contemporary

Review: Cut by Patricia McCormick

Posted on by kellyvincent

Cut book coverThis short book first came out eighteen years ago but it’s still relevant today. It’s (fairly obviously) about a girl who cuts herself.

The book starts with Callie in the hospital—a mental ward—sitting with her therapist. Pretty quickly, we learn the circumstances of when she cut herself for the first time. And then we learn that she’s not speaking, at all. She has to go to these group therapy sessions with other girls who are there for different reasons—some have eating issues, some drug issues. So, very early on we’re set up to wonder why she’s cutting herself, if she’s going to talk, and what’s going to happen with her group.

McCormick obviously did her research on cutting and what drives people to it. She portrays Callie sympathetically without romanticizing cutting in any way. And she addresses how cutting can make people feel better at times but shows how that’s a fleeting thing. And it stops working:

The pain is so sharp, so sudden, I catch my breath. There’s no rush, no relief. Just pain, a keen, pulsing pain… It’s never hurt like this before. And it’s never not worked.

Callie is shown to have depth even though we don’t really get to know her reasons for cutting any sooner than the therapist. The other girls are portrayed realistically, too, and there’s an interesting subplot involving one of the anorexic/bulimic girls. And even though we see her brother Sam only once in story time, he is a good character and critical to the story.

Check this one out if you’re up for a short but deep portrait of a troubled teen.

Review: Almost Love by Louise O’Neill

Posted on by kellyvincent

Almost Love book coverAlthough I generally review only YA books here, I’m making an exception this week. Not because it’s St. Patrick’s Day and this book is by an Irish writer, but because Louise O’Neill is one of my favorite authors even though she hasn’t written that many books—I’ve read her other three, all of which are YA (and all of which I’ve reviewed here). Almost Love is about a woman in her mid-twenties and almost has the feel of New Adult, but not quite.

O’Neill is clearly great at creating main characters who aren’t really likable but who you still care about, as she does this in Almost Love like she did in Asking for It. Almost Love tells two parallel stories from Sarah’s life—one when she twenty-four and another three years later. In the “then” timeline, she’s recently graduated from Dublin Art College and is living with some of her buddies from school, including Fionn, who’s basically her best friend in Dublin. She’s from the Tipperary area and has friends back there, but she hardly ever goes home. Fionn is already becoming a semi-famous up-and-coming artist in Ireland and Sarah feels inferior and never works on her art anymore. She’s teaching school art and is still in the party mindset. But then she meets a student’s father and soon they begin a relationship that is doomed from the start, even though she doesn’t see it.

In the “now” timeline, she’s living with her boyfriend Oisín, who’s mother is a very famous and rich artist. Sarah’s still friends with Fionn but we know that she did something horrible in the earlier timeline that has strained their relationship. She also is still unable to make any art even though she’s still teaching it. Sarah was happy with Oisín in the beginning but there are seeds of trouble now and it’s not clear how things will go.

Sarah really isn’t a nice person. She’s self-absorbed and a pretty terrible friend and girlfriend. She’s also clearly a little depressed and feeling inferior to the important people around her, so she’s not a great joy to be around for the reader. However, despite all that, I still really wanted to see how things worked out with her. When she becomes obsessed with the student’s father and lets him mistreat her, I kept wondering if she’d finally see how horrible he is or if he would destroy her in the end. And I really hoped things would work out with Oisín because he seems like a really nice guy.

O’Neill is great at getting into her protagonists’ minds, and she does it here, too. We see Sarah change, and not always in a good way, and understand her bad choices even if we’re screaming at her to make different ones. And of course this is a feminist book, with several good lines that I really like. Here are a couple:

Being admired by him didn’t feel like when other men would look at her, teeth bared as if they wanted to devour her. Smile, love, men would shout as she passed them on the street. You’d be so much prettier if you smiled, as if performance of joy was the price Sarah had to pay for existing in a female body in a public space.

and

Maybe men didn’t want women to be funny, not the women they were having sex with anyway. Sarah suspected that men wanted a girlfriend to be ‘fun’, which seemed to mean she should find them funny and laugh at their jokes, never making any of her own.

If you’ve read O’Neill’s other work and like it, you should check this one out. It won’t disappoint. And if you’re new to her but like slightly challenging books, you should try it, too.

Review: Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Posted on by kellyvincent

Darius the Great Is Not Okay book coverDarius the Great Is Not Okay is a unique book. Darius is an American kid whose mother is from Iran and whose father is Teutonic stock, and he is under treatment for depression. You don’t see a lot of YA featuring boys of color with depression, so I was curious to see how this one would play out. Also, most of the book is set in Iran, which is cool—I’ve only personally encountered one other YA book set there (not that I’ve looked extensively, but still).

Darius doesn’t fit in in Portland, Oregon and feels second-rate even in his own home. He does have an eight-year-old sister he adores, but his relationship with his father is rough. It’s clear from the very beginning that that causes him the most grief. Almost as soon as we’re first introduced to his father, Darius refers to him by his first and last name—Stephen Kellner—which is jarring. But he does this repeatedly, making it clear that he feels distant from his father.

In addition to things being difficult with his father, Darius has a bully (who also gets the first/last name treatment). He has one friend at school, a Persian girl. But she’s full-Persian rather than being “Fractional” as he thinks of himself, so he feels less than her. Interestingly, Darius has been on medication for depression since he was twelve, and that doesn’t seem to faze him much. He’s not 100% comfortable with it, but it doesn’t bother him as much as the other things do. His father also has to manage his own depression, so they’re very matter-of-fact about it. (I should mention that the depression representation is very good.)

Darius has a Skype relationship with his family back in Iran. But when it becomes clear that his grandfather’s brain tumor is getting worse, his family decides to visit the country for the first time. This is when the story really gets started—it’s the first time he really feels at home, after meeting his family and becoming friends with a boy named Sohrab from down the street, but he still has a lot to learn about his family, friendship, and himself.

Sohrab is a great friend to Darius and the two of them really bond. Darius spends most of his free time with him. It’s an interesting relationship from an American perspective, because Sohrab is very tactile. That’s realistic for a male relationship in Iran, even though it feels a little like there might hints of a romance between the two for an American reader. There are also hints that Darius’s “difference” might include being gay, but this never goes anywhere substantial, which made this a nice book about genuine friendship and family. Iran turns out to be where Darius finds himself and finally comes to an understanding with his father.

If you want a book about depression, or one about a kid who doesn’t fit in, or one about a half-Iranian kid going to Iran for the first time, etc. try this one out. All in one package. It’s very good.

Review: Essential Maps for the Lost by Deb Caletti

Posted on by kellyvincent

Essential Maps for the Lost book coverI’ve read a couple other books by Deb Caletti and liked them both. One thing I noticed is that the two I read (Stay and The Nature of Jade) were different from each other. So I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up Essential Maps for the Lost. I heard Caletti speak about this book with E. Lockhart last year at a library event so I knew it had something to do with mental illness, like both of the others I read. But the interesting thing is that I found this book very different from the other two. It felt more more literary, for one (not that the other two weren’t but this one seemed more so)—maybe even a little ethereal. I read it for my MFA so I had to study it after my first read through. On my first read, I actually found myself a little confused because there were a lot of characters and we were really deep in both of the main characters’ heads. But as I read through it a second time, everything seemed obvious and clear, so perhaps I just wasn’t paying full attention the first time I read it. Who knows.

The novel is about Mads and Billy. Mads is an eighteen-year-old living with her uncle in Seattle while she completes her realtor course so she can get certified and go into business with her mom back in eastern Washington. One morning she goes for a swim in Lake Union and stumbles across a dead body. The dead woman committed suicide by jumping off the Aurora bridge and it turns out she has a son—Billy. Mads becomes a little obsessed with finding out everything she can about the woman and her family, which ultimately results in Mads semi-stalking Billy (watching his house from the car and so on). The two of them meet in a kind of random way and they would not have talked again except for the fact that Billy dropped a map he carries around and Mads decides to return it so she finds him again. The two of them bond over what that map represents—the classic children’s book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg—because they both love it. For Billy, it represents a connection with his mom, and for Mads, it represents where her love of reading started.

As I mentioned, the book deals with mental illness. Obviously Billy’s mom’s suicide is part of it, but the more significant part is that Mads is dealing with depression made worse by the stifling future she sees for herself because of her obligation to her mother. There are some deep moments in the book relating to depression. For instance, Billy thinks,

depression can be a monster only felled by the most epic weapons. It’s a bully that winches your arm behind your back when no one is looking, that wears you out, and shouts stuff that sounds romantic but is never, ever romantic

Overall, I liked to book and found the story moving. If you’re in the mood for a more literary book than most YA today, give this one a try.

Review: Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

Posted on by kellyvincent

Geektastic book coverI am still studying short stories for the MFA, and this was one of the few YA collections I’ve been able to find. So I wasn’t expecting too much—but it turns out the book is pretty awesome. I really liked several of the stories. A few were a little on the bland side, but there was only one that I didn’t care for. None of this should come as a big surprise given the names of the authors in this collection. Though the book’s 9 years old so it predates some of their biggest stardom (John Green, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black especially).

The first story, “Once You’re a Jedi, You’re a Jedi All the Way” by Black and Castellucci, is a love story between a Klingon and a Jedi at a con, which is a giant sin if you didn’t know. They wake up together and the Klingon is mortified that she’s apparently slept with a “[f]orce-feeling, Padawan-braid-wearing, lightsaber-rammed-up-his-ass Jedi.” It’s a cute story full of classic geekery.

The next story is “One of Us” by Tracy Lynn. This one’s about a cheerleader who gets voluntarily schooled in various aspects of geek culture by four geeks with different areas of interest who hang out in the media room at school. She’s trying to become more knowledgeable in geek culture to understand her boyfriend better. But it’s a nice story that ends with an unlikely friendship.

“Definitional Chaos” by Scott Westerfeld is a punchy story about a guy who needs to get a briefcase full of cash to Florida from… some place far from Florida (I can’t remember). It’s for a legitimate reason but he gets a helper in the form of his ex-girlfriend, who he still has some animosity for because she killed him in an online game they played. This one delves into the combinations of good vs. evil and law vs. chaos and what it means to be certain ones. The only thing they can agree on is that the girlfriend is chaotic. It wasn’t my favorite story but it was good.

I really liked Cassandra Clare’s story, “I Never.” It’s about a very shy girl who’s been playing Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights in an online game where the players impersonate fictional characters from (other) games, movies, TV shows, and books. They group is having a big gathering. So the characters are playing fictional character while also “playing” themselves. Jane only got involved in the game at the prodding of her friend. But in the process, she met a boy who’s playing Heathcliff. He’s the primary reason she has come to the gathering, because she thinks they have a special connection. But things don’t go like she expects at all. It’s a nice story, if one of the longer ones in the collection.

Next up is M. T. Anderson with “The King of Pelinesse.” This one’s about a boy who makes a long bus journey to meet a man who is both his idol (as the author of some pulp fantasy novels) and also someone who his mother once knew and apparently despises. There’s a mild twist at the end that I enjoyed.

I think my favorite story in the collection is “The Wrath of Dawn” by Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith. This is probably because it’s all about Buffy, which is my biggest fandom (I’m not much of a popular culture geek at the moment). It’s about two new stepsisters who go to a Buffy Sing-Along along with another guy who’s supposed to be the main character’s date. But he mocks her for being named Dawn since Dawn on the show is one of the more despised characters. Dawn of the story mounts a strong defense for Dawn of the show.

“Quiz Bowl Antichrist” by David Levithan is about a boy who’s the token English geek on his school’s quiz bowl team. The rest of the team handles the scientific and technical stuff. They make it to a national competition, where tensions mount and unpleasant things get said. It has a happy ending, as you’d expect from Levithan.

The next story is “The Quiet Knight” by Garth Nix. Tony’s a LARPer and plays a knight who doesn’t speak, because in real life Tony’s voice is odd because he damaged his throat and larynx by drinking bathroom cleaner when he was a kid. He’s very self-conscious about it and pretty shy, but he finally connects with someone he meets at a LARP event when they run into each other later. It’s short and sweet.

“Everyone But You” by Lisa Yee is about Felicity, a girl from small-town Ohio who has always defined herself by her excessive school spirit and her baton twirling skills. When her mom moves them to Hawaii, Felicity’s baton isn’t accepted with the same admiration by the local students. She becomes the butt of every joke and has to figure out a way out of the mess.

Kelly Link’s “Secret Identity” comes next. This one’s about a teen girl who’s been talking to an older man online. It’s told after some events that occurred when they had arranged to meet up at a hotel. It’s told in second person, like she’s writing a letter to the guy, which I’m not generally a fan of. The story’s interesting enough, though, if quite long. Not too geeky, however.

John Green’s “Freak the Geek” is about a couple of girls who get targeted in an annual prank against the geekiest girls at school. It tests their friendship. It’s not a bad story, but it doesn’t live up to any of his novels.

The next story is the one in the collection that I actually sort of disliked. I’ll explain why. It’s “The Truth About Dino Girl” by Barry Lyga. The setup is actually pretty good and I liked that—the main character is obsessed with dinosaurs and has a new obsession—a guy named Jamie. The problem is Jamie’s girlfriend Andi, first for being the girlfriend and second for being a bitch. It’s a revenge story and I thought the revenge was over-the-top. I won’t give it away, but I just don’t really approve…

“This is My Audition Monologue” by sara zarr is another second-person story. It’s about a girl and her attempt to both get a part in the school play and also simply be memorable. I didn’t love it either—I couldn’t really get into the character but theater geeks probably will appreciate it.

“The Stars at the Finish Line” by Wendy Mass is the next one. I quite liked it. It’s another love story, with an astronomy theme this time. Peter’s had a crush on Tabitha since fourth grade, when he also inadvertently set off a long-term competition between the two of them, even though there’s no real competition—she’s the smart one who really will become an astronaut. He ends up teaching her about observational astronomy, one thing she doesn’t know, and they bond.

The last story is “It’s Just a Jump to the Left” by Libba Bray. It’s about a pair of eight-grade best-friends who are starting to grow apart. The background is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, something the two of them have attended every Friday night for ages—until Agnes ditches Leta for a boy. The rest of the story is about Leta’s quest to grow up, too, while not losing Agnes as a friend.

That’s a pretty thorough overview of the collection. Like I said, I thought it was overall very good and I’d recommend it if you’re a fan of YA.

Review: Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Posted on by kellyvincent

Juliet Takes a Breath book coverJuliet Takes a  Breath was recommended to me by a friend for being something you see very little of. It is about feminism for queer brown girls, with white feminism and privilege being criticized freely and often. So, as a white person, it can be hard to read. Much of the criticism makes sense; some of the things that the white women in the book do are realistic and I can see how they’re irritating or worse, even when they’re well-intentioned (though not all the instances in the book are). Despite the general sense of uncomfortableness that surrounded me while I read it, I liked it and found it engaging.

Juliet is a short, chubby puertorriqueña from the Bronx. She has just finished her first year of college and now has a white girlfriend she’s in love with. She has decided to come out to her family at the dinner table the evening that she’s leaving to start an internship for a feminist author in Portland, Oregon. She doesn’t know how it’s going to go and she’s distressed when her mom basically hides from her at the revelation. She leaves for her internship and is thrust into the wild world of Harlow Brisbane.

Harlowe’s the author of a famous (fictional) book of New Feminism called Raging Flower: Empowering Your Pussy by Empowering Your Mind, which has done well in certain circles. Not long after Juliet arrives, Harlowe gives her a seemingly impossible research task. Soon after, Juliet meets a male nudist in Harlowe’s house who makes her feel inferior in her queerness by asking challenging questions. She learns Harlowe’s in a polyamorous relationship with a black woman named Maxine and they all go to a writing event for women of color where white women are allowed to attend but not speak. Juliet doesn’t get why the white women must remain quiet until she overhears a couple of them talking.

From here, Juliet begins her research at the library and gradually gets exposed to more and more challenging and confusing ideas about gender, sexuality, race, love, and more. There is a crisis with Harlowe where she does something that makes Juliet feel objectified and Juliet flees to be with her older and wiser cousin in Florida. The cousin helps her finally start to understand all the confusing ideas she’s been bombarded with in Portland. Juliet comes back armed with knowledge and we see her come into her own with the women around her.

As I mentioned, the book will be challenging for white readers but still very much worth the read. But it’s not written for white people; it's for for young queer people of color and it will ring true, I am sure. It was first published in 2016 in paperback by a small press but it looks like it’s being reissued in hardback in September, probably because it’s done relatively well. Check it out.

Review: Dramarama by E. Lockhart

Posted on by kellyvincent

Dramarama book coverFirst, I have to say that Dramarama plays heavily with stereotypes—namely Gay Best Friend and Theatre Geek. However, it’s not a bad thing at all because Lockhart brings both to life so effectively.

Sarah is a big-time musical theatre fan in a small-time, boring Ohio town. When she meets Demi at an audition, she finds a kindred spirit and the two of them become inseparable. Demi, who is black and (closeted) gay, gives Sarah her stage name—Sadye. They are classic theatre kids—overdramatic, enthusiastic, and physical. When both of them manage to get into a summer program at an elite performing arts school, they’re ecstatic. And off they go.

This is where things get interesting, because they’re separated into different dorms and soon their friendship is going to be tested. Demi fits in immediately. He’s able to be comfortably out of the closet and he just explodes into the talented performer he is. Sadye struggles more. She’s sharing a room with three other girls, two of whom really intimidate her, while the other she views as desperate and uncool.

Sadye’s friendships with her roommates develop and she watches them succeed while she feels like she’s not doing as well as she should. They are all taking classes and preparing for two different shows, one of which is early in the summer and so comes pretty quickly. Sadye enjoys that even if she didn’t get the most important role. But everything starts to get complicated as the summer progresses.

Really, I couldn’t relate to either Sadye or Demi, as I couldn’t be more different, but that didn’t make them uninteresting characters. Sadye is wonderfully flawed. She’s not always likable, as she does some unpleasant things, but we can see where those actions come from and we empathize. She’s a very realistic teenager.

The ending of the novel surprised me a bit. It didn’t happily tie everything up. I mean, it tied everything up like it needed to, just not really happily. There was element to it that I felt was a little out of the blue and maybe not the best possible ending, but it didn’t make me not enjoy the novel. Also, Demi didn’t behave quite like I would have in the ending. Still, much of the book was fun because of the characters and setting rather than the plot itself.

One other little thing that was kind of fun for me is that all the kids admire Kristin Chenoweth. (Sadye is distinctly not Kristin-ish, being rather tall.) Kristin is from Oklahoma and graduated from Oklahoma City University, where I’m doing my MFA (it apparently has a great musical theater program), so that was a little cool.

If you’re a fan of Lockhart, you’ll want to read it, even though it’s different from her others (actually, all her books/series are different from each other). It would also be enjoyable both for kids who grew up a part of the theatre world and those of us who only observed wryly from afar.

Review: You Against Me by Jenny Downham

Posted on by kellyvincent

You Against Me book coverI like Downham but was a little hesitant about this one because I thought the premise sounded stressful. But I’d put it on my reading list for this MFA semester, so I cracked it open last week.

Mikey’s 15-year-old sister Karyn has been raped just before the book opening and he’s upset but not sure what to do about it. Ellie’s brother Tom is the accused rapist and she’s defended him with her statement to the police, because she was the only other one home the night it happened. It’s clear from the back cover copy that Mikey and Ellie are going to meet and the implication is there of a relationship.

They come from different worlds. Mikey’s mom’s life is largely ruled by alcohol and the family is on benefits while Ellie’s family is wealthy. Mikey left school after not doing well and 16-year-old Ellie is dutifully studying for her exams. Tom is a typical entitled rich white guy, used to getting what he wants. Ellie is very timid, though, with an overbearing father who favors Tom heavily and a mother who does, as well.

The book opens with Mikey going to Tom’s house to beat him up, but he’s not home. However, the family is throwing a huge party to celebrate him getting out on bail. When Mikey knocks on the door, it’s Ellie who answers and he convinces her he’s one of Tom’s friends so he gets invited to the party. Mikey and his friend go with the intent of beating Tom up, but instead Mikey accidentally befriends Ellie and decides to run with it—he can mine her for info about Tom. The problem with that is that he actually likes her, and she likes him. Things progress sort of like you’d expect, but not exactly, which makes it work.

The subject matter is handled with care and we don’t know what really happened until quite a ways into the story. There are hints but Ellie, Tom, and Karyn are all sticking to their stories. Still, the book is very well-plotted with reveals coming right as they’re needed and not before. The characters are great. Ellie is sort of spineless in the beginning but grows one, Mikey’s not the greatest guy (kind of a player) but he gets believably nicer, and Karyn also seems to finally be recovering from the assault by the end. I should mention that it’s a quiet story that makes you think throughout and might seem a little slow to some, but it didn’t bother me. As I mentioned above, I thought pacing was good.

There are lots of YA books about rape out there, but this one is different because we never get the victim’s perspective. I enjoyed it more than I thought I might, so I’d recommend it even if you’re not a fan of issue books (it doesn’t feel like one to me). And the seaside English town setting will provide a certain exoticism for American readers.

Review: Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

Posted on by kellyvincent

Girl Mans Up book coverGirl Mans Up is one of the best books I’ve read in a while. This is the first gender nonconforming girl I’ve really seen in a book (I’m sure there are others, but I haven’t encountered them) and I was really excited to read Pen’s story. It reminded me in some ways of what I’m trying to do with my own book Ugly, even though Pen is different in a lot of significant ways from my protagonist.

Penelope—Pen to everyone—Oliveira is one of the guys. Her best friends are Colby and Tristan and they’ve been friends for years. They’re all gamers and Pen’s the best among them. But there are some things that aren’t perfect—another boy named Garrett has been hanging out with them and he loves to push Pen’s buttons (and everyone else’s).

…that one over there who’s sort of a girl, I don’t know, I can’t tell anymore.

Colby and Tristan have always been fine with who Pen is, but Garrett is obsessed with the fact that she’s a girl who prefers the company of guys and doesn’t really look like a girl, except for her very long black hair, which she keeps pulled back in a pony tail all the time.

Pen explains Colby’s loyalty system to us early on. Guys have each other’s backs and all serve a role in a friendship. Pen’s primary role—other than being a gaming companion—is to get hot girls to talk to Colby. This was a little weird to me, because I didn’t see how he didn’t have enough confidence to just go up to them himself. But still, this is how he does it. He’d point to a girl he wanted and tell Pen to go work her magic. Said magic is effectively manipulating the girl into trusting her—and then Colby, so he could get what he wanted. It’s awkward and Pen doesn’t realize what she’s really doing because she has really bought into the whole guy system. Colby’s a real piece of work, although it takes her a while to see it.

Pen’s got a secondary issue to deal with, too. She comes from a very traditional Portuguese family that immigrated to Canada, where she’s grown up. She has a very supportive older brother and the two of them are considered black sheep by their own parents and the rest of the family, all because Pen is not a “good girl” (i.e., a girly girl) and her brother doesn’t want to work in the factory with all the other men—they don’t have the required respeito (respect) for their elders. I love the conflict that Pen’s family provides, especially her mom, who’s pretty horrible but totally believable. Everything Pen does to be herself is interpreted as an intentional insult to her mom and family.

When Colby tries to get Pen to go after a girl who Pen herself is interested in, things go weird and different. Pen’s arc is really to learn to folly of Colby’s guy code and the value of female friendship and it takes most of the book for that to work entirely out. Along the way, she comes to understand herself better and she also learns to stand up for herself in ways she doesn’t at the beginning. At the start of the story, she’s pretty passive, despite the fact that there is a lot for her to fight against (and for).

The book is well-plotted and all the major characters are deeply drawn. It’s told in first person present tense, which makes it feel really immediate and intense throughout. It’s great. There’s lots of very colloquial (but not overly slang-y) teen speak which felt real to me:

“Dude, I’ve known these guys longer than I’ve known you, so you can suck it”

There’s also lots of interesting stuff done with the fact that the older ones among Pen’s family are not native speakers of English. Girard includes “broken” English that feels very real (and I really think not mocking). Her mom says:

“I no yell. Listen. You cut you hair, you get people laugh.”

It works well. There’s also a lot of actual Portuguese in the book, as Pen and her family speak it, even if Pen isn’t as comfortable with it as English. This is handled very effectively to give the book a particular flavor without distracting the reader.

I haven’t given much of the book away because I think you should experience it the way I did, as an unknown entity. But you should go read it—it will open your eyes to an experience that is probably different from your own (and if not, it will be refreshingly familiar and real). It’s really an excellent book. No wonder it won an award and was a finalist for another.

Review: Meet Cute

Posted on by kellyvincent

Meet Cute book coverMeet Cute is a collection of “meet cute” (the first meeting of a couple who will be starring in a romance) stories by some big names in YA contemporary and romance right now. By their very nature, some of these feel a little incomplete—because these are the stories of the meet only, not the rest of the romance. There are fourteen of them and definitely some are better than others, in my view.

The first is “Siege Etiquette” by Katie Cotugno. This one’s told in second person (“you”), which is something that I don’t like. I mean, I don’t hate it, but it just feels forced and manipulative and a little pretentious. The story itself didn’t really speak to me, either. It’s about a girl who ends up in a bathroom with a boy she doesn’t know well at a party when the police are trying to get in and everyone else is hiding in the basement. The main character, Hailey, just isn’t too likable and I didn’t care that much about her. I liked the guy—Wolf—better and wondered why he seemed interested in her.

The second story, “Print Shop” by Nina LaCour, is actually my favorite. It’s about Evie, a girl who takes a job at an old-fashioned print shop because she values the non-digital approach. But then her first assignment is to get the shop an online presence, which I thought was pretty funny. Not that the story is very funny (it’s not), but I felt Evie’s pain, which is what you want. So then there’s a PR fiasco on the Twitter account she creates, all because of a “typo” made on a banner for a high school girl. After searching the girl’s profile, Evie jumps through hoops to help make sure she gets her remade banner in time, and when they finally meet, it is cute.

I enjoyed the third one, “Hourglass” by Ibi Zoboi, reasonably well even if it didn’t move me too much. It’s about Cherish, the only black teenager in her small town. She’s dress shopping with her white friend Stacy, who’s got the perfect body, unlike Cherish (who is giant—6’5” (wow)). And really, Cherish isn’t dress shopping herself—she’s with Stacy because the shop doesn’t have anything that will fit Cherish. For that reason, Cherish isn’t planning to go to the prom. But after she has a falling out with Stacy, she visits a new African tailor in town. That’s where she meets the tailor’s son, who looks like a superhero and is studying at the local community college. He’s nice.

The next story is “Click” by Katharine McGee. This one is about a an online dating date that goes horribly wrong—but in all the right ways. The online dating site is Web-data-driven, in that it scrapes the Web for all bits of info about anyone who signs up and does some clever matching on multiple points. She goes on her first date and manages to leave her phone in the taxi. This isn’t just normal bad because her phone contains a data chip with a very important program on it that she’s been working on. (Okay, let’s not talk about the fact that she wouldn’t have not had a backup somewhere, but okay, for the purposes of the story…) She and her date spend the evening chasing down the phone/chip.

“The Intern” by Sara Shephard is about Clara, an intern at a record company who gets a weird assignment with one of the company’s artists—take him to a psychic. I had a little trouble with this one because some of the events just didn’t feel entirely plausible.

The sixth story is “Somewhere That’s Green” by Meredith Russo. This one is about a trans girl whose community is up in arms since the school started letting her use the girls’ bathroom. I didn’t really love this one, either. The meet cute is between her and one of the spokespeople for the bathroom-use opponents, who despite having really religious parents likes girls. I just didn’t totally buy it all.

The next one is “The Way We Love Here” by Dhonielle Clayton, which features a brown girl and an Asian boy on a fictional island with magical undertones because everyone is born with several red strings around their ring fingers. The strings disappear over time until they’re all gone when you meet your true love. Vio isn’t particularly interested in meeting hers and when she rescues Sebastien from nearly drowning, they begin a time-traveling adventure of sorts. It’s kind of an odd story and I didn’t get really into it, but it wasn’t bad.

The eighth story is “Oomph” by Emery Lord. I liked this one quite a bit, too. It’s about two girls who meet at the airport and is full of clever and cute dialogue. I did feel like it took a little to get going, but once it did I really liked it.

The next story is “The Dictionary of You and Me” by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I’m sort of ambivalent about this one. I definitely liked the premise—a girl working at the library gets to know a boy while chasing down an overdue dictionary. It was just that the dialogue was a tad disappointing—decent though not as funny as it was trying to be. I also felt like the coincidence meter was sounding because of who the boy turns out to be.

“The Unlikely Likelihood of Falling in Love” by Jocelyn Davies is an interesting story. It’s definitely got a cute premise, even one aspect of it did bug me a little. It’s about a girl who’s the only girl in her AP stats class (and plans to win a Nobel Prize in math, as soon as they start offering one). She spots a boy on a train going the opposite direction in NYC and is instantly smitten. Then she proceeds to make calculating the likelihood of seeing him again her end-of-semester project for stats. This is what bugged me a little—I didn’t think that the only girl in a technical class would do such a “girly” topic. But then, maybe she would. We don’t get to know her too well in such a short story. Also, the way it’s written made it sound like the end result—whether or not she meets him again—matters to the class project. It doesn’t. The likelihood of something happening stays the same whether or not it actually comes to pass. But still, it was a pretty fun story.

I didn’t really care for “293 Million Miles” by Kass Morgan because I found it not very plausible, particularly the big reveal at the end. It’s about a guy and a girl trying out for a Mars mission. They end up in an isolated room together, ostensibly being tested for behavior under stress. I thought that her behavior would have totally ruled her out and the way they treated him at the end just didn’t work for me.

I’m not a fan of reality TV, so at first I thought I wouldn’t like “Something Real” by Julie Murphy. It’s set on the set of a reality TV show—one that pits two girls against each other in a competition to get a date with a famous young musician. So at first it’s not clear who the meet cute is between, but once we meet the musician himself, we can guess. It’s cute and there are several funny scenes.

“Say Everything” by Huntley Fitzpatrick is another second person story, which still bugs me, by the way. I didn’t love this one, either. A girl whose family used to be rich is waiting tables for some cash. A boy asks her out and it turns out that he’s not just any boy—he’s related to the reason her family isn’t rich anymore. He does her a weird favor that takes her back to when she was younger and makes her rethink her current situation.

The last story, “The Department of Dead Love” by Nicola Yoon, is really unique and creative. I liked it even if I didn’t love it. Thomas had what he thought was a perfect relationship that ended several months earlier and he’s gone through the various areas of the DoDL before finally landing in Autopsy (i.e. relationship autopsy). If he’s lucky, he’ll qualify for a Do Over. Things go unexpectedly and he doesn’t get what he wants out of his visit there, but ultimately gets something else.

Anyway, this was a long review. If you’re a fan of YA romance you might like this one.

Review: Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Posted on by kellyvincent

Just Listen book coverI first read Just Listen a few years ago and I loved it, mostly for Owen, the male lead. Not because he was swoonworthy or whatever in the typical sense. No, it was because he was hilarious (as was his sister and his relationship with her). Also, I could relate to him and his frustrations with Annabel (I had the same frustrations). I recently reread the novel for my MFA and found it just as good as I remembered. I was still frustrated with Annabel and glad to see her change by the end, and I was still very fond of Owen and his anger management issues (doesn’t sound particularly funny, but it’s all in the way he and his sister talk about it).

It’s not too surprising that I couldn’t relate too much to Annabel, who’s working as a model on the local scene. Fortunately, she’s not one of those uber-skinny, unhealthy girls. Body image is actually really important to the story, as Annabel’s sister Whitney suffers from anorexia and much of the book revolves around this. Fortunately, Annabel herself has a fairly healthy view of herself and actually eats like a normal person.

The book is told entirely from Annabel’s perspective and it starts at the beginning of the school year (junior year, if I remember correctly). And Annabel’s got a big problem. Something happened at the end of the last school year that cost her her friendship with Sophie—and her entire social standing. This is noteworthy for a couple reasons: we don’t know what happened and Annabel doesn’t tell us until close to the end; and Sophie is a horrible bitch to everyone so it doesn’t reflect well on Annabel that she was friends with Sophie for as long as she was. Still, the point is that at the beginning of the year, Annabel doesn’t have any friends.

We learn pretty quick that Annabel can’t speak her mind. She’s a consummate people-pleaser. She has two older sisters both of whom have pretty distinct personalities, whereas Annabel gets kind of lost. We get the sense that her family doesn’t know her that well. We almost get the sense that she doesn’t even have a personality (that’s kind of how it felt to me, anyway). She’s just so nice.

She eats lunch on a wall outside the school vaguely near Owen, a big guy most people are scared of because of the time he punched this really obnoxious guy the previous year (Annabel even saw it happen). After something happens that gets them to speak for the first time, they strike up a very unlikely friendship which grows slowly over the course of the book.

As I mentioned, I loved this book. Still, it’s quiet and even slow-moving because we get lots of flashbacks along the way. I didn’t notice that the first time I read it because I was too busy wanting to see where their relationship goes and what actually happened at that party that pissed Sophie off. But this time, I found it interesting because normally that is a bad thing to do (stop the forward motion of the story by looking back) but for me it totally worked here because I was so invested in Annabel and I knew the past was the key to unlocking what happened. And as it turns out, what happened was a big deal and by the end Annabel is finally able to deal with it because of her growth that comes at least partially as a result of Owen’s influence.

So I enthusiastically recommend this to fans of contemporary YA. It’s deep and moving and entertaining all at the same time.

Review: Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

Posted on by kellyvincent

Kissing in America book coverIt’s not often that you get a YA novel that deals with both poetry and romance novels. Rabb does a great job with this book. It’s cute and funny even while touching on some sad subjects.

Eva is sixteen and she’s still trying to get over the death of her father in a plane crash two years earlier. And deal with the fact that her mom doesn’t seem to care and has done everything in her power to erase Eva’s father’s memory from their lives. For whatever reason, after he died, Eva found comfort in romance novels. They certainly can be comforting, as they always end how you want them to. There’s no risk of something going really wrong. But it’s also got Eva believing in love a little more than her mom would like.

Eva’s had a crush on Will, a senior swimmer at their school. When she’s lucky enough to get him assigned to her tutoring session, she thinks she’s got a chance. But when a parade of girlfriends come by to pick him up afterward, she doesn’t have a lot of hope. But still, they get to know each other over the weeks and when he breaks up with his last girlfriend, Eva’s dream comes true. His kiss is as great as she imagined and they end up spending a (chaste) night together in a garden on top of their school. But then Will drops a bombshell: he’s moving across the country.

Eva’s distraught, but she’s so convinced of their perfection as a couple that she’s not really worried. Still, she needs to be able to see him again, and she figures out a way to make that happen. She convinces her best friend Annie to compete in a game show in LA to win a bunch of money for college. Then she manages to convince her skeptical mom to let her ride across the country on a bus (no planes for Eva). Adventures and heartache ensue.

Where does the poetry come in? you ask. Eva used to be a poet. She’d write with her dad, who she was very close to, but since his death she hasn’t been able to write. Will convinces her to write a poem, which she does even though she thinks it’s crap. But then she’s stuck again. It isn’t until the end that she’s starting to get over that. But poetry is still important to her, and each chapter starts with a quote from a poem.

I liked this book. I specifically listened to the audio book, which was well done and I’d recommend it to fans of contemporary. Eva’s likable and relatable even if she’s a tad naive (who isn’t at 16…).

Review: Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume

Posted on by kellyvincent

Tiger Eyes book coverAs I think I’ve mentioned earlier, I wasn’t a huge Judy Blume fan growing up, although I did read most of her stuff for younger readers. My MFA course instructor wanted me to read several of Blume’s books for this semester and Tiger Eyes was one I picked. It was first published in 1981 and I have to say it holds the test of time pretty well, with a couple exceptions I’ll mention below.

New Jersey teenager Davey’s father has just been killed in a robbery/murder at his 7-Eleven store, leaving her, her mom, and her 7-year-old brother, Jason, all behind. Davey’s mom is not coping at all, and Davey isn’t doing so well, herself. She has panic attacks at school and passes out more than once. Davey’s aunt (her dad’s sister) and uncle visited for the funeral and left an open invitation to visit them in New Mexico if they need to. After Davey’s fainting spells, that’s what her mom decides to do.

So the three of them head off to Los Alamos and stay with Bitsy and Walter. At first, Walter insists on showing them around like they’re happy tourists and Davey is soon bored to death. She pushes back and takes off on Bitsy’s bike to explore a little, escaping to the nearby canyon, where she also meets the elusive Wolf.

Bitsy clearly relishes her new role a mother hen while Davey’s mom stands by basically catatonic. They’re there long enough that the two kids have to enroll in school. Davey fights it but loses and soon starts at the local high school, where she is befriended by Jane. Things develop from there in ways I really didn’t expect. I thought this was going to be a love story, but it’s not. It’s deeper than that and goes into healing after a trauma and just dealing with relationships and the unexpected turns they sometimes take.

I mentioned there were a couple of aspects of the book that made it not age as well as it could have. Davey is overall a pretty decent kid who you could imagine in modern novel. Her best friend is a black girl who can’t stand basketball and loves science. Wolf’s Hispanic and she definitely likes him. But at one point when she’s frustrated at her brother for making baking his new hobby, she walks in on him preparing cookies and calls his apron “faggy.” I mean, uh. But even worse is the overt racism that Davey’s friend Jane displays toward all Hispanics. Davey doesn’t get it because she definitely doesn’t feel the same, but Jane is still a major secondary character and it’s pretty unpleasant (although it doesn’t get mentioned very often, to be fair—maybe three times—but it’s a stain). I know that this is painting an accurate picture of the town/gown divide in Los Alamos because of the national lab there (at least at the time; I don’t know if it’s still like that), where all the lab scientists are white and all the laborers are Hispanic. But still.

With those caveats, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the story. Davey’s a really sympathetic character and we see her standing up for herself and her family when she needs to. It might be Blume’s best book.

Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Posted on by kellyvincent

Looking for Alaska book coverI first read Looking for Alaska two or three years ago, and reread it recently for the MFA. I enjoyed it the second time around, too. Of course, I was “reading as a writer” so the experience was a little different. Still, it’s a good story told well.

Miles Halter is a studious and mostly friendless 16-year-old in Florida when the book opens, but he’s fine with his situation. He does want more out of life and is seeking the “Great Perhaps,” a journey he’s starting by heading off to an Alabama boarding school—where he’s won a scholarship. Once there, he befriends his roommate, nicknamed “the Colonel”, who introduces him to other friends, especially a girl named Alaska. An evening conversation with her is all it takes for Miles to fall in love (she’s, of course, hot). But she’s also wild and has a boyfriend. She’s the quintessential manic pixie dream girl.

The Colonel and Alaska introduce Miles to cigarettes and drinking, and Miles takes to his new social life like a champ. Suddenly he’s a major rule-breaker along with the rest of them. Then, in some ways not a lot else happens until the major event a little past halfway through the book. Miles hangs out with them and continues to be smitten by Alaska. Another girl, Lara, has a bit of a crush on him and he sort of starts seeing her (he doesn’t mind getting his first BJ from her at all). But then the Big Event happens. And like the back of the book says, nothing is ever the same.

Except it kind of is, and Miles has to come to terms with that. Life is full of major events and they’re not all pleasant. Feeling a little guilty about their role in the Big Event, he and the Colonel embark on a mission to find out what happened, ultimately realizing that they can’t really know.

It’s cool to see Miles develop over the second half, actually. Because he’s not really very nice to the people around him, especially Lara. He’s a believable, fairly self-absorbed boy. But by the end he has grown and I think he’s on his way to being a nicer guy.

Miles’s voice in the book is great—intelligent and a little sarcastic (not too much). And the novel is funny. Miles says:

You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can’t say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers.

Green has a way with words and pulls you into all the characters. Alaska is the most elusive of the major characters, but that’s by design.

So if you want to see a realistic portrayal of a teen boy going through his first real crush and having to deal with his first real tragedy, this is a good book for it. But if you can’t handle kids behaving badly, you might not like it. Because they do a lot of getting up to no good.

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).