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Review: Dark River by Mary Jane Beaufrand

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Dark River book cover

I stumbled across Dark River at Half Price Books and knew nothing about it, but it sounded interesting. The cover asked, What deadly secrets does the river hold?

Ronnie’s parents move her to a small, rural-ish town in Oregon so they can run a country inn. Her dad is a former attorney who doesn’t miss it, and Ronnie is a former city girl who does. Her mom cooks exotic stuff to make people feel better, being a former TV cooking show star. Ronnie’s a little lonely and has just one friend who works at the inn, Gretchen, and a guy at school she has a crush on, though that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. She also befriends a young girl named Karen, who she babysits.

The river is basically a moody character in the story, setting the entire tone of the book. Ronnie is a little fascinated by it, as well as the rest of nature that she’s getting acquainted with. She watches everything during her long runs out on the country roads.  But her comfortable world is rocked when she finds Karen’s body at the river while on one of her runs. At first, it seems not surprising that the volatile river would take a life.

But things get more complicated when it turns out that Karen didn’t drown accidentally. And a warning from the sheriff to Ronnie about Gretchen seems like nothing but eventually turns out to be a harbinger of some really dreadful things. The world is not as Ronnie sees it—it’s much darker and she has to come face to face with it.

She sense of foreboding is there throughout the novel so that you know something is going to happen, but I for one had no idea what it was going to be. And it’s interesting and relevant. Overall, a good read, and relatively short if you’re not in the mood for a something lengthy (though it’s emotionally hefty, for sure).

Buy Dark River on Amazon US

Review: Winger and Stand Off by Andrew Smith

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Winger book cover
Stand-Off book cover

Andrew Smith always impresses me. But of all of his books that I’ve read, Winger and Stand-Off are my favorites because they are funny but still speak to something real. As always with Smith, the main character is a boy, which offers a different perspective from what I usually read. The novels follow Ryan Dean West, a smart kid who’s skipped two grades and attends a boarding school. He’s got a little bit of an artistic bent and draws great little illustrations covering various aspects of his life. He’s also pretty crude and gives us a direct line into the male teen psyche, which is both funny and a teensy bit disturbing. It’s not like I didn’t know that sex is on their minds about 80% of the time, but it’s still funny to see it played out. Still, the male characters feel very real and even relatable.

Ryan Dean’s in a slightly awkward position since he’s younger than his peers (his cohort, I guess I could say). At the beginning of Winger, his best friend is a girl named Annie, and unsurprisingly he’s in love with her, but as he’s just fourteen and she’s sixteen, she (also unsurprisingly) thinks he’s just a kid. Ryan Dean also has to play a sport—and he chooses rugby, which is interesting because it’s a pretty tough game. I’m not giving anything important away if I tell you there’s a pretty funny and unquestionably painful scene where Ryan Dean’s crotch gets stepped on by a heavy cleat, which actually causes bleeding. Poor guy. Throughout the course of his junior year, he also becomes really good friends with an older boy named Joey, who serves as a bit of a mentor while Ryan Dean makes some pretty bad choices along the way. When something really terrible happens at the end of the book, Ryan Dean’s grown up some so he can handle it a little better than he might have earlier.

But he doesn’t handle it all that well, and that carries us into the sequel, Stand Off. In this one, he’s a fifteen-year-old senior but he gets stuck with an annoying twelve-year-old freshman roommate in one of the the smallest dorm rooms on campus. The powers that be at the school figure Ryan Dean will be great for helping the kid—Sam—adjust to life at the school. He resents this, since he’s spent his whole time there trying to transcend the age difference. By now, he’s managed to convince Annie to be his girlfriend, so things should looking up, even if Sam is a little fixated on her, himself. Ryan Dean’s also been made captain of the rugby team, which brings its own set of challenges. Most importantly, the troubles of the last year are still haunting him, leaving him with some genuine problems he’s afraid to face head-on. The novel takes us through that year, with him finally dealing with everything by getting the help he needs to make it happen.

I really can’t recommend these books enough.

You can buy Winger and Stand-Off on Amazon US

Review: Dealing with Blue by Stacia Leigh

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Dealing with Blue book cover

Dealing with Blue is a sweet YA romance featuring an unlikely partnership between Suzy Blue, a nice girl who might be a tiny bit uptight, and J.J. Radborne, a good guy who’s just been dumped by his long-time girlfriend. They’re really likable and credible characters who both grow (and grow up) through the book. I quite enjoyed the chance to get to know them. I should mention that Stacia is my critique partner so I had the opportunity to see not only the characters grow, but also the book itself. The end result is charming.

Suzy and J.J. have known each other since they were little kids, because they lived next door to each other for years. But when Suzy’s parents split a while back, she moved out to live with her dad. But now he’s been shipped off to a war zone and she’s forced to move back in with her troubled mom. I say “troubled” because she’s a hoarder, and this means things are difficult for Suzy. Personally, I really enjoyed this setup and watching how it all unfolds through the rest of the book. It’s a fairly honest (but not unsympathetic) look at hoarding and the way it touches the lives of people living with it.

J.J.’s life isn’t nearly so difficult, but it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, either. Getting dumped by his girlfriend really sucks. They were together forever and he thinks he really loves her. But he has a plan for this—make her jealous and she’ll want him back. Who better to help with this then his old pal, Suzy? All he has to do is teach her to drive so she can escape. It doesn’t occur to him to wonder why she needs to get away so bad, but it doesn’t matter since theirs will be a mutually beneficial deal.

Watching Suzy and J.J.’s relationship unfold is a lot of fun. It’s sweet and cute but wholly believable. Suzy is terrified of J.J. finding out about her mom’s hoarding, and the whole time I was wondering how J.J. he would react when he finds out (because of course, he has to). The resolution is interesting and satisfying.

Another way that the book provides an unusual perspective is that it feels more like J.J.’s story to me. Usually a romance focuses on the girl’s perspective, so if you like seeing more of the guy’s perspective, you’ll especially like this.

You can buy Dealing with Blue on Amazon US

Review: Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner

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Carrie Pilby book cover
Carrie Pilby offers an interesting portrait of an unusual girl, one I can sort of relate to, though she’s way smarter and way more well-balanced at her age than I was.

Carrie is 19 and she’s recently graduated with a degree from Harvard because she’s very, very smart. But she’s also become a bit of a hermit. Her only family is her father, and he’s in Europe. He does support her, though, and she has a decent apartment to hide out in. Because that’s what she’s doing. She spends most of her time lounging in bed in her apartment. She’s obviously got low-grade depression (possibly dysthymia) but it seems to come mostly from being isolated.

And why is she isolated? Well, she’s a little socially awkward, it’s true. But the reader can easily see that the real problem is her worldview. She’s very cynical and sees almost everyone around her as hypocrites (sex-obsessed ones at that). She’s fairly judgmental and holds everyone else up to her own high standard. If they’re not as smart as she is, they’re stupid. If they don’t hold themselves to the same moral standards, they’re horrible. And so on.

So in some ways, she’s not the most likable person. But like every good New Yorker, she has a therapist. Hers challenges her to change her life by doing a few smallish things, and she finally relents and gives it a shot. He’s told her to list 10 things she likes, join a group, go on a date, tell someone she cares, and celebrate New Year’s. For most people, this wouldn’t be hard, but it is for Carrie because she has to change her outlook to make it all happen. So the book is suddenly about dismantling her worldview a piece at a time. Not too far into the book, she finally gets a job that makes her interact with other humans and we start to see her walls shrink a little. Her quest to finish the list takes her a lot of unexpected places and we watch her grow and finally learn how to live a little more happily.

Oh, and it’s funny, too. Self-aware social misfits often are.

You can buy Carrie Pilby: A hilarious and charming story on Amazon

Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

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Beauty Queens book cover

I read this book over a year ago and it currently still my favorite recent-ish read. It’s absolutely hilarious—I laughed out loud over and over. And it’s also genius. It cleverly highlights the ridiculous expectations society has on teen girls and women in general. The humor focuses on using the absurd and the book plays with stereotypes to great comic effect. Bray manages to create realistic and believable characters using US state stereotypes as the template. Eventually, she turns everything on its head.

In the book, contestants in a teen beauty pageant crash land on a desert island. Only thirteen of them survive, representing a little bit of everything. One Indian-American, one African-American, a Jewish girl, and a bunch of white WASPy girls hailing from states all over the country. Miss Texas—Taylor—is awesome. She takes charge the way a bold Texan should (even making them woo-hoo enthusiastically), making sure to keep up the propriety these girls are used to: “Miss Montana? Is that the way a Miss Teen Dream sits, all slutty like that with her hoo-hoo showing?”

One of the girls spends the duration with an airline serving tray embedded in her forehead. Taylor admonishes her for being upset—“let’s not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things live.”

When they’re taking stock of the skills and knowledge they have, Jennifer tells everyone that her family traditions are alcoholism, dysfunction, and “anything you can make from government cheese.”

But my favorite is Adina, Miss New Hampshire, who entered the contest as a joke and is my personal hero. She missed the memo about the societal rule that a respectable girl doesn’t say anything about herself that might be construed as bragging.

I won’t spoil the fun for you, but I have to say when the hot pirates show up, I thought I would die from laughing.

One last thing: I listened to the audiobook, which was one of the best ones I’ve ever listened to. It was narrated by the author herself, and she does different voices for all the characters–often, I find this annoying, but here it totally works (maybe because I trust her to know what she was imagining when she wrote it).

You can buy Beauty Queens on Amazon