's disappearance as well as helping Nick and Dara heal from their accident. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nick and Dara's lives have been slowly eroded. Their parents are in the middle of divorcing, and their father has moved out of the house: "For the first month or so after Dad announced he was leaving, Mom acted like absolutely nothing was different. But recently she's been <i>forgetting</i>: to turn on the dishwasher, to set her alarm, to iron her work blouses, to vacuum. It's lie every time he removes another item from the house - his favourite chair, the chess set he inherited from his father, the golf clubs he never uses - it takes a portion of her brain with it." And Nick can't make things work with Dara anymore. It was Nick who was driving the car the night she and Dara got into the accident, and since they've both returned home, Dara won't talk to her. This is complicated by the presence of Parker, Nick's childhood friend and Dara's boyfriend. He's the awkward thing between them, something one of them has and the other one doesn't. Nick explains,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dara had just broken up with her latest boyfriend, Josh or Jake or Mark or Mike - I could never keep them straight, they cycled in and out of her life so fast. And suddenly, she would crash movie night with Parker, wearing short-shorts and a tissue-thin shirt that showed the black lacy cups of her bra. Or I would see them riding the scooter together in the freezing cold, her arms wrapped around his chest, her head titled back, laughing. Or I would walk into the room and he would jerk quickly backward, flashing me a guilty look, while she kept a long, tan leg draped across his lap.<br />Suddenly, I was the third wheel.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nicks' mom insists that she work at Fan Land, an old amusement park a short bus ride away from their house, for the summer. It's a way to distract her from her problems with Dara, and to keep her both mentally and physically busy. What Nick doesn't plan on is working with Parker for the summer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oliver deftly writes about the relationship between sisters. Nick navigates her way back to being Dara's best friend, while Dara leads Nick through a game that she made up: "It's called: catch me if you can." Meanwhile, the disappearance of Madeline Snow drifts in and out of the background, finally coming to intersect with Nick and Dara. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's hard to talk about a book like this without talking about the twist, which waits at the end of the story like a trapdoor, forcing the reader to go back and reconsider everything that's come before. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some of Oliver's writing is so poignant that she captures adolescence in a way that seems very right. I loved the switch in perspectives between Nick and Dara, and Dara's frank writing in her diary entries. It turns into a very different book two thirds of the way in, becoming a thriller instead of realistic YA fiction. I didn't mind, because Oliver's writing continues to remain consistent, especially in the small details that make up adolescent experience. I flew through <i>Vanishing Girls</i>, and am checking out the <i>Delirium </i>trilogy next!</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9189361222043328239.post-80655129089742812752015-06-10T10:00:00.000-06:002015-06-10T10:00:04.986-06:00Dear Hank Williams by Kimberly Willis Holt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was lucky enough to hear Kimberly Willis Holt speak at the YA Literature Conference at Louisiana State University last summer. I read her books when I was in elementary and middle school, both <i>Louisiana Sky </i>and <i>When Zachary Beaver Came to Town</i>, so it was fairly exciting to hear her talk about writing and her books during the conference. At a presentation at a Baton Rouge library, Willis Holt read an excerpt from a work in progress, which happened to be <i>Dear Hank Williams. </i>At the time, it was slated for publication in 2015, and it just came out a few months ago. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Dear Hank Williams </i>is an epistolary novel, although the letters are very one-sided: Tate P. Ellerbee and her classmates have been asked by their teacher to find a pen pal and write to him or her. Tate picks Hank Williams, since she routinely hears him singing on the radio as part of the Louisiana Hay Ride. She doesn't seem bothered that he doesn't write her back, but continues to tell him about her family and her life in Rippling Creek, Louisiana. It's just a few years since WWII ended (the book is set in 1948), and Tate's teacher's suggestion of the class writing to Japanese pen pals is not met favourably by everyone. Tate writes, "Mrs. Kipler's brains must have frizzled from her last perm. We just got out of a war with those folks. I'm not about to share my life with the enemy. I remember when I was four years old, the soldiers from Camp Claiborne marched past our house in the mornings. Aunt Patty Cake would have a pot of coffee ready for them. Before we saw them, we heard the <i>stomp, stomp </i>sounds of their boots pounding the road. When we did, we'd walk outside, Aunt Patty Cake with the coffee, Momma with the cups and cream, and me with the spoons."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">She lives with her Aunt Patty Cake and her Uncle Jolly (they are brother and sister), who is consistently bringing home new women to date: "We know Uncle Jolly has had his heart broken when we discover sofa cushions scattered on the floor and Aunt Patty Cake's straight chair pointing legs up. He leaves a trail through the mess where he's staggered to his bedroom. Aunt Patty Cake calls it 'Jolly's Path of Heartbreak Destruction.'"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When Willis Holt spoke about the book, she said it was strongly influenced by her discovery of the Goree Girls, a women's singing group from Goree State Farm, a women's prison in Huntsville, Texas. They were popular, received fan mail, and got radio play. Tate's mother is a Goree Girl, although Tate pretends to Hank Williams that she is an actress in Hollywood. There are many secrets like these; Tate is an incredibly unreliable narrator. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn't like <i>Dear Hank Williams </i>as much as Holt's other novels, mostly because there seemed to be so many surprised reveals that clashed with the truth as Tate told it. But the Louisiana setting, the epistolary format, and Tate's nuanced voice makes this book well worth the read. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0