I’ve already reviewed Rabb’s other book, Kissing in America, which I really liked. So I had high expectations for Cures for Heartbreak, her first.
This book is relatively compact, with a lot packed into only 230 pages. At the opening, fifteen-year-old Mia’s mother has just died twelve days after receiving a diagnosis of melanoma. Mia is heartbroken because the two were very close. Mia and her older sister fight all the time instead of providing comfort to each other. Rabb effectively shows Mia’s bereavement and her acting out in ways the reader can understand. Then Mia's father has a heart attack, which he survives, but it ushers in new hospital time. Mia is still trying to recover from her mom’s death all while dealing with everything else a teenager has to deal with, especially school and (sometimes inappropriate) crushes, and now she has to worry about her father, too. The book’s really about Mia coming to understand that love is complex and that it isn’t lost when you find a way forward.
Mia’s a very well portrayed character—authentic and compelling. We see her father through her embarrassed and frustrated eyes, and he’s a good character too. They get closer after her mom’s death and her older sister’s departure, with their weekly trips to Wendy’s. Of course the writing is also lovely, evocative and full of moving details.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Kissing in America (though that one is a little funnier than this one) or who likes to see portraits of people dealing with grief in the best way they can.
This book originally came out in 2003, but Mackler revised it in 2018. She didn’t make major changes, but did upgrade it to fit with today’s technology a little better. One of my writing friends recommended the book to me because of the kissing in the beginning (it was relevant to a story I was writing). I’m glad she did, because I quite enjoyed the book.
This is fun collection of mostly urban fantasy stories centering on (duh) zombies or unicorns. It is framed as a competition between the two editors, where Team Zombie is led by Justine and Team Unicorn by Holly. There are twelve stories in the collection but I was only able to read ten of them due to a weird printing error (pages from one story later in the book replaced pages in two other stories earlier in the book). Not sure how that happened with a major publisher like Simon & Schuster, but okay…
This is a really interesting and unique book. It’s steeped in Mexican-America culture, but not really in a positive way—the main character, Julia, basically hates every aspect of it. To me this was interesting because one of the reasons she hates it is that she can’t navigate it well—she’s socially awkward, but not in the “standard” way (at least this was my take on it). No, she says and does the wrong thing for her culture, which might be okay in white American culture (though definitely not always).
This short book first came out eighteen years ago but it’s still relevant today. It’s (fairly obviously) about a girl who cuts herself.
Although 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.
This book is a collection of short stories set in various points of US history ranging from 1838 to 1984. The stories are all about girls bucking the system in some way, but those ways vary widely over the book. The stories are all realistic except for a couple that have some magical realism elements. The stories also run the gamut on the diversity spectrum, including girls of several different religions, several protagonists of color (and different ethnicities, too), at least one lesbian, one character in a wheelchair, and another on the autism spectrum.
Darius 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).
I’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.
I 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).
Juliet Takes a
This is a book that came to me from one of those YA book clubs I belong to as I’d never heard of it. But I’m actually surprised there isn’t a little more hype around it because it’s very good and it’s got a believable badass girl in it. I guess historical fiction isn’t where it’s at right now.
First, 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.