Reviews

Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Posted on by kellyvincent

Eleanor and Park book coverEleanor & Park is one of my favorite books because it’s a wonderful emotional roller coaster-ride. Rowell is probably my favorite author because of what she can do with details. Who knew hand-holding could be as intense as she makes it?

This book was Rowell’s first foray into the YA space (she’d published other books for the adult market), but they weren’t originally sure if they were going to market it to teens or adults. I think they chose wisely, as she’s followed up with a couple other successful YA books. 

Eleanor & Park is about—surprise!—Eleanor and Park. Eleanor’s new to town and her living circumstances are terrible so she has to scrounge for clothes. Even taking a bath is a huge and risky ordeal because there’s no door to the area where the bathtub is. The list of problems really goes on and on, but suffice it to say that her biggest one is her asshole of a stepfather. 

Park, on the other hand, is a fairly normal middle-class kid with one exception—his mom’s Korean and that’s just not regular in their town. 

The book opens in Park’s point of view when he deals with some of his racist classmates and then watches with everyone else as Eleanor appears on the bus for the first time, wearing a crazy combination of clothes. She’s desperate to find a place to sit and eventually Park slides over so she can sit next to him. It’s a risky move for him because now he’ll be associated with the freak who’s already been made fun of by all the kids on the bus. But he soon changes his mind about her and it marks the beginning of a slow-build relationship that readers (including me) love. 

They don’t speak at first, but Park notices she’s reading over his shoulder on the bus (he reads comics), so he brings some for her to borrow. They still don’t speak much. Then he starts to share his music, even giving her a Walkman and batteries since she doesn’t have such things. Park is clueless about her troubles at home because she does her best to hide them, but they get closer and closer and eventually she starts spending most afternoons at his house. 

But of course, the stepdad finds out and all hell breaks loose. This leads to a heartbreaking decision for both of them, even though the book (by most people’s reading) ends on an up note. 

Really, I just adore this book. It so captures the intensity of first love. But it’s also a great story about a tough girl  who manages to get through some really horrible circumstances and eventually come out ahead. It’s kind of interesting, because in some ways I felt closer to Park while reading than to Eleanor, but this is fitting because of how closed off she is even with him. Rowell’s such an amazing author. I can’t recommend this book enough (for readers 15+, I guess).

Review: The Accidentals by Sarina Bowen

Posted on by kellyvincent

The Accidentals book coverI’m a huge fan of Bowen’s adult romances, especially the True North series set in Vermont. So of course I had to check out her first YA book.

Rachel is about to turn 18 and start her senior year in high school at an elite boarding school in New Hampshire. This would all be great, except for the fact that her mom just died from cancer a week earlier. And she has a complicated relationship with a long-term friend named Haze who was great during her mom’s illness. She really leaned on him, but he wants more than friendship from her and she’s not on the same page.

Add to this the fact that her father—who she’s never met—is a famous rock star named Freddy Ricks. She’s never met him because he’s basically a jerk, according to her mom, even though he regularly sent along his child support check each month. And now he suddenly wants to be in her life. He’s trying to get custody of her so she doesn’t have to stay in the group home she’s in. She knows he’s probably not trustworthy, but she’s curious and parental affection-starved enough that she goes with him back to California for the rest of the summer. She wants to know what happened between him and her mom, even though she’s too scared to ask.

Their relationship progresses a little, although there’s quite the hiccup when his mother finds out Rachel exists and immediately comes out to meet her. It’s pretty clear that Ricks is just a very successful man-child. Rachel still doesn’t really trust him and reveals very little about herself. He doesn’t really ask, though to be fair he has no idea how to be a parent.

Ricks relocates to New Hampshire to be near her once her school starts and they continue trying to get to know each other. But at that point, other aspects of Rachel’s life become possibly more important (at least they’re more immediate). That would be Jake, a boy she befriended by email and phone over the summer, her new roommate and friend Aurora, and joining the a cappella group on campus. Her relationship with Jake is especially important, because he’s someone she does want to be more than a friend, and he feels the same, even if it’s not clear that they’ll really get together.

It’s fun and satisfying to watch these two important relationships develop over the course of the book. Because although her father is never fully redeemed in my eyes, she comes to terms with the way things went before and are now. They will be okay. Jake is a nice guy, too, and I was glad to see where that went. Overall, this is a good book that will appeal to fans of YA romance, especially if you’re also into music, which features heavily.

Review: Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Posted on by kellyvincent

Jellicoe Road book coverJellicoe Road is a layered contemporary with a carefully-woven-in mystery. It’s beautifully written. But I have to admit, it’s also just the kind of book that makes me feel a little dumb, because I regularly felt like I didn’t fully understand everything that was going on (especially in the beginning). This can happen with complex books—I am often a lazy reader and don’t always pick up on very subtle nuances, which abound in this book. Still, that doesn’t make it a bad book and I did enjoy it (things made sense for me by the end).

Taylor Markham is 17 and she’s now the leader of all the houses at her boarding school outside a small town in Australia. She’s kind of an unlikely leader and isn’t overly confident in her abilities, but she’s stubborn enough to want to try. She’s had to learn to be kind of tough, as her mom abandoned her at a 7-11 when she was 11.

There’s an alternating storyline that takes place 20 years earlier about five kids around the same age as Taylor. Three of them survived a terrible car wreck on Jellicoe Road and ended up at the school, with the others being a local and a cadet. It’s not clear how this relates to Taylor, though naturally you suspect it must in some way.

Being the leader matters for Taylor because one of the main focuses of the book is the “war“ fought between the Jellicoe School kids, the “Cadets” (city kids who camp out for 6 weeks at the beginning of the school year for some outdoor experience), and the “Townies” (self-explanatory). The war is really about territory, thought there being teen boys involved, there’s also a spatter of physical violence. Who has what territory limits the areas the different groups can go. The first quarter to third of the book is full of complicated negotiations for territory and hostages.

Taylor’s main adult confidante is Hannah (who’s more of a friend than anything—and the one who found her at the 7-11). Hannah lives at a house very close to the school and is in the process of writing a book that Taylor’s curious about but has never read—at least not until Hannah mysteriously disappears near the beginning. The disappearance is very distressing for Taylor, but Hannah’s book ties into the history of the kids from the car wreck.

Things do come together very nicely at the end, and although it felt inevitable (as all good endings do), it wasn’t really predictable. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m not going to say any more about the story, but if you enjoy nuanced and lovely storytelling you could very well love this book.

Review: Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

Posted on by kellyvincent

Something Like Normal book coverSomething Like Normal is a slim book that explores a few weeks in the life of Travis Stephenson, a 19-year-old Marine home on leave after a tour in Afghanistan. His best friend there was recently killed and Travis is having apparent PTSD symptoms even though it’s undiagnosed because he’s afraid to seek help. He has nightmares and keeps thinking he’s seeing his dead friend. This definitely makes for a good story. And I did enjoy it, even though there were some things that bugged me about it.

Travis’s father is a jerk who has never forgiven Travis for giving up football. Travis’s brother Ryan sort of stole his “girlfriend” (I’ll get to the reason for the quotes), Paige, after Travis left for basic training and co-opted his car as well. His mom turned into a super-supportive military mom and his father didn’t take well to being ignored, so their marriage is struggling. So Travis comes home to a bit of a mess.

He goes to a party with Ryan and ends up at a bar where he encounters Harper Gray, a girl who wronged back in middle school. Somehow a little fib he told took on a life of its own and Harper ended up with a reputation as the town slut.

This is where one of my issues comes in. The good girl/bad girl thing was definitely in this book. Because Harper, despite her reputation, was really a good girl (i.e. a virgin) and Paige was really the one who slept around a lot (that’s why Travis thought of her only loosely as his girlfriend). And there were some other girls who were also considered sluts by the guys in the book in a way that might be realistic but was still frustrating. I wanted to see Travis come to realize his role in the perception of the girls and he never did.

Anyway, Travis runs into Harper at a bar and she goes off on him when he tries to flirt with her and punches him. That seems to be all she needs to do to get her five years of anger and resentment out of her system, which is the other thing that bugged me. Suddenly, she seems interested in him. I didn’t understand why, and I think the story would have been better if Travis had to struggle more to win her over.

Having said that, when I ignored how easy it was to get Harper on his side, I did enjoy the rest of the story. Travis does seem to change a little, and he comes to terms with the impact his friend’s death has had on him. He is a better guy by the end. Harper could definitely have been developed more than she was, but she was still a good character. The other secondary characters were a tiny bit flat. The best was Travis’s mom, who makes a major decision with his support. His friends aren’t bad as characters, though they are a little stereotypical (but to be fair, I imagine groups of Marines probably frequently are like that).

Overall, it was a good book, with those caveats I mentioned above. It’s nice to read a male protagonist. And Doller is a good writer. She gets into Travis’s mind effectively, the dialogue is realistic, and the story is well-plotted.

Review: Hush by Jacqueline Woodson

Posted on by kellyvincent

Hush book coverThere’s good reason this is a well-known and well-respected book. Woodson has done a great job with a tough subject, written 16 years ago—long before the publishing world started earnestly trying to make up for its lack of diversity.

At the beginning of the story, Toswiah Green is a happy 12-year-old girl in a happy family. She’s black and her father is a Denver police officer. Everything’s great—until her father witnesses two white officers shoot an unarmed black teenager. He can’t live with himself if he doesn’t say what he saw—a murder. But that’s not going to fly with the rest of the police force, so the family has to go into witness protection so he can testify.

Toswiah becomes Evie and her sister (Cameron) becomes Anna. By the time they leave, Toswiah’s 13 and Cameron’s 14. Everyone knows what witness protection is, but Woodson really brings to life the trauma and finality of it. Both Evie and Anna have trouble adjusting to their new lives because they loved the ones they left behind so much. Their mom throws herself into a new religion. But their father has the most difficulty, basically passing the time by sitting and staring out the window.

Evie starts trying to get her life in order while still feeling disconnected from the rest of her family. She takes up track and finally makes some friends. But it’s not enough. Her sister is threatening to leave to go to a college that allows early admittance, her mom is still obsessed with religion, and her dad’s still staring out the window. So there’s a long way to go.

There’s a lot of subtlety to the book. It’s about race, but that hardly gets specifically mentioned. The more overt themes—identity and doing the right thing—are addressed more directly. Toswiah/Evie ponders her father’s choice. Was it right, given the impact it has on the family. She also spends a lot of time and emotional energy on her identity. Is she still Toswiah now that she’s Evie? Who is she, really? The answers don’t come easily but Woodson handles it with deep understanding. All her characters are well-developed. The language is lovely, too, while still staying believably in a young (heartbroken) teen girl’s voice.

I’d definitely recommend reading this one. The novel might be considered YA but on the younger end of the spectrum. It might be more appropriate under the middle grade umbrella. So it is appropriate for younger readers, but no less relevant to teens and adults.

Review: Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1) by Justina Ireland

Posted on by kellyvincent

Dread Nation book coverThis is really a remarkable and very powerful book. First off, it’s a very engaging and exciting story with some action. You’ve got the Civil War setting and you’ve got zombies. I’m pretty sure that Civil War era isn’t a common setting in YA historical fiction, so that’s a nice thing right there. But Ireland has really twisted that setting with her introduction of zombies, or shamblers as they call them in the book (which is, by the way, an awesome term).

After the Battle of Gettysburg, the dead rose up off the battlefield and that started the epidemic. The Civil War ended because the North and the South basically needed to band together to fight the shamblers. Slavery is illegal, but it’s not exactly a time of respect for black people. And Ireland did something else really interesting—she took the concept of the schools that they used to forcibly send Native American kids to back in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. These were horrible places where the primary goal was to eradicate Native American culture. Ireland took that concept and created combat schools for Native Americans and black people to learn how to effectively fight the shamblers. Because apparently it’s their duty to do that while the white people get to mostly laze around.

This is all a great and very creative setup, but what really makes the book is the main character. Jane McKeene has everything you could want in a protagonist. She’s smart and has serious moxie—you’d have to be a pretty weird person not to like her. Some of this is her training, but most of it is just who she is. She is a black, which seriously limits the roles she can play in life. But she doesn’t let that stop her. She was born to a white woman in Kentucky who was married to a rich man off in the war. I didn’t expect to get the full story on that but we do near the end, and it surprised me.

Okay, so that’s the basic setup. But there’s more to it because Jane gets herself mixed up into some intrigue. The school she attends—Miss Preston’s School of Combat—is just outside Baltimore, which claims to be shambler-free. But all is not as it seems. After a bold rescue of an entire room of people, Jane ends up getting the attention of the mayor of the city. Soon she is paired up with a boy named Jackson and a girl from her school, Katherine, on an adventure none of them wants. Fortunately, Jane’s there to save the day in her own way.

Let me just say that Jane’s voice is amazing. She’s so distinctive but is absolutely believable as a girl in her circumstances. When asked “Wherever did they find you?” she answers, “At the junction of hard luck and bad times,” because that’s what her momma used to say. She’s pretty unflappable, but even she has moments where the horrors of the attitudes of the times make her a little emotionally vulnerable: when Jane and other black kids are jogging into a new situation, she thinks:

Old Professor Ghering called Negroes livestock the night of the fateful lecture. I can’t help but think of him as we scurry along.

I loved that moment (for a character in a book) because it shows just how awful that racist climate is—even someone who knows better falls prey to shame. It’s insidious. She’s a very complex character.

Some of the other characters are also fairly well-developed. Katherine in particular is interesting because she’s walking a fine line that really challenges her. She’s very different from Jane at the beginning of the book, but less so at the end. Her circumstances make her different partially because she can pass for white. A couple of the other characters that mattered were Jackson and Gideon, and I have to say that they could both have been developed a bit more. I wanted more of both of them.

I should mention that Jane is technically bisexual because this has been another touted feature of the book. I say technically because it wasn’t integral to the story at all—it felt tacked on. Like, ooh, let’s make her bi, too! Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with doing that, but it’s just not interesting or admirable.

Race, on the other hand, is absolutely intrinsic to the story. No way could this book have been written if race wasn’t addressed head-on. Ireland is unapologetic about it, too. The racism is painful and very real. A preacher in the book says:

“I know that you can deal with the obstinate Negroes as long as you remember that they are, at their heart, children. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ as the Scripture tells us.”

On the risk for black people attempting to pass as white, Jane thinks, “There’s nothing white folks hate more than realizing they accidentally treated a Negro like a person.” The woman who raised Jane (a former slave at her house) once told her about the “bad old days”:

It was bad then, Janie. A different kind of bad, but bad all the same. … So don’t let nobody tell you any different about the old days. Life is hard now, nothing but suffering, but some kinds of suffering is easier to bear than others.

This will be a hard book for some to read, but I still think it’s worth it. It tells us some truths about the times even while doing so through the screen of zombies.

Review: Easy by Kerry Cohen Hoffmann

Posted on by kellyvincent

Easy book coverFor full disclosure, this author is going to be my faculty mentor for the first semester of my MFA, which is why I picked up her books. However, I haven’t met her yet so I figured I can still be trusted with a review.

This book packs a lot in just a few pages (my copy is just over 160 pages). It really captures how much it can suck to be a teen girl nowadays—how unfair the world is with its conflicting rules about behavior. Jessica is fourteen and she’s suddenly discovered boys—and that they’ve noticed her, too. She takes walks along a busy road and when a man looks at her, she swings her hips and lifts her eyes.

I know this is stupid, inviting trouble. But it feels so good to be wanted, I can’t help myself.

All she really wants is to go out with Jason, but he doesn’t seem to care about her even though she keeps trying to insert herself into his life. She has an encounter with him at a party and

…after being kissed by Jason Reilly, I feel as if nothing can penetrate me. It’s like he put an invisible shield over my body with his wandering hands.

But he doesn’t feel the connection she does, or the specialness of what they did. She wonders,

How can I feel such longing for what was between us, and he doesn’t? I wish more than anything I could go back in time, fix the ugly parts of me that made him turn away.

But he’s not happy with just tossing her to the side. No, he spreads a story about her (that isn’t really true, anyway) and overnight she’s got a “reputation.” She also has met (on one of her walks, no less) a 20-year-old named Ted who’s clearly interested in her even if he doesn’t hold a candle to Jason. He believes her when she says she’s 18 and she ends up messing around with him and regretting it. She keeps Ted a secret from everyone.

In addition to her boy troubles, Jessica’s dealing with family drama and growing apart from her best friend, Elisabeth. Her dad is marrying his new girlfriend and her mom hasn’t gotten over the fact that he cheated and left her. Elisabeth is pissed off at the way Jessica is putting herself out there for Jason, when Elisabeth knows he’s not worth it.

Note that this book is not anti-sex. It’s all about self-respect and knowing who you are and what you actually want. It’s just not subtle, and felt almost like a fable to me, partially because of the shortness and partly because it was so message-heavy. But it still didn’t feel preachy. It’s just that there was no question what the point of each scene was. I suppose this is really more of a novella than a novel, with its laser-focused plot.

Although I enjoyed it, I think Easy would be a perfect read for younger teens who are more on the reluctant reader side. Short and easy to understand with a positive message about self-worth. It’s appropriate for boys, too, because of the questions it raises. A perfect opportunity to ask boys why they do that thing—why after someone has done something nice for you, do you feel compelled to do the meanest thing possible to that person and try to ruin their life? Why not at least say thank you like your mom taught you and leave it at that? I seriously don’t understand.

Review: Still Life with Tornado by A. S. King

Posted on by kellyvincent

Still Life with Tornado book coverKing loves to work with weird ideas, and this book is no exception. At the beginning of the book, all we know about Sarah is that something happened at school that has her unwilling to go anymore. She was a talented artist but whatever happened seemed to suck her ability to draw right out of her fingers. She wanders Philadelphia by bus and ponders how literally nothing is original. Nothing she does, nothing anybody else does, nothing. She’s depressed and having an existential crisis.

But the thing is, the book isn’t just about Sarah. She narrates most of it first person, present tense. But there are also sections she narrates in the past tense about a family vacation to Mexico six years earlier, the last time she saw her nine-years-older brother. And then there are short scenes narrated by Sarah’s mom, which give us insight into the problem of Sarah’s family. Because that’s what the book is really about. It actually digs in pretty deep into the subject of physical abuse in a unique way.

But even more, the book’s about being a teenager. Sarah desperately wants to just be a human being, but she has to deal with the labels that society attaches to everyone. We learn a little slowly that her friends—or someone—did something to her. And King sums up what it’s like to be a teen with something to say:

But now it’s been so long that if I bring it up, I’ll look like a girl who can’t let go of things. Teenage girls always have to let go of things. If we bring up anything, people say we’re bitches who can’t just drop it.

That quote is just so perfect.

At this point, you may be wondering what’s so weird about the book. Sarah starts seeing other Sarahs. Actual, physical manifestations of herself at other stages in her life, specifically at ten (just after the Mexico trip), twenty-three, and forty. This isn’t some mental break—other people can see and interact with the extra Sarahs. This drives home the point that everyone is only at a particular point in their lives—they have a past where they were different but still themselves, and they’ll have a future where the same holds true. It’s interesting.

This is a loaded and layered book and you’ll probably see different things than I did. Whatever you might find, it’s worth your time if you enjoy magical realism or have liked King’s other books.

Review: The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill

Posted on by kellyvincent

The Surface Breaks book coverI had high expectations for The Surface Breaks because I think O’Neill is an amazing and very skilled writer. She did not let me down. This book is different from her others, as it’s a reimagining of the fairy tale The Little Mermaid.

Now, I have to start by saying I don’t know my fairy tales at all. I don’t think I ever saw Disney’s The Little Mermaid, either. So I don’t know how much of the book comes from the original tale and how much is new from O’Neill. The little mermaid herself, Muirgen (or Gaia, as she prefers to be called), is the youngest of several daughters of the Sea King. He is a bit of a tyrant even though she and her sisters don’t see it that way. They accept all the expectations and limitations placed on them. They are to look pretty, be agreeable, and nothing more. The girls’ mother disappeared on Gaia’s first birthday. Everyone believed the Sea King’s story about her getting trapped in a human’s fish net. Gaia grows up romanticizing the idea of her mother and looking forward to the time when she too can go to the surface and see what’s up there. The book opens right before her fifteenth birthday—the year she’s allowed to swim to the surface.

When she does go, she happens upon a shipwreck and saves one of the humans—a beautiful man she’d admired all day, long before the storm that broke up the boat rolled in. This is a grave sin that would get her in big trouble with the Sea King.

Gaia has the misfortune of being the prettiest of the sisters, so she’s been betrothed to a much older mer-man who’s one of her father’s good friends. He’s pushy and horrible and soon after the book opens, he starts coming to her bedroom at night and taking what he wants. The first time is such a great example of O’Neill’s evocative writing that I have to share it. Just after gripping her by the waist and threatening to tell the Sea King about her misdeed at the shipwreck—of course he’d followed her, he’s a big creep:

He tightens his grip and claims my lips with his, his cold tongue invading my mouth like a greasy sea slug.

I mean, seriously—a sea slug. That’s such and awesomely perfect description, and so, so gross.

Gaia spends her time mooning over the man she rescued, Oliver. She visits the area where she took him and hopes to see him again. She imagines herself in love. So when Zale makes it clear that once they’re bonded he will prevent her from making trips to the surface, she starts to panic a little and eventually comes up with an escape plan. She’ll visit the Sea Witch and see what can be done.

The Sea Witch makes Gaia a gruesome offer: she has to give up something of herself that’s very valuable, will get legs that will be agonizingly painful, and has only a month to make Oliver fall in love with her, or she’ll die. She accepts.

That’s when the real adventure starts. That’s also when the dread sets in. I find that dread is a significant feature of O’Neill’s books, because you know things aren’t going to go the way the characters (and readers) want. It makes the books hard to put down, and that was definitely the case here for me. Once she got to the surface, I finished the book in two nights, staying up way too late the second night. Because even though the setup is great, the story with the humans is so good. This is when Gaia’s latent feminism wakes up, even if it’s quiet.

The book is full of wisdom and an awareness of the utter lack of fairness in the world for girls and women. Gaia watches men at a party:

They estimate the beauty of each passing girl, weighing it up with their friends. Listing pros and cons as if it is their decision to make, that the girls’ beauty will be determined by their opinions rather than objective fact, because they are men and a man’s word is final.

It’s brilliant and beautiful, too. After the party,

The evening plummets into night, the moon rowing across the ocean’s skin.

I just love it. And then there’s the ending—just, wow. I really didn’t know where it would end up (I was dreading it, after all) and it totally surprised me in a very good way.

If you consider yourself a feminist or even if you don’t but you’ve just noticed how rough things are for girls, you should check this one out. It was seriously great. A genuinely entertaining story loaded with so much more.

Review: Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1) by Tomi Adeyemi

Posted on by kellyvincent

Children of Blood and Bone book coverThere’s a lot of hype surrounding this book (for instance, I saw Entertainment Weekly called Adeyemi the next J. K. Rowling). Hype can be both good and bad. It had a lot to live up to, but I was still excited to read it, even though it’s way longer than my normal reads.

If you haven’t already heard about it, Children of Blood and Bone is an epic fantasy with all the elements you’d expect—magic, sword fights, magical artifacts, and an epic journey—but it’s set in a world inspired by Nigeria and West African legends. It’s a story of oppression, unjustified violence, class, and privilege—and it’s cast is entirely black. Eleven years before the book opens, the king of Orïsha killed all the maji (people who could use magic) in the Raid. He also did something that destroyed the ability to do magic, but he let divîners live. Divîners are children who will become maji when they reach the age of thirteen, but now that magic is suppressed, they won’t. Divîners and maji both are marked with white hair so it’s instantly clear who they are. The divîners who survived the Raid are treated very badly (this is a significant understatement) and called “maggots” as the slur of preference.

The book features three teenage characters who all have POV chapters: Zélie, Amari, and Inan. Zélie’s the main star, being a divîner and effectively chosen by the gods for the book’s important quest. Amari is the kingdom’s princess and Inan is her older brother. Amari sees her best friend killed by her father for no good reason. She flips out, steals a magic scroll, and flees. Poor Zélie is the one she runs into and who helps her escape. Prince Inan is sent to retrieve Amari, with instructions to bring her back alive—unless people find out what she did. Once Zélie and Amari (plus Zélie’s brother Tzain) reach Zélie’s village, they learn that there is a way to bring magic back to the land. Thus begins the quest. The three of them head out, with Inan on their heels the whole time.

The book’s very well-plotted and pacing is good. In my view, quest books frequently end too rapidly. This one moved quickly at the end, but it didn’t wrap things up prematurely. The ending was very satisfying.

All three main characters are amazing—they’re multi-dimensional and well-developed, with each of them changing dramatically over the course of the book. Their emotional journeys are all interesting and deeply-felt. Zélie’s brother is the fourth major character and while he doesn’t change as much as the others, he’s still important to their character arcs.

Then, the world building is fantastic. The magic system is unusual (at least in my experience) and well-explained. I loved that the language of magic in Orïsha is Yoruba, a real language native to Nigeria. I also appreciated all the slightly gratuitous diacritics on so many of the place names and magic-related words. And they ride giant cats. Cats!

I do have one complaint about the book, but it only detracts from the full reading experience a tiny bit. That is that a lot of the conflicts are resolved to easily and quickly. Some terrible obstacle would be thrown in their path and then some solution would appear. For instance, when they’re needing to charter a boat to an island at one point, they have to convince the captain of a ship to do it for no money. I didn’t 100% buy his fast acquiescence.

Despite that, it’s an excellent book that you should seriously consider reading. YA fantasy lovers should definitely love this one, but I think it’s fresh and engaging enough that even those who don’t read that should enjoy it. I’m definitely watching for the sequel.

Review: The Stranger Game by Cylin Busby

Posted on by kellyvincent

The Stranger Game book coverI was excited to read this book, as it sounded like a nice psychological thriller, a genre I enjoy but don’t read much of. Nico Morris’s older sister, Sarah, disappeared four years earlier when she was fifteen and Nico was eleven. And now she’s back.

Or is she? That’s the question. Nico isn’t sure if it’s her sister or an imposter.

As I’m trying to write this, I’m noticing that it’s actually kind of hard to describe the story without giving anything away…

Still, when the book opens, Nico tells us she knows in her bones that her sister’s dead, despite desperately wanting to believe she was alive. That there was a chance. She talks about the early days after the disappearance and all the false sightings and false hopes. Now, four years later, they learn that a girl claiming to be Sarah has been found in a Florida shelter. She’s damaged and is suffering from retrograde amnesia.

Nico’s story is interspersed with chapters from Sarah’s life that start to hint at who she is. So even before the big reveal, you basically know what’s going on.

Most of the book is comprised of the developing relationship between Nico and her returned sister. Because Sarah’s definitely different. But that’s to be expected, considering what she went through. Throughout, Nico wonders if it’s Sarah or not. Then some of Sarah’s old friends come onto the scene and shake things up a bit, making Nico choose sides.

Despite my high hopes for the book, I have to admit I was underwhelmed by the end. I didn’t feel particularly surprised at the revelation of what actually happened when Sarah disappeared, even though I hadn’t specifically anticipated the exact circumstances. I think that’s one of the things with psychological thrillers and mysteries. So much hinges on surprise (but only surprise that in retrospect was inevitable). I also didn’t find the voice that engaging—I wasn’t totally drawn in by Nico, even though I did sympathize with her plight—and it made the book drag a little for me. Out of curiosity, I peeked at some other reviews on Goodreads and found that the book did totally work as intended for a lot of people. So it’s going to come down to individual taste.

You might enjoy this one if you enjoy psychological thrillers/mysteries and don’t mind kind of knowing the what even if you don’t know the why.

Review: Fat Angie by e. E. Charlton-Trujillo

Posted on by kellyvincent

Fat Angie book coverI’ll start off by saying that this is an unusual book. This is mostly because of the point of view, which I’ll go into more below.

The novel is about a girl named Angie who had a very public emotional breakdown after her sister was captured and presumably killed in Iraq. Angie’s convinced she’s still alive, but no one else believes that. Before the book opens, Angie started falling apart—she gained a great deal of weight and tried to kill herself in front of a packed gym.

It’s not clear whether the bullying started before her sister went missing, but as the book opens, it’s vicious. There’s one particularly mean girl, but everyone mocks her for being fat and many people taunt her about her missing sister. Even her own adopted brother makes fun of her. Her mother is impatient with her and thinks she’s doing everything for attention. Her mom even found a therapist for Angie who’s totally unsympathetic.

Then her neighbor, a popular boy named Jake, sort of befriends Angie. And a new girl named KC arrives. KC isn’t impressed by all the popular kids and instead gravitates toward Angie. Soon they become friends and maybe more, but it’s a relationship full of turmoil. Because in their conservative town, being different isn’t very acceptable. Angie’s mom can’t tolerate her being with a girl, which creates the first rift. Things degenerate from there.

During all this, Angie decides to try out for the varsity basketball team because before her sister joined the military, she was a basketball star. She starts training for it with Jake’s help and tries out. The rest of the story follows her basketball pursuit and her relationships with KC, her brother, Jake, and her mom.

I mentioned the point of view above—in most contemporary YA, it’s 1st person, though 3rd person close isn’t unusual. 1st person just means it’s told using “I” and we get deep into the main character’s mind. 3rd person means “he/she” is used for the main character and the “close” just implies we get to nearly the same level of emotional depth as with 1st. This book is 3rd but it doesn’t feel very close at all. Throughout the book, Angie is referred to as “Fat Angie” (by the author, I mean), which I found very distancing. I never did feel like I knew Angie that well. I knew she was fat and had no self-confidence, but that was about it.

There are also phrases that are repeated (such as Angie’s “couldn’t-be-bothered mom”), which also pulled me out of the story a little each time. And KC speaks in very distinct (and unfamiliar to me) slang, which I didn’t find totally credible. I think stylistically, the book is very unique and that could appeal to a lot of people, even though for me it was distracting and kept me from getting as into the story as I wanted. But it still is a lesbian coming-of-age story, something we don’t get a lot of (I think there are a lot more stories about gay boys than girls out there…), so it’s probably worth a peek if you are looking for that.

Review: Shadow Run (Kaitan Chronicles #1) by Adrianne Strickland and Michael Miller

Image posted on by kellyvincent

Shadow Run book cover

This sci-fi book isn’t my normal genre (anymore—when I was young, all I read was speculative fiction). So I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it now. In the end, I quite enjoyed it.

Qole is a 17-year-old prodigy captain/pilot of the spaceship Kaitan. She is carrying on her family’s tradition of fishing for Shadow, a mysterious substance found in space that can be used as fuel, among other things. The whole setup is very reminiscent of Firefly, but I don’t mean in a derivative way. I’ve also seen comparisons to Dune.

The downside of being a fisherman of Shadow is that it poisons people exposed to it, making them lose their minds. But Qole is special because she appears to have some sort of resistance to it. In fact, she’s already “poisoned” by it but it  has given her enhanced abilities rather than driving her crazy.

Nev couldn’t be more opposite from Qole. Where Qole and her ragtag crew are barely scraping by, Nev is a privileged prince. He also happens to be a very competent hand-to-hand fighter due to a lifetime of training. He has a special, very expensive blade that works some sort of magic (I mean that metaphorically—it’s future-science-based). And for reasons that eventually become clearer later, Nev’s family need Qole and her Shadow-resistance to save his family. Nev works his way onto Qole’s ship with the intention of convincing her to come with him, but it doesn’t end up being as easy as he’d hoped.

As this is YA, it’s not surprising that there is a bit of romance involved, but the story is much more than that. The characters are interesting and varied, the world-building is excellent, and pacing is pretty good (though I think it gets a little rushed near the end). Qole is tough and believable without being overly angsty. And the choices Nev has to make near the end are difficult but they work in the novel.

If you like space operas, you’ll dig this one. I plan to pick up the sequel some time.

Review: Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

Posted on by kellyvincent

Holding Up the Universe book coverNiven’s other YA book, All the Bright Places, is probably going to remain one of my favorite YA novels of all time. So Holding Up the Universe had a lot to live up to, for me.

The premise is definitely interesting. It’s about two kids with major and out-of-the-ordinary challenges in their lives. Libby Strout is extremely overweight and Jack Masselin has a severe case of face blindness.

Libby is returning to school after being homeschooled for many years—initially because she was housebound due to being so overweight that she couldn’t leave her bedroom, so overweight that they had to break a hole in the wall to get her out of the house. She got fat after her mom died several years earlier and she tried to eat her way through the grief. She’s lost a bunch of weight and is looking forward to returning to school even though she was bullied during her time there as a younger kid. She has great hopes for her return and is shot down pretty quickly. Still, she manages to make a handful of friends and plans to audition for the school’s dance team if a spot opens up. She may be a target, but she’s not a withering flower. Not at all.

Jack’s an interesting case. His face blindness makes all social interactions difficult for him and several times he’s humiliated himself mixing people up. Niven does a fantastic job of keeping us constantly aware of his challenges. Jack recognizes people based on unreliable clues and context. It’s easiest at home, since everyone is a different age or gender, but even there it’s dicey. For instance, he’s in his bedroom one morning before school and thinking about his brother, Marcus. “When a tall boy with shaggy hair comes into my room and starts yelling at me, I figure it’s him.” Then “a woman appears at the door and wants to know what in the Great Fanny Adams is going on.” Jack coughs, “which makes her point to the door and tell the tall/shaggy boy to get the hell downstairs.” Then he looks out the window at everyone leaving, including his little brother, Dusty, and summarizes it like this:

The woman climbs into one car with this little kid, and a man with thick dark hair gets in another car with the tall/shaggy boy.

It’s funny, sure, but it also perfectly conveys how nightmarish everything is.

Libby and Jack first encounter each other when he basically assaults her as part of a cruel prank, stuffing an apologetic note in her backpack at the same time. She retaliates by punching him, so they both have to go to this after-school group counseling session and eventually get to know each other and find out they have more in common with each other than they could have imagined. They get closer and help each other through some rough patches.

If you enjoyed the emotional depth of All the Bright Places—or just like books full of raw and at times intense emotions—you will enjoy Holding Up the Universe. It’s also just interesting to get a flavor of true face blindness.

Review: The Weight of Zero by Karen Fortunati

Posted on by kellyvincent

The Weight of Zero book coverThere has been a lot of books about mental illness coming out lately, which I think is great as long as the author handles it carefully. The Weight of Zero is definitely a standout in the crowd of these books for its authenticity and solid story.

Cath Puloski has bipolar disorder (type I, which involves possible psychosis during the mania periods). And she’s already gone through some destructive mania periods and significant long-term depression as well. She used to be a ballet dancer but has quit it. Her two best friends abandoned her a few months earlier and one in particular has now made it her life’s work to humiliate Cath at every possible moment. The same one told the entire school about her disorder and now everyone mocks her and calls her crazy.

When the book opens, Cath’s fairly stable. Not (very) depressed; not manic. But she’s obsessed with her disorder and how it’s ruined her life, as she sees it. She’s convinced that the depression will eventually return and she has a plan for that: she’ll kill herself before it can really take hold. Like most potential suicides, she’s convinced that her mom (her only family) will be better off with her dead because Cath feels like a massive burden. She feels generally worthless because she thinks she’s genetically deficient and that none of her peers could possibly care about her.

Her psychiatrist has recommended that she start a group therapy program that runs every day after school. She doesn’t want to go at all, as she’s sort of checked out of trying to get better because she thinks she can’t. But her mom makes her go. She meets some new characters there, including Kristal, who becomes her first post-diagnosis friend. The other change in her routine occurs when she gets paired up with Michael for a big history project. Both things take her life a direction she thought impossible.

The book deals with the reality of bipolar disorder exceptionally well. We’re in the psychiatrist’s office with Cath while her doctor explains aspects of the disorder but the story focuses on her reaction to that information, so the reader is picking up knowledge about it without it feeling clinical. I thought that was really well done.

Cath’s voice is great. She’s very believable even when she’s thinking things that the reader knows are totally wrong. And best of all, she’s funny—not constantly, but every so often. It’s just right. For instance, she reacts to the leader of the therapy group’s change in tactics:

This is a novel spin on the IOP experience—Sandy pitching our mental illness issues like they’re black badges of courage. The few, the brave, the bipolar.

The other characters were also well drawn. Cath’s mom is wonderful—you feel so bad for her because you know what Cath’s planning despite the fact that she’s trying so hard to do everything right. The plot is strong and there’s a great subplot with the history project (and the way it ties into Cath’s life and thoughts is perfect).

Overall, an excellent book that I genuinely loved. Everyone should read it.