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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Review: The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love

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The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love book coverWho knew you could write a book set almost entirely at a comic con? Apparently you can because Tash managed it.

Graham is in love with his best friend, Roxy, who’s also his next door neighbor. She’s either oblivious or in denial. But not only are they friends, they’re also a comics-generating partnership. She’s the artist and he’s the writer. And they are massive super-fans of a somewhat obscure sci-fi comics series that had a short-lived life. Think Firefly in terms of fandom, though the story is about an alien who comes to Earth and meets a man. There’s love involved.

The comics were written by a genius who’s made himself a hermit since the series ended. There is a lot of speculation about him. Right before their very own New York Comic Con starts, Graham and Roxy find out the elusive man is coming to do a talk, and they pretty much freak out. Graham plans to impress Roxy by getting exclusive tickets to the event and decided he will confess his love over the weekend.

However, things do not go as planned at all. They are so off-plan that Graham goes a little crazy, especially when he angry-drinks a few beers. It looks like maybe everything is damaged beyond repair. But is it? Sometimes the plan isn’t the right thing, after all.

This is a cute book, very light even though it deals with the pain of unrequited love (I’m not giving anything away since it’s in the title). It’s also fun and there are loads of pop culture references, some of which I think are made up, even though there were some I got. Still, the sense of fun is there throughout, and anyone who’s a bit of a fandom geek will recognize themselves and their friends, and will appreciate the book.

Review: Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King

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Everybody Sees the Ants book coverEverybody Sees the Ants is outwardly about bullying, but it’s really about many things, including masculinity, self-respect, and standing up for yourself. It’s really creative and like many of King’s books, has more than a touch of magical realism.

Lucky Linderman is a passive Pennsylvania kid. Unfortunately, he’s also got a big target on his back because the meanest bully in town has made it his personal mission to punish Lucky just for existing. Nader favors physical punishment, and the book’s inciting incident is when he injures Lucky significantly enough that Lucky’s mom takes him away to Arizona after school’s out. This introduces Lucky to two more adults—his aunt and uncle—who become important in his life.

Prior to the book starting, Lucky managed to get himself in hot water over an assignment. He was supposed to create a survey question for a class, and his offering was, “If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose?” Not the most well-thought-out thing, since it got the school and his parents all freaked out and convinced he was suicidal. And he isn’t overtly suicidal, even if he is supremely unhappy with his life. But there are definitely red flags that go up throughout the book that indicate to the reader that things aren’t quite healthy in Lucky’s head, even if he doesn’t see it himself.

It is significant to the story that none of these supposedly well-meaning adults seem to think anything needs to be done about Nader, or at least they don’t do anything about it. His father avoids Lucky and his mom by spending all his time at work; his mom avoids dealing with anything—including her own marital troubles—by swimming lap after lap at the pool.

Passivity is a major theme in the book, and Lucky has to learn to overcome his. His grandfather helps him through his dreams, where Lucky attempts to rescue the man who’s officially MIA in Laos from the Vietnam War. It’s in the dreams where Lucky actually feels powerful. His grandfather even helps him see that he’s not crazy even though he sees ants—a little group of characters that appeared because of all the stress with Nader. They follow Lucky around and comment on his life, giving voice to his fears. As the name of the book implies, everybody’s got a little bit of the crazy in them because that’s part of being alive—all people have some things in their lives that make them feel out of control.

One of the great strengths of the book is the numerous supporting characters. As you’d expect in a book from King, the characters are all deeply drawn and interesting. The adults especially are as flawed as Lucky (if not more). The writing style is uncomplicated and it fits Lucky’s voice perfectly. There isn’t really a strong plot per se, but the story doesn’t suffer for it as we live Lucky’s complicated life with him.

Overall, Everybody Sees the Ants is a solid exploration of bullying and building self-respect—and it’s funny, too.

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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We Were Liars book coverLockhart is definitely a writer I admire, and one of the things I like most about her is the fact that she is so versatile. All her books (or series, at least) are so different from each other. That’s some skill.

So I was looking forward to reading her psychological suspense. We Were Liars is about Cadence Sinclair and the rest of the Sinclair clan. Specifically, she spends all her summers on the family island with her cousins (Mirren and Johnny) plus the nephew of her aunt’s live-in boyfriend, Gat.

Cadence gives us a quick history of her childhood on the island, which is where the families come together for the summer only—they don’t see each other at all outside of summer. Then we get to “summer fifteen” when she and the others are fifteen and they hang around, swim, and talk. Just generally laze. But there’s more going on. For one, Cadence is in love with Gat, who supposedly has a girlfriend back home, but the two start up anyway. Everything is grand.

And then one day it’s not.

Cadence is narrating the book as a seventeen-year-old. She suffered some traumatic brain injury in summer fifteen and all she knows about what happened was that she’d been found basically washed up on the beach in her underwear. Now she gets horrific headaches and is half-addicted to pain pills. She doesn’t go back to the island until summer seventeen, when she’s still desperately trying to remember what happened. It starts coming back in bits and pieces until we finally get the final fragment.

We Were Liars seems to be kind of a polarizing book, looking at Goodreads. So I feel a little odd reporting that I wasn’t super-wowed by the book. I liked it and I’m glad I read it, but I didn’t really feel strongly about it. Everyone knows there’s a twist near the end and some people see it coming and some don’t. My experience was kind of odd—I didn’t specifically see it coming, but once I hit it, I didn’t feel particularly surprised. Maybe I was in a weird mood when I got there. I don’t know. Still, it’s the kind of story you think about even after you put the book down.

If you like psychological thrillers and YA, or Lockhart, give this one a shot.

Review: The V-Word edited by Amber J. Keyser

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The V-Word book coverThe V-Word is a collection of writing about real first-time sexual experiences. It’s not even specifically YA, though it will definitely be of interest to a lot teenagers. Everyone wants to know what it’s like, after all, even if they’re not intending to find out from personal experience any time soon.

The essays run the gamut from good experience to bad, but most capture the awkwardness of the first time. All the experience are women’s, with the writers looking back to high school, college, or even later. Most of the articles address sex with boys/men, but there are several about lesbian experiences. Some of the girls wanted to shed their virginity. Others were more resistant. Some experienced abuse. One waited until she was married. I won’t go into the details of any of them because it’s best to read them as-is.

After the experience essays are some extras: a short essay about how girls should take charge of their sex lives by: knowing their bodies, knowing what turns them on, knowing what they’re up against (in terms of society’s expectations, ever-present porn, and lack of reasonable sex ed), safe sex, knowing how to talk about it, and knowing when they’re ready. Then there’s an interview with a teen media specialist that talks about how most media targeting teens doesn’t address the female sexual experience at all, usually fading to black; labels like slut and prude frame much of the conversation; and several other interesting things. Finally there is a list of resources for both girls and their parents.

I’d recommend this to all teen girls at least, say, fifteen. Or anyone who’s really curious.

Review: Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

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Once and for All book coverDessen is one of my favorite YA authors because she paints such realistic teens. Yes, they’re white and usually reasonably well off with mostly functional families around them. But still, she digs deep into their lives and makes even an average girl interesting.

Eighteen-year-old Louna Barrett is the daughter of a very successful wedding planner and works most of the weddings herself. She doesn’t necessarily love it but it’s what she knows and she’s good at it, and she only has to do it until she goes off to college. Louna is incredibly guarded, due to a tragedy that we know very little about for the first part of the book. When she meets Ambrose, she can’t stand him because he’s an irresponsible hassle. When her mom hires him to work for the company for the summer, Louna can’t believe it. She’s got to work with this idiot.

Louna and Ambrose first meet at his mother’s wedding, where she has to retrieve him for pictures with his mother and the rest of the family. Her first thought is that he’s really good-looking, but her second thought is that he was too annoying. She says:

He was like that upside-down exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence in Spanish, the mere appearance of which warned of something complicated ahead.

He’s outside flirting with a couple girls instead of inside where he needs to be, and Louna strong-arms him inside. Later he asks her to dance and makes it clear he’s interested in her even though she turns him down. So she isn’t happy to be stuck working with him, but she tries to make the best of it by offloading some of her work to him.

Once it gets going, the book alternates between the current day, where Louna’s dealing with Ambrose, and flashbacks to her time with Ethan, her first real love. We know something really bad happened to him and it takes a little while before we get the full story. Still, we know that Ethan was a great guy and it’s no wonder Louna can’t get over him and move on. In the present day, Louna and Ambrose make a bet that requires him to date just one girl for seven weeks and her to date multiple guys over the same period.

I have to admit that this wasn’t my favorite Dessen novel. I never really warmed up to Ambrose. I mean, it’s not like he was a horrible guy, but he did do some jerky things, even if sometimes it was passively—by not doing or saying something he should have. And Louna herself is a little on the bland side.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have strengths. A lot of people will love the background of all the weddings, and I admit even though I find weddings tedious, those elements were actually interesting to me because it went totally behind the scenes and aired some of the dirty laundry. And Louna’s best friend, Jilly, is entertaining and very likable. And supportive. Louna’s mom and her business partner, William, are both good characters, too.

So I’d definitely recommend this for Dessen’s fans, as well as anyone who really digs weddings.

Review: The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

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The Nature of Jade book coverI always like a good book that deals with mental health issues, as long as it does so realistically and non-preachily.* The Nature of Jade fits the bill.

Jade’s a very open character, revealing a lot about herself early on, and she’s frank as the book proceeds, too. She has Panic Disorder and struggles to keep herself under control a lot of the time. She has found that watching elephants calms her down, so she keeps the Seattle zoo’s 24-hour elephant webcam on, which is where she first sees a boy in a red jacket coming regularly to visit, a toddler in tow. She becomes mildly infatuated and even goes there hoping to meet him, but he doesn’t show up again. In the end, she volunteers with the elephants and becomes a bit of an elephant care expert.

Then the red-jacket-boy shows up again and she actually meets him and learns his name. They start seeing each other and she really likes him, but her instincts tell her that something is up, though she doesn’t know what. When she finds out, it’s a bit of a shock. Other readers might guess, but I didn’t. Also, once I found out, I assumed the book would go one direction, but it went another.

The Nature of Jade is only my second Caletti book, but I consider myself a fan. She creates wonderfully deep characters who go through interesting journeys. Even the non-viewpoint characters are fleshed out really well. Her writing is nice—great setting details, realistic dialogue that fits each character, and the internal thoughts are powerful. Take this:

Some guys give you the edgy feeling of dogs behind chain-link fences, and some give you the nervousness of high heels you’re not used to. But Sebastian—he makes me feel like I just buried my nose in warm laundry.

She also made me laugh (with understanding) with lines like this:

Blushing is so unfair. Might as well wear a sign: WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.

I have to mention the bizarre similarities between this book and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver books, which I don’t feel bad about because the two of them expressed the same surprise (I wrote about seeing them speak here). But it’s uncanny—neither knew about the other’s book when she wrote her book (the road to book-completion to publication is long, and the first Ruby Oliver book came out in 2005 and The Nature of Jade in early 2007). Ruby also lives in Seattle, has anxiety attacks, sees a therapist, and volunteers at Seattle’s zoo. Ruby lives in a houseboat and Jade’s boyfriend lives in one. Also, on a side note, there’s a guy named Titus in the story and Lockhart’s got a major character with that name in Fly on the Wall. Weirdness.

Anyway, that’s not important. If you like books about complex people facing difficult situations, you should enjoy this one.

* According to Merriam-Webster, this really is a word.

Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

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All the Bright Places book coverAll the Bright Places sort of destroyed me for a day, it was so emotionally demanding. I mean, the story took me through the wringer and once I’d finished it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and reliving the emotions I’d felt while reading it. I came to the book without being aware of the hype and the comparisons to Eleanor and Park and The Fault in Our Stars. Despite that, Eleanor and Park was exactly the book it made me think of, not because of the story, but because of the emotional depth and the journey it took me on.

Mental illness and suicide are at the forefront of everything in the book, but the story goes beyond the mental illness to tell a story about two teenagers who seem unbelievably real. Violet Markey was in a car accident that killed her sister several months before the book begins. Violet blames herself for what happened and has pretty much stopped living. She just floats from day to day and slips further into depression. The things she used to care about most don’t matter to her at all anymore. One day her feet carry her to the top of her school’s six-story-tall bell tower.

That’s where she encounters Theodore Finch, the school’s resident “freak,” as the bullies call him. But Finch isn’t a freak—he’s a kid with a serious and treatable mental illness that he doesn’t understand or want to acknowledge. We don’t initially have a name for what’s wrong with him, but he loses track of time, sometimes seems to wake up with no memory of how he got places, goes days without sleeping, and at times has so much energy that he has to run for miles to feel normal again. It’s not hard to figure it out if you know a little about mental illness, but it doesn’t get named until close to the end.

Finch is self-aware despite being afraid of labels, which he thinks will lead to being mistaken for a mental illness. Here he is thinking about a breakdown he had:

It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic when they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable just to make it simple for me and also for them.

He’s not wrong.

Despite Finch’s obsession with death, I was convinced throughout that he does want to live, but that he needs to learn how. And he’s trying. Although he resists the efforts of the school counselor he’s required to see, there are moments when he’s almost honest with him. And one time he tells Violet that he gets into these moods that he can’t shake:

“Kind of black, sinking moods. I imagine it’s what being in the eye of a tornado would be like. All calm and blinding at the same time. I hate them.”

It’s a huge moment because he’s actually being open and honest about how he feels. But Violet doesn’t have enough experience with him to recognize it. She chalks it up to being a teenager. Earlier in the book, he describes his father’s black moods:

“Like, the blackest black. Like, no moon, no stars, storm’s coming black.

She doesn’t make the connection right away—but it’s sad, because why would she? She’s not a psychiatrist. She’s just a kid with not much real-world experience.

If Finch isn’t going to get through to Violet, someone who deeply cares about him, what about his family? Violet and Finch’s families are radically different. Violet’s parents are engaged with her even though they don’t really know what to do for her. Admittedly, they don’t catch on to how badly Violet’s handling her sister’s death—they don’t see the depression for what it is. Probably they should have gotten her into counseling other than the school counselor. But it’s not unbelievable that they wouldn’t think of it.

Finch’s family, on the other hand, is horrible. He has a physically abusive father and a super-detached mother who is herself likely suffering from depression after being dumped by Finch’s father. She pays no attention to Finch or his sisters and it’s a deeply frustrating situation for the reader throughout the book. It’s so obvious that something is really, really wrong. But again, it’s entirely believable that a family like this could exist. It’s also clear that whatever afflicts Finch also afflicts his father and that his father would never, ever admit to having a mental illness.

I’ve talked mostly about Finch here, but Violet’s journey is just as significant. With his help, she learns to live again—she overcomes things that scare her and starts wanting to enjoy herself again. Rather than living a day at a time, she starts planning ahead. It’s a very realistic and believable recovery, given that her depression had a specific trigger.

Although this book is about mental illness and suicide, it’s not overly message-y. It’s a great story written really well. It is told in dual perspective, and Violet and Finch’s voices are totally different and true to their situations. Niven loads the book with little details that make the characters and settings authentic and relatable (this is one of the things that makes it like Eleanor and Park for me—because Rowell is a master of important details). Her descriptions throughout are excellent. Here’s Finch thinking about how he sometimes feels:

[T]he headaches are part of it. It’s like my brain is firing so fast that it can’t keep up with itself. Words. Colors. Sounds. Sometimes everything else fades into the background and all I’m left with is sound. I can hear everything, but not just hear it—I can feel it too. But then it can come on all at once—the sounds turn into light, and the light goes too bright, and it’s like it’s slicing me in two, and then comes the headache. But it’s not just a headache I feel, I can see it, like it’s made up of a million colors, all of them blinding.

I really cannot recommend this book enough. It’s important and well-executed and everyone should read it for insight into authentic depression and suicidal ideations, as well as for the good story.

Review: Break by Hannah Moskowitz

Posted on by kellyvincent

Break book coverThis book distressed me. Probably not in what could be said to be a good way, but in the right way (the way it was intended to).

The book is about a boy who is intentionally breaking his bones because he knows they grow back stronger. Jonah’s on a mission to break every single one in his body. This just gave me the willies every time he talked about it, or broke another. It’s hard to willfully break your own bones. I’m pretty sure that not many people can intentionally hurt themselves. It’s unnatural, after all.

So, it’s distressing to read about.

On top of his bone-breaking mission, Jonah has a complicated life: his parents fight all the time, he has an 8-month-old brother who screams constantly, and his 16-year-old brother, Jesse, is severely allergic to many foods. And Jonah feels responsible for taking care of Jesse. Jonah’s also got his friend Naomi, who films all his breaking, and a not-girlfriend named Charlotte who he makes out with.

We know going into the book that Jonah’s doing the bone-breaking because everything’s falling apart around him. And more than the first half is just more of that and all his family troubles and responsibilities. But then he gets found out about two-thirds of the way through the book and everything gets a little crazy. Unsurprisingly, Jonah’s self-destructive choices become a mental health issue and that has big consequences for him.

I’ll be honest—I’m not sure if I liked this book. It was definitely well-written (lots of realistic tough moments, well-drawn and believable characters, evocative use of language, and more). But the sense of discomfort was with me the whole time I was reading it. And once Jonah’s mental illness starts getting addressed, I felt like several improbable things happened. I also thought the ending left several things unresolved.

It still could easily appeal to a lot of readers, though. It’s definitely gritty and the characters are complicated and interesting. A lot of people will be able to relate to Jonah’s attempt at dealing with his problems in the wrong way.

Favorite Reads of 2017

Posted on by kellyvincent

I thought I’d go over my favorite YA books that I read in 2017. (These aren’t necessarily books published in 2017.)

E. Lockhart tops the list with her Ruby Oliver Series. The four books (plus the prequel in Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything) are so good—funny while dealing with some significant issues. See the review for the series or the one for Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything.

Next comes One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus, which is clever, fast-paced, and has more depth than I expected from a thriller. See the review here.

I really enjoyed Unbecoming by Jenny Downham. It also delves deep into the complicated life of a teenager but has extra layers dedicated to her mother and grandmother (both of which are interesting despite the fact that this is a YA book). You can see the review of the book for more. The other book by Downham that I read this year, Before I Die, also makes the list. This is a gut-wrenching book about, well, dying. I reviewed it here.

Lockhart shows up again again with The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which was technically a reread in 2017, but I think that counts. Frankie’s a fantastic character who takes something to the kind of extremes we’ve all probably wanted to go to at some point (but have been too chicken). The review is here.

One last that I’d like to mention is The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth. This is a seriously long book about being a lesbian in a harsh, not-understanding place. But it digs deep and keeps you interested. See the review here.

 

A Bonus

The view from my dining room window on Christmas day:

the march of the snow-capped bushes
They’re Coming…

I swear there didn’t use to be so many of them. Clearly, they’re multiplying.