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The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone by Adele Griffin

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Addison Stone is legendary.

She’s the girl who isn’t just a budding talent, an artist on the rise. She is hot artist right now, no qualifiers necessary.

Except, Addison Stone is dead, and she died under some mysterious circumstances. No one knows for sure what happened, and what comes together in Adele Griffin’s The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone is the testimony of people who knew her as they attempt to put together the pieces of just what happened. How could such a young talent be gone?

The construction of this book is brilliant. Never do we get Addison’s voice because she’s dead; instead, we’re only allowed to get to know Addison through the voices of people who knew and associated with her, for better or for worse. Some of the people who get the chance to speak up loved Addison and wanted to see her get better and better with her art. Others, though, weren’t fans of Addison nor her life. Some, maybe, were downright envious. Bit by bit, Addison’s life comes together through these narratives, which are interspersed with both Addison’s art and photographs of her life.

Without getting Addison’s voice directly, it might feel like this book is a bit gimmicky. But Griffin manages to do something smart: she not only works with the set up to tell a huge story, but she simultaneously uses the format to comment upon the idea of art and artifice. Because who are these people to tell us who Addison is? What do their concepts of her as a person — and her as an artist — do to render a full person? Can they? What of their biases and connections with and to her do to getting at the heart of who she was?

Addison wasn’t without problems. Being talented came at a price, and much of it had to do with pressure. Internally, externally, and from the entire world around her. Being young and female didn’t help the situation. There’s much here about gender and about the unique struggles and situations that talented girls find themselves in and how that sort of lifestyle is destructive not because of the individual living it, but because of the way the world operates and puts expectations and demands upon girls. Further complicating the situation and tying right into that is the struggle Addison had with her own romantic life. She was (and was not) interested in more than one boy. The revelations those boys have about Addison and their personal relationships with her, because they’re so biased, tell us a lot about Addison and her interest in them.

We get the opportunity to see Addison’s growth through her adolescence, and we learn exactly how she came to hone her talents and find herself living the big city artist dream. But as much as it seems like it was a dream, bits and pieces come together to tell us as readers perhaps it wasn’t a dream after all. That perhaps there was something bigger warring within Addison.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone has a plot twist in it that comes through the bits and pieces we learn about Addison’s younger years. It’s spoiler to reveal what that twist is, but it might be fair to note that there’s a tiny bit of a supernatural element to the mystery of the story. That tiny bit of supernatural, though, may not be precisely what it seems to be. It might indicate a far bigger challenge to Addison and her struggles with creativity and the bigger questions that surround artists and creative inspiration. More, this delves into what might be the most provocative element of the story (and, as noted above, the bigger idea behind the book’s construction): the idea of performance. What is performance? Is it art? Is it life? Is it both? Who are the performers within one’s own life? At what point do you get to separate yourself from the work you do? Are you granted permission to do so, and if that’s the case, how do you protect that inner self from the bigger world taking in what it is you do and create?

Also, who owns a story once it’s out there? Is it the artist or is it those who enjoy the art?

The voices and perspectives in this book are unique and easy to navigate. Though we hear from a lot of people, it’s never confusing. Much of what emerges from the cast of characters is in itself the story: we get to see and experience what envy and love look, feel, and taste like without those things being described straightly to us. The immersive setup makes it easy to forget that this isn’t an actual story of a person who lived; this is a fictional account of a fictional character’s death.

Griffin’s novel is experimental but exceptionally successful at being so. This is the kind of book mystery lovers will want to get their hands on, as well any readers who are themselves creative and artistic and struggle with the internal and external manifestations of themselves and their art. It’s a complex, layered book, but it’s a lot of fun because of that. There are serious themes, but the way they come together and the way it’s put together and examined by the reader is the most enjoyable part. This is a book of pieces and characters, but it’s ultimately the reader who gets to put them together. Addison is an older character, so readers seeking stories at the upper end of YA or about teens who choose not to pursue traditional college/career paths will want to pick this up, as well. The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone asks more questions than it answers — and it begs to be discussed because of that.

If the book piques your interest, check out this great piece at School Library Journal between Liz Burns and Adele Griffin. Learning about how the book came together — and the girl who inspired the way Addison looks — is really fascinating.

For those who like a little story to your book covers, too, the cover of this book is not only fitting, but representative of an Addison habit you’ll come to discover. It’s a small detail, but it made the experience of the book that much more enjoyable.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone will be available August 12 — next Tuesday — from Soho Teen. Review copy received from the publisher. 

Audio Review: Teardrop by Lauren Kate

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Eureka’s mother Diana died in a freak weather event a few months ago when a wave crashed over the bridge they were driving along. While Diana didn’t make it, Eureka was rescued by someone, but her memories of the incident are murky. Afterward, she goes to live with her father, who has been divorced from her mother for several years and has remarried to a woman named Rhoda. Tensions between Eureka and her stepmother are high, especially since Rhoda is a main force behind Eureka’s mandated visits to see a therapist to deal with her grief and her recent suicide attempt.

While driving to a school event one day, Eureka is rear-ended by a car driven by another teenager, a boy named Ander. He acts oddly, though Eureka is strangely drawn to him. He begins popping up in the same places where Eureka goes. Her best girl friend, Cat, encourages Eureka to avoid him at all costs, but Eureka isn’t convinced he’s dangerous. It soon becomes clear that he has something to do with the strange items Diana left for Eureka in her will: a book written in an archaic language, a locket, and a strange stone that can’t get wet. When Eureka manages to translate the book, she learns that everything – Ander, the items, Diana’s accident – leads back to the legend of Atlantis.

Goodreads reviewers are particularly vicious about Lauren Kate’s previous series, Fallen. I expect a lot of that has to do with how popular they are: the more people who read them, the more people will find they dislike them, and many of them will be very vocal about it. (The flip side is true as well, of course – it’s certainly found a lot of fans.) I haven’t read them – angel fiction isn’t my thing – so I can’t say how they compare to this new Teardrop series. What I can tell you is that I don’t foresee Teardrop winning over any new fans.

The primary problem with the book is pacing. It’s 11 discs long and it seems like half of them are solely exposition. Most of the book is concerned with mysterious goings-on in Eureka’s town, some of which are repeated (for example, we see Eureka’s best guy friend Brooks acting hot-and-cold toward her at least half a dozen times before it’s revealed why). When things really do get going, it’s near the end of the book, and it involves a huge info-dump that coincides with the climax of the story. Not the most interesting or engaging way to reveal information. I have a feeling many readers will grow bored before getting to the payoff.

As for the payoff itself, it’s a little disappointing. I gave this one a whirl because I’ve long been obsessed with stories about Atlantis, but the twist Kate gives the legend is not terribly exciting. Without spoiling things too much, I’ll say that it involves Eureka’s inability to cry – her tears would cause something terrible to happen, something that has to do with the lost city. I think there might be a metaphor hidden in here about teenage girls’ emotions and how they inspire fear in people, but if it’s there, it’s muddled. Mostly I just thought it was a little ridiculous; it was hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

Erin Spencer’s narration is good; it neither enhances nor detracts from the book. I had a hard time determining if Eureka’s best girl friend was named Cat or Pat – it sounded like one or the other on different occasions (it’s Cat). She voices Eureka in a slow, deliberate way, which is normal for audiobooks (don’t want the listener to miss something!) but also works well for Eureka’s character, who is grief-stricken and depressed. The other characters are only partially voiced.

This would be a good pick for fans of light fantasy who don’t mind a slow-moving story. It’s the kind of book that focuses a lot on its non-fantasy elements: high school friendships and romances, parties, grief over a dead parent, tensions within blended families. The fantasy portions seem almost an afterthought at times. Waterfall, the sequel, publishes this October, and hopefully it includes a little extra meat to the re-imagined Atlantis legend and less plodding to the story, but I’m not sure I’ll read it to find out.

Audiobook received from the publisher. Teardrop is available now.

Audio Review: The Tyrant’s Daughter by J. C. Carleson

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Fifteen year old Laila has always been told that her father is the king of their middle Eastern country. When he’s killed in a coup by his own brother, Laila’s uncle, she escapes with her family – her mother and younger brother – to America. There, Laila’s mother keeps up the pretense that Laila’s father was a king, even calling her younger brother a prince. Laila slowly begins to learn the truth: her father was a dictator, a tyrant, a man who kept his power by force.

While Laila struggles to adapt to her new life in America, she also struggles to understand her old life in this new context. Written by a former CIA officer, the book has a strong ring of authenticity. Carleson wisely chose to create a fictional country for her book, but the story is based on an amalgamation of real people and events. Nothing is played for gasps or used to deliberately alarm the reader. Instead, we’re given a chance to see the world from Laila’s point of view. Her voice is authentically teen, but she provides a very different perspective from most other YA books. It’s fascinating and makes for riveting reading.

Carleson’s book tackles multiple topics and themes, juggling them all successfully. Laila’s story begins as an exploration of her experience as an immigrant, including her assimilation into American culture. A white student fascinated with international students quickly “adopts” her as a friend and initiates her into the school’s culture, including how many American girls relate to boys. This portion of the novel is particularly well-done. We see Laila’s judgment of her new American acquaintances quite starkly. At one point she tells the listener that the first word that sprang to her mind when she saw her new friend was “whore.” There’s the flip side to this, too, as Laila experiences the myriad ways in which the other teens judge her.

While Laila is an immigrant, her story is not typical of most immigrants. Her life in her home country was extraordinarily privileged, but it was also sheltered. Laila knew nothing of her father’s actions, not even whispers or rumors, really. Her American friends speak openly about it, though, and for the first time Laila has access to the internet where she can look up whatever she likes. And she does. Watching her grapple with her new knowledge adds another layer to the story, complicating it further.

Added to the mix is some international intrigue. An American man stops by their home frequently, and Laila eventually guesses that he’s an agent for the CIA. He indicates to Laila that their family is in America due to his kindness, and that her mother must hold up her end of the bargain – namely by giving him intelligence. But Laila’s mother has her own motivations, and she only feeds bits and pieces of what’s really going on to Laila. This part of the story could easily have become unrealistic, turning a thoughtful, complex novel into a Tom Clancy book for teens. But Carleson doesn’t fall into this trap. What she has crafted instead is a multi-layered novel with a realistic role for her teen to play. Laila isn’t an action-adventure hero. Instead, she overhears phone calls, draws conclusions, and tries to puzzle out the hidden meaning behind her mother’s words.

There are many more aspects of the book I could discuss, such as how Laila interacts with refugees from her own country, or how the novel’s women have their own kind of power, or how it’s impossible to determine what is right and what is wrong, even after it ends. This is a complex, meaty book. It’s got so many parts, all the parts of a complicated life, and it’s executed nearly perfectly. 

The book is narrated quite well by Meera Simhan, who voices Laila with a light accent, just enough to give her a realistic voice without turning her into a caricature. You can listen to an excerpt here.

The end of the book is devastating. It pulls no punches and provides no easy answers. With this kind of book, there really aren’t answers at all, much less easy ones. Because the ending is open-ended, it also makes Laila’s story seem a bit more real. An author’s note and a some commentary by Dr. Cheryl Benard, a RAND researcher, are must-reads. They provide more context for Laila’s story and also give real-world examples of young people in similar situations and what their ultimate fates were. Fascinating, timely, discussable, and highly recommended.

Audiobook provided by the publisher. The Tyrant’s Daughter is available now.

The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang & Sonny Liew

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I don’t think Gene Yang has written a book yet that I haven’t liked. His latest, The Shadow Hero, is an ambitious project, one that should instantly establish itself as part of the comics canon. He’s taken an obscure character from the 1940s, possibly the first-ever Asian American superhero, and written an origin story for him that is fresh, timely, and fun.

The Green Turtle was a short-lived hero from the Golden Age of comics. His face was almost always obscured, which some argue was done in order to allow the creator to make him an Asian-American hero as opposed to the white American that the publisher wanted. Yang and Liew have pulled this character from the footnotes of comics history and made him into an interesting and fully-formed superhero, the son of Chinese immigrants experiencing his teenage years through the lenses of his heritage as well as his unconventional ability.

Like much of Yang’s other work, this is a story about growing up as a Chinese-American, but it also feels very much like a classic superhero story. Hank’s parents were both born in China and came to America separately, for different reasons. Hank’s mother felt like she settled for Hank’s father, and she doesn’t have the life she always dreamed of. This contributes to her desire to make something of her son, and she sets about trying to figure out a way for Hank to get real superpowers, much like the Anchor of Justice, a real superhero in this book’s world (set just before the second world war). Hank isn’t into it at first, but as you might expect, something eventually does happen and Hank becomes the Green Turtle.

Yang takes a lot of tropes (a nicer word for cliches in this case) from 40s comics and incorporates them into Hank’s story. The book includes things like a detective named Lawful, gangsters as villains, freak accidents that imbue people with powers, and so on. Rather than feeling lazy or derivative, these choices feel deliberate, especially when accompanied by a hero protagonist who is pointedly Chinese-American as his inspiration was never allowed to be. The book feels like a homage to Chu Hing (the creator of the Green Turtle from the 40s) as well as a corrective – in a small way – to decades of comics history that never allowed stories like these featuring characters like Hank and his family to be told.

The book also functions really well as a straight-up superhero comic, no context needed to enjoy it. The story is interesting, the art is crisp and expressive, the characters are nicely rounded. The plot also has some unique mythology behind it, tying it back to Hank’s heritage, lending Hank and his nemesis extra depth and adding some much-needed layers to the story.

I love superhero origin stories featuring teenagers; they’re such perfect metaphors for the teenage experience. I see this as a great readalike for fans of the new Ms. Marvel, someone who is also struggling to grow up as part of a cultural minority in America while simultaneously grappling with new abilities that are both amazing and terrifying.

The author’s note at the end gives context on the original comic and reproduces an issue in full. It’s a must-read, enhancing the significance of Yang and Liew’s own work. Highly recommended.

Finished copy provided by the publisher. The Shadow Hero is available now (so no excuses).

Dirty Wings by Sarah McCarry

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Maia and Cass’s friendship happens by chance. Their worlds should have never collided, but they did, and now that they have, the girls are inseparable.

Maia’s adopted, “lucky” to be living in a home where everything she ever needs is handed to her — as long as she’s proper, behaves, doesn’t get out of line, and pursues that talent she has playing piano. She’s Vietnamese, and has no knowledge of her birth lineage or how she ended up in this home, with this strict, powerful mother and a father who is more absent, more hung over, than he is present.

Cass is a street girl. She lives in a squat house, wears the kinds of things you’d expect of a girl who doesn’t have a home to go back to. It wasn’t her choice, after the abusive step fathers and the mother who couldn’t offer any most stability than she thought she could make for herself. Hers is a tough life, a brutal contrast to Maia’s, but it’s when their paths collide and when Cass gives Maia a taste of the wild freedom she has, that Maia can’t get enough. That Maia wants to experience for and by herself.

Dirty Wings is the second book in Sarah McCarry’s trilogy that begins with All Our Pretty Songs. It can be read alone, as a stand alone, since the events within the first book don’t have any bearing on the events of the second. This is a book about the teen lives of the mothers of the girls in book one, and while it informs All Our Pretty Songs, you could read these books out of order (though I will say that one of the revelations that comes at the end of Dirty Wings was so powerful, it made me go back and reread the first book because I put together some of the pieces of mistruth betrayed by the unnamed narrator in that story).

In Dirty Wings, an intense, life-changing friendship unravels, but it’s not a pretty, glossy kind of friendship. It’s rough and it’s dirty, and it’s transformative for both girls.

The narrative in this story moves back and forth between the present “Now” and the past “Then.” We begin in the now, as one girl stands on the edge of a cliff, ready to throw herself down and end her life. The other girl pulls her back. It is here we see the immediacy — the necessity — of their friendship. We flash back, then, to the moment they met, and then further back to the moments where they realized how much they needed one another even then. Maia needed Cass to help her come to her own, and Cass, despite later insistency that she never changed, needed Maia to help show her what a fulfilling, loving friendship could be.

Because what Maia and Cass have for one another is love. It’s a phrase they’ll open themselves up to saying. A phrase that, for neither of them, had been empty before they found one another. A phrase that didn’t have the heart behind it. A phrase that comes with actual tender feelings that neither had allowed themselves to have.

It’s about intimacy that’s not physical and not romantic.

Not until near the end of the story do we understand how the “Then” and the “Now” intersect. Because in the now, Cass and Maia are on the road. They’re in California, then Mexico, then heading toward Seattle. In the “Then,” both girls are deeply in Seattle and in their respective lives — Cass in the squat home and Maia in her pristine home, her hours split between her piano teacher Oscar’s home practicing and her own home practicing even more. Cass’s future is never talked about because her future is the day-by-day. Maia’s, on the other hand, is clear. She’s going to an audition at a major, prestigious school in New York City and if she gets in (when she gets in), her life will be on the exact right path. Or will it be? Is this her path or the path her parents and Oscar so desperately want for her?

When Maia and Cass are out together in the “Then,” talking about the future, about their lives, about how they do and don’t have the capacity to mold it to their liking, they decide it’s time to get on the road. Maia steals her father’s car, and that’s when they enter the “Now.”

Before they get to that point, it becomes clear there’s something going on in the “Now” that doesn’t make Cass all that happy. His name is Jason, and he’s the leader in a band the girls went to see on one of their stops. He’s nothing special, according to Cass, but the moment Maia sees him she falls desperately, hopelessly In Love, and the girls decide to follow him down to Mexico. It’s an all-or-nothing romance Maia flings herself into, and Jason does nothing to stop her from falling for him. He encourages it even because he, too, enjoys what attention Maia puts upon him. It is no time before the two announce their engagement, and Cass is left to feel lost and alone in a way she never felt before. In a way that made her question her own future, now that she’s lost her best friend to a boy who won her with pretty songs and pretty promises of a rock and roll future.

There is so much to dig into here. This is a rich, layered story with characters who are so deeply flawed and yet incredibly fascinating and compelling because of these very flaws. Cass and Maia’s love for one another is palpable, and because McCarry’s story is written from a third person point of view, it’s clear that even when Jason enters the picture, Maia’s love for her best friend doesn’t go away. It’s influenced and strained because of Jason and because of the excitement there is in chasing something new, but the feelings she has for Cass don’t change because she recognizes that it’s with Cass she was best able to think about who she is. Even if how she pursues it — how she chases it — how she names it — is wrong. At the end of the book, there’s a great line where Cass talks about how much she’s seen Maia change and grow over the course of their friendship but that she herself will always be the kind of girl she is. This line, seemingly simple, tells us as readers just how much Cass herself has changed, too.

We do end the story knowing Maia’s pregnant.

We end the story knowing Jason’s not going to be around much.

And we also end the story knowing something happened between Cass and Jason that unlocks a million answers to All Our Pretty Songs. Or at least, perhaps it unlocks a million answers — Cass’s reliability is always up for question.

Woven into the story is the fantastical element. Dirty Wings takes from the myth of Persephone, but in no way is it a retelling nor is knowledge of the myth necessary to appreciate the story. Readers who do know it will get it and those who do not will see those elements as wholly part of the story itself. Both Maia and Cass are haunted by images of a man in a dark robe, and both of the girls have their own interpretations and expectations of this vision, and how each of them chooses to interact with it not only illuminates who they are as individuals, but also gives depth to what their relationship becomes at the end. This is fantasy light: there’s not a world being built, and even with the interweaving of the Persephone myth, the question remains up in the air of whether what happened “actually” happened in the story or whether both girls suffer from something more internal. For me, it was a little bit of both, especially because of how Cass chose to pursue and compartmentalize these visions. Perhaps, too, it was symbolic of what could come between two girls who are best friends.

Dirty Wings will appeal to readers who want a challenging, literary story about friendship that pulses with music and gorgeous prose. It’s not for the faint of heart readers — drugs, alcohol, partying, and sex are all part of this world, but by virtue of the way the girls are written and characterized, it’s clear none of what they do or engage in is glamorized. Their choices impact them greatly. This is the kind of book perfect for those who identify as goth or alternative or who believe they don’t ever see themselves present in books. They are here in this book and in a way that’s authentic, thoughtful, and full of depth.

If you want to know a bit more about Dirty Wings or Sarah McCarry’s writing, as well as enter to win copies of her books, check out this great interview.

Dirty Wings will be available next Tuesday, July 15  from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher. In full disclosure, Sarah and I both write for Book Riot.