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When I Was The Greatest by Jason Reynolds

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If you’re looking for urban fiction, you might want to give Jason Reynolds’s When I Was The Greatest a shot. Set in Bed Stuy, New York, this is the story of Ari, a good guy who is just trying to pull it all together and keep afloat in a neighborhood which isn’t always the easiest, the fairest, or the safest place to be.

But this isn’t really a story about feeling sorry for Ari. Ari is a pretty sweet guy — he absolutely adores his mother and his little sister Jazz. His dad, who is not living with them, has made a lot of mistakes in his life, but Ari understands the whys and hows of those mistakes and accepts his father despite them. Dad comes around quite a bit, so he’s not an entirely absent father.

Then there are Noodles and Needles. Not their real names, of course. They’re Ari’s neighbors, brothers, who are about as divergent in personality from one another, and from Ari, as possible. Noodles is older, and he’s probably Ari’s best friend. But he’s a troublemaker. Noodles engages in activities he shouldn’t and he does so without a whole lot of remorse. He’ll steal and he’ll act out and it’s not a big deal to him.

Needles gets his nickname from the needles he uses to knit. He learns how to knit from Ari’s mother, who decided to show Needles how to do it because her background in working with mentally ill taught her that sometimes having a means of refocusing attention can help a person with an illness.

Needles has tourette syndrome, and he regularly breaks out into tics. The knitting, as they all discover, is a means of helping calm Needles down during a tic. He loves the activity, as it keeps both his mind and his hands busy. Ari thinks it’s kind of neat that Needles is so taken with it, but Noodles is far less into it — it makes his brother look even weaker than he already is.

Reynolds’s novel is a character-driven one, as the bulk of the action in this story is far less important than the development of the boys. We learn pretty early on that Noodles acts out, and Ari suspects there’s a lot more going on within him as to why he chooses to behave the way he does. As we get to know the characters better after the big incident — which I’ll get to in a minute — we discover than Noodles’s behavior is related to the resentment he has toward Needles’s illness. Noodles believes that his brother’s tics are the reason that their father left them, and even though he loves Needles, he can’t help but associate his father’s absence with him. Of course, there is a lot more to it than that, but knowing Noodles’s world view, his beliefs and suspicions ring true and honest. He’s a teen in a rough part of town with no father and a brother who he loves and wants to love more, but he can’t make sense of the way all of the cards have fallen in his life.

What Ari wants to do is get all three of them into one of the biggest area parties for just one night. That party, which will be brimming with pretty girls, booze, and good beats, should help loosen them all up. And of course, it’ll make them look cool, since they’re all under 18. The bulk of the plot of When I Was The Greatest revolves around Ari, Noodles, and Needles getting new hair cuts and styles and flashier clothes in order to fit in to this party. But when they get to the party and Ari’s put into a corner he doesn’t know how to escape from, he fears that his reputation will forever be tainted. Except that’s not really the thing he has to be worried about.

Needles is in trouble. And Noodles will be in trouble, too.

How the three boys untangle themselves from the party and the fight that broke out is what changes their relationships with one another and for Ari, it changes his relationship with his father.

The setting in this story is rich, but what I think I appreciated about it the most was that while this was urban and while it indeed featured the elements you’d come to “expect” in an urban novel — violence, drinking and drugs, gangs, and so forth — that’s not at all what the book was about. This was a book featuring black teens who are just that: teens. They’re navigating relationships with one another and they’re figuring out their own selves in the world they’re a part of. Things aren’t perfect, but the story is never focused on that imperfection. It’s on the sidelines. The focus is instead on the characters. Reynolds does an excellent job of making Ari’s voice authentic and relatable. There are good adults in this book, too, and what makes some of them such good adults is that they’ve all made mistakes and not only do they own up to them, but they talk about how much they’ve learned from their past choices. Beyond Ari’s mother — who works two jobs to make ends meet — and Ari’s father — who does sketchy stuff in order to make a living — there is Ari’s boxing coach who becomes an incredible mentor for Ari not just in terms of the sport, but on a much grander scale.

When I Was The Greatest is a bit of a slower read, though, because it is more focused on character than it is on plot. Perhaps a means of describing this book would be to call it literary urban fiction. This book should have good appeal to teen readers, and in conjunction, there’s a lot that can be talked about. There is great service done even in the packaging of this book. The knitted gun on the cover is appealing and raises questions of what role it could have in the story (there’s not a knitted gun, but there is knitting and there is a gun incident that stands as the moment when Ari and his father really connect).

Readers who love Coe Booth’s work will find Reynolds’s novel to be a really good read alike. As long as language isn’t an issue — because one of the characters suffers from tics — this book would be okay to hand to younger teen readers eager for edgier realistic fiction.

When I Was The Greatest is available now. Review copy picked up from my library. 

The Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher (& a giveaway!)

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Emily’s father came home after a trip out to the woods — somewhere he went regularly — and he had the body of a teen girl in his arms.

She was dead.

It doesn’t take long before police arrive and Emily’s father’s put into jail, accused of murdering the girl. He was the only one it could be, right? But Emily has more questions than answers, though she is positive her dad was in no way responsible for killing Ashlee. Sure, he might suffer PTSD and he might not always be in his rightest of minds, but her father isn’t a killer and no way will she let him be locked up for the crime he didn’t commit.

Welcome to Lucy Christopher’s The Killing Woods.

Damon is the boyfriend of the girl — Ashlee — who was found in the woods. He’s at peace with the idea that the person who killed Ashlee has been found, but he’s not at all at peace with how she died in the first place. Worse, he feels immense guilt because when she died, he was too drunk and high from their playing “the Game” to know up from down or even be aware of what was happening around him.

All he knows is that they went into the woods and she didn’t come out alive.

Christopher’s novel is told in alternating view points, both of which are full of desperation. Emily determined to clear her father’s name from the crime and Damon, determined to find out just what happened and how Ashlee died. Emily and Damon aren’t coming together on this; quite the opposite, in fact. School’s turning into a real hell hole from Emily, as people see what they believe her father did as somehow something she should have to suffer for further.

But even if the two of them aren’t coming together, Emily and Damon will come together, when they realize that the only way to put the entire story to bed is if they figure out the timeline of events. Who was really in the woods? What really happened to Ashlee? What role did Emily’s dad actually play in her death, if any at all? The novel is built upon the two of them investigating this independently but it’s when they have to piece it together collaboratively that the tensions and stakes rise even higher.

The woods in Christopher’s novel are exceptionally depicted. Part of why the woods matter so much is because of what they meant to Emily’s father. The woods contained an old bunker, and he liked to spend his time in there. Maybe “liked to spend his time there” is a bit misleading. Emily’s father felt somewhat comforted by the bunker’s presence. As readers who know anything about mental illness know, what helps a person doesn’t always make the most sense. In this case, it doesn’t seem clear why her father would be comforted by a bunker, but at the same time, it makes perfect sense.

Damon and his friends weren’t strangers to the woods themselves. In fact, they enjoyed the sprawling, somewhat odd, woods because of how it afforded them the chance to play “the Game.” The game was one that let them show off their masculinity. Their power. Helped them train to become tough guys and strong guys. It would be a nice means of getting them prepped were they ever to want to join the military because they’d be prepared physically — and mentally. And the day Ashlee died, she was playing the game with them as well. Except her version of the game differed from their version of the game. And the day Ashlee died, the game involved a little more partying from the boys than it did usually.

And the day Ashlee died, more secrets spilled out than ever before.

Perhaps Damon and Ashlee weren’t exclusive.

Perhaps Ashlee wasn’t a victim of Emily’s father’s hands.

Perhaps Ashlee was a victim of . . . herself.

Don’t want to be spoiled? Go ahead and skip down to the paragraph beginning with a “*.” Because from here on it, it’s all spoilers since there is a lot I want to talk about which can’t be tackled without spoiling the reveal.

As it turns out, Ashlee wasn’t killed by Emily’s father. Nor was she killed by something that Damon did. Throughout the book, we see both of their stories, and we worry about whether Damon’s being drunk and high when she died played a big role in what happened and we worry at times that Emily’s father really did commit the crime. Christopher is savvy in how she builds her evidence for both sides, and because both teens are well-voiced and their passion for answers strong, there are enough faults in logic in each of their tellings that it seems maybe what they hoped wasn’t true really is. For a long time, I bought more into Damon being responsible, though at times I saw where Emily’s father was responsible, too. This is great story crafting, and it compelled me to keep pushing forward to figure out who the responsible party really was. But better — I hoped neither of those possibilities was the actual explanation.

And neither were.

Even though we’re given a pretty big picture of the story through two sets of eyes and two perspectives, what we aren’t knowledgeable of is what ends up playing the biggest role in the resolution: we don’t know Ashlee. We know of her. We know she played the Game. We know she was Damon’s girlfriend. We know they were sexually active and involved and we know how much that mattered to Damon. But beyond that, we’re not keen on who she was or what her goals or desires were.

Until there’s a break and we learn that maybe Ashlee wasn’t entirely sympathetic. That maybe she harbored some really dark secrets. That maybe she wasn’t exactly as faithful to Damon as Damon was to her.

Because Ashlee liked attention and she liked the attention of boys who’d give it to her. Especially when those boys were playing their Game. Especially when she could get a boy alone and let him play her game.

Although it’s well-written and plays into a bigger, quite interesting, theme about emerging sexuality and experimentation with adulthood (drugs, drinking, the Game’s goals of building and bulking up), where Christopher’s story falls apart a bit for me is when we get the big Ashlee reveal. Her game was the choking game. She lived for the high of being choked and passing out. In many ways, it’s written to be equivalent in terms of a high as reaching orgasm. It was the height of pleasure and thrill for her, and that she could convince boys to do this to her, it was even more of a high to her. Ashlee’s death happened because the boy she convinced to choke her managed to hurt her more than intended — either by her or by him. Emily’s father comes into the picture when he tried to rescue her from the woods and resuscitate her. Because her father had been in the bunker and managed to figure out there was a girl he could try to save in a way that he’d failed to save when he was himself at war. This was his shot at redemption for past actions (again, handled exceptionally well knowing that this was his means of making sense of PTSD through his PTSD-suffering mind).

What seems like a logical explanation for what happened doesn’t entirely fit the voice of the story nor does it work for me in terms of the ages of the characters. The choking game is very juvenile: it’s the kind of thing teens experiment with in middle school and something that — at least in my experience — becomes a warning to kids very early on in their lives. I don’t like to self-insert when it comes to review writing and suggest my experience is universal, but I think most teens who are 16 or 17 or 18 are well beyond the point of finding the choking game the kind of rush that Ashlee might. And while Christopher does a good job of building it against the idea of sexuality, thus aging it up, I don’t necessarily buy it. I don’t want to say it felt convenient because it didn’t — the writing and storytelling allow this explanation to be right — I don’t buy it. I wonder how teens would feel about this explanation. Would it feel too juvenile to them? Or would it make sense to them and feel like it was written right at them?

* While I didn’t buy the explanation, I thought the strong writing, the compelling characters, and the pacing of this book make it a great read. It’s crafted smartly, and I loved how much want there was in this story. At no point was there a lull because every scene involved a character desperately seeking something: an answer, a resolution, a connection. There’s no saggy middle.

Like in her Stolen, Christopher gives us characters who have a lot going on internally and who struggle with their ethical and situational choices. She knows how to write moral ambiguity and that shines through. The characters grow and change their minds, and even when the explanation comes through, what resonates with The Killing Woods isn’t the “how it happened,” but instead, “how they grew.” Damon changes significantly throughout the book, and at the end, he realizes what it is he really needs to move forward. Emily discovers the depths of her father’s own illness throughout and it helps her in the end better connect with him in a way she was never able to before.

The Killing Woods will appeal to readers who loved Stolen and who love stories where nothing is quite as it seems. This is a character-driven thriller, and there’s a lot of respect paid to teenagers coming into their own. Emily and Damon aren’t necessarily characters you like as a reader, but they’re characters you come to care about because their stories are interesting and honest. Readers who loved Carrie Mesrobian’s Sex & Violence or Stephanie Kuehn’s Charm & Strange will find this an excellent next-read in terms of character and voice, as well as for their explorations of violence and sexuality and masculinity and more. Readers who liked Laurie Halse Anderson’s The Impossible Knife of Memory, especially the aspects regarding how Hayley’s father’s PTSD impacted her and her family will find this book to be complementary — there are some neat parallels between the two books. There’s more mystery to The Killing Woods, but it’s the characters who resonate (and make up for the aforementioned misstep in the “what really happened” aspect of the story).

Readers who like their realistic YA with a darker edge have been treated lately to a lot of great stuff, and Christopher’s book will further satisfy those readers.

Want your own copy of The Killing Woods? Thanks to Scholastic, I’ve got two copies to give away to a US reader. Fill out the form and I’ll pull two winners at the end of the month.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water by Amy Spalding

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Kellie Brooks thinks she knows herself, thinks she knows her best friends, and thinks she knows her family. But everything she thinks she knows begins to fall apart when her adopted sister Sara turns 18 and has the chance to meet her birth mother. And everything changes again when Kellie joins the school newspaper and realizes Adalaide, the girl she’d always thought was a dork, is actually not that dorky after all. And it changes further when her best friend Kaitlyn begins to drift away.

And Oliver, the brother of her sister’s boyfriend Dexter, only complicates Kellie’s life even further. After their awkward encounter last May, wherein he tried to get Kellie to have sex and she backed out, she thought his presence in her life was gone forever. But now it seems like he’s interested again.

Amy Spalding’s Ink Is Thicker Than Water is an excellent example of a true YA novel. It’s coming-of-age, but it’s coming-of-age through a perspective that’s quite minute and not world-shattering. What Kellie is going through and experiencing is entirely within the contours of her own life and her own experiences. She’s navigating a tricky situation in her family life, a change in what she thought were forever friendships, and an opportunity to pursue a romance with a boy who she thought would never again be a part of her life. Despite the fact none of the things that happen impact the greater world, they each play a huge part in impacting Kellie’s own world. And each of the things she encounters leads to her coming to better understand her role in her own life and in the lives of those around her — as well as her role in the greater world.

Family is the biggest aspect of this story, and Spalding isn’t afraid to look at a very complicated family dynamic that isn’t interesting because of its complexity and challenges, but rather, is interesting because it does work. Sara is Kellie’s older sister, but she’s adopted. Kellie’s mother and father were told the chances of them ever conceiving a child naturally were slim to none, and they chose to adopt Sara to start their family. It was no time before they conceived Kellie without a problem — though in no way are Sara and Kellie at odds with their places within the family. In fact, they’re as close as two sisters can be.

But the family gets more challenging, as Kellie and Sara’s parents are also divorced. Mom has remarried, and after a significant life reevaluation in the past, she also left her job as a paralegal and started working at The Family Ink — a tattoo shop — with her new husband. Mom and her new husband have a child together, a boy named Finn, who both girls adore and take turns taking care of. Kellie and Sara’s dad lives nearby, and though he doesn’t admit to being in a relationship with anyone else, he does have a girlfriend. Both girls spend time with dad, even though they live with mom. Despite being divorced, mom and dad get along, and both have their girls best interests at heart. So when Sara chooses to meet her biological mother, it’s not a surprise that both mom and dad support her decision to get to know her better, even if it does hurt them. But, of course, it’s a hurt that’s less about feeling abandoned and more a hurt of knowing their daughter’s growing up and learning how to make life choices and relationships for herself and her best interests.

Which is where this story really veers into something memorable. For Kellie, Sara’s decision to spend more time with her biological mother feels at times like a personal insult. Kellie’s not selfish, but she IS a teenager: Sara’s lack of time being spent with her feels like it’s done with the intent to make Kellie jealous and hurt, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with Kellie. It has to do entirely with Sara coming to learn how to be herself. This is something that Kellie eventually will figure out, as she, too, learns how to navigate these family relationships and the shifting that they can go through.

Kellie’s friendship and subsequent change in connection with Kaitlyn is really believable and it’s really honest. As Kellie begins to spend more time with the newspaper and honing her skills as a humor columnist (and yes, some of those columns are in the book to read), she’s spending more time with those who share those interests with her. Kaitlyn is doing precisely the same thing, though her interests aren’t in the newspaper or in writing. As a result, the girls begin drifting apart, even though it’s not in a nasty or mean way. Kellie takes it as an affront, though, as Kaitlyn spends more time with her new friends, and as readers, we see the loneliness this leaves her. She doesn’t want to hate Kaitlyn and she doesn’t want to be mad at her, but she can’t help feeling sad and lost as both Kaitlyn and herself throw themselves into new experiences and one of the consequences is their friendship changes. It doesn’t end. It just changes.

Change, if it hasn’t been obvious, is a key theme in Ink Is Thicker Than Water, and it might be argued that it’s through her relationship with Oliver that Kellie figures out change doesn’t need to be scary. Back in May, Oliver and Kellie were having a good time together and almost had sex — but she didn’t want it to happen and it didn’t. She wasn’t ready. Since then, Kellie worried that she and Oliver never had another shot, so when he pursued her again, she didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe someone could want to get to know her after she’d let them down before. But the truth was, Oliver appreciated that aspect of her.

From the outside, their relationship look great: Oliver loves to be in touch with Kellie, he wants to make things “Facebook official” quickly, and he’s always willing to be around for her, even if sex is something she’s not ready to enter the equation (and he’s incredibly respectful of this). The thing is, Oliver is a little bit . . . clingy. Desperate, even. And as much as Kellie loves the attention and loves the ability to reach him any time she wants to and needs to, she’s also a little wary of how much he wants to ensure their solidarity as a couple. Of course, there’s a reason for his actions, and Kellie will discover what it is when she’s out with his brother Dexter. But more than discover what it is causing Oliver to act as he does with her, Kellie will realize that she’s not too different from him, but in her relationship with her sister. It’s this ah ha moment when Kellie not only appreciates Oliver even more, but it’s in this moment when Kellie comes to understand that people can and do change and that change doesn’t have to be scary.

Change can be a good thing.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this story for me has to do with Kellie’s relationship with sex and virginity. As noted, she almost had sex with Oliver upon meeting him for the first time months ago, but she backed out, saying she wasn’t ready for it. So when he returns to her later, she’s worried that that choice will forever be the reason he would not be the reason he’d want to be in a relationship with her. If she hurt him once, the potential to do it again and again exists. But Oliver doesn’t believe that. When their relationship develops, sex remains in the back of Kellie’s mind regularly: she’s not ready for it. But rather than keep that voice at bay, she’s open and honest about it with not just herself, but with Oliver as well. At times it comes out awkwardly, but it’s that awkwardness that’s honest and real. It’s a tricky topic, and Spalding handles it in a way that’s funny and incredibly authentic. Kellie does eventually decide she’s ready, and in the process, she takes steps to protect herself and Oliver in a very non-preachy, non-message-y manner. Once the two of them do engage in sex, Kellie’s reactions and desires are true to her coming to understand herself, coming to understand relationships and what and how physicality plays in, and more than that, Kellie discovers that she as a person has autonomy. She can do what it is she wants to do in whatever manner she wants to do it, as long as no one gets hurt in the process. Even though she thinks sex is the scary part, she learns after sex that the really scary part is owning that freedom and the responsibility that comes with it.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water is equal parts funny as it is heartening. Kellie’s voice is strong and memorable, and it is authentically teenage. There’s no doubt this is a 16-year-old character who is discovering how tough and how exciting it is to be a 16-year-old. Things are perfectly imperfect, and it’s up to her to make the decisions of what to pursue and what needs to be let go.

While the ending feels a little neatly wrapped up, it fits the story and it fits the characters. I enjoyed how Spalding worked the tattoo shop into the storyline, and I felt like she did a great job making the mother’s storyline work for Kellie — we know mom learned too late what it was like to pursue her passion, and now she gets to be not just an example, but she gets to be one of Kellie (and Sara’s!) biggest advocates. It’s refreshing to see such a dynamic, supportive family in YA fiction and moreso to see it within the context of change and challenge. This isn’t a textbook family and it never could be. But because they love and support one another through thick and thin, they make things work. Likewise, Spalding’s knack for capturing friendship and relationships is noteworthy.

Readers who loved The Reece Malcolm List will find as much — if not more — to enjoy in Ink Is Thicker Than Water. Without doubt, this is the kind of book that will resonate with readers who dig contemporary realistic fiction, particularly in the vein of Sara Zarr and Siobhan Vivian. Kellie is easily one of my favorite protagonists this year because she’s imperfect and real in her imperfections. Her less-desirable qualities aren’t insurmountable, but they’re also not masked or made pretty. They’re just a part of who she is, and as she works towards an understanding of who she is, she doesn’t reject those things. She accepts them.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water will be available next Tuesday, December 3 from Entangled. Review copy received from the author. 

Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi

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Maybe all I have is my own two feet. And the confidence that they can bear my weight when the world goes sideways. Maybe that’s enough.

Corey, Holly, and Savitri are best friends — Corey and Holly are brother and sister, while Corey and Sav have a relationship. Their bond is tight, and one of the activities that keeps them connected as a threesome is their interest and participation in freerunning through different areas of Chicago. It’s their favorite activity, right up there with being mega invested in comics.

The night the story opens, things look like they’re solid, or about as solid as they could be knowing what’s between them. The three of them are freerunning, and when their fun comes to an end, Corey and Holly hop into one car, while Sav hops into another. Lingering in the back of their minds, though, is the inevitable future. They’re going to be pulled apart because Sav wants to attend school outside Chicago, even though it means leaving behind her best friends and her family. But Sav’s torn about this, too, because she loves the city and she loves her friends and boyfriend.

That night, everything changes when the car Corey and Holly are in is approached by a gunman, shots are fired, Corey dies, and Holly falls into a deep coma.

Chasing Shadows is Swati Avasthi’s sophomore novel, and it’s a hybrid graphic novel, illustrated by Craig Phillips. Together, the pair write an incredibly evocative, engaging, and wholly different type of story about grief and, more interestingly, friendship.

The three friends in this story are well-drawn, and not only are they well-drawn both through the writing and through the illustrations, they’re interesting because they partake in activities and have passion for topics that aren’t always readily seen in YA. But what makes it noteworthy isn’t that they’re different. It’s instead that the story embraces these things about them in a way that makes them your typical, average teenagers. Sure, they engage in freerunning. Sure, they love comic books. Sure, Sav is a main character of color (she’s Indian). But it’s never about the fact these teen do things that are outside the norm of many YA characters. It’s instead that they’re normal.

Avasthi’s story is told through two points of view, and this set up is important to the underlying theme of friendship. Holly, who is in a coma and struggling not only with all-encompassing grief but also an unnamed mental illness — which may or may not have been brought up through the grief and coma — brings us into a really dark world. She wants to give up and die in order to be with her brother. Much of her voice is through the graphic elements, which ties into not just her love for comics, but also ties into her relationship with Sav and Sav’s heritage. As readers, we know there is something really wrong with Holly, too. Her thinking is marred by her grief, but it’s more than that. She truly believes she’s got nothing worth living for, and in her post-coma recovery, it becomes clear that she’s not the person she was just weeks ago. Something is off.

Savitri is the other voice, and she, too, is struggling with immense grief. She’s not only lost her boyfriend in the incident, but her best friend Holly is hurting and is ill. And it’s that illness which pulls Sav into considering the value of friendship. How much does a person give to another in order to make it work? How much do you have to sacrifice of yourself in order to be there for a friend? Does it change or shift depending on the state that that friend is in? Avasthi does a spectacular job of allowing the reader to not only consider Sav’s empathy for Holly’s situation but also forcing the reader to understand that Sav’s life and future can’t be put on hold for the sake of her friend, either. At what point does she make a decision to stay with her friend and help her through her illness and at what point does she have to walk away? The choice Sav makes is — spoiler — the riskier one, but it’s ultimately what made this book not just a good read, but a great one. I think too often there’s a desire to go for the easier, happier ending, especially when it comes to a story about grief and loss and mental illness. But Avasthi doesn’t do that here. She instead serves the characters in the way that they best need to be served.

The struggle and consideration and reconsideration of friendship is what stands out in Chasing Shadows, even more so than the grief element. In that respect, the comic panels are brilliant because they unify the two girls through their shared passions but these panels also divide them because of the stories within them and what those stories mean to them as individuals. For Holly, it’s a coping mechanism. For Sav, it’s part of her heritage. Avasthi never names a mental illness here, either, which gives it almost more weight than had she diagnosed her character’s pain. It’s dealt with with incredible respect and care, and in many ways, it’s that care and honor of the illness (and even more so the girl suffering with it) that makes what Sav chooses to do even more painful  . . .  and more honest.

Chasing Shadows is well-paced, but the writing is never sacrificed. This is a strongly written, gritty book which is only enhanced by the graphic aspect. It never feels like a gimmick; instead, it serves a marked purpose that further develops the characters and adds depth to their relationships. In many ways, this feels like a true YA novel to me. It has great teen appeal to it, and the hybridization enhances that. As noted earlier, too, Phillips’s illustrations are strong. They never felt like an afterthought.

Although this book makes use of the graphic elements and does delve into some mythology, it’s wholly contemporary. There’s nothing fantastical here. In many ways, it’s through those non-straightforward storytelling elements that the book is an excellent example of contemporary realistic YA. Readers who dug Avasthi’s debut novel Split will find this to be an excellent next read, and anyone who wants a gritty, painful story about loss, friendship, and about “what comes next” will want to pick this one up. Because this book delves into mental illness in a really unique manner, I would go so far as to say those readers who loved the way in which Nova Ren Suma explores mental illness in 17 & Gone will want to give this book a read, too. They aren’t at all the same, and the styles are markedly different, but the ways in which both books give an interesting glimpse into mental illness make them a worthwhile pairing.

This is a book that will linger in my mind for a long time, and it’s one that solidifies Avasthi as a must-read author for me. She gets tough contemporary YA so right.

Chasing Shadows is available now from Random House. Review copy picked up at ALA. Swati will be sharing a guest post later this week, too, on the very topic of friendship in YA and in her book. 

Thin Space by Jody Casella

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I’m a little torn on putting up a spoiler alert for my review of Thin Space — yes, I plan on going into territory that could ruin major plot points in the book. That said, the jacket copy for the book completely ruins the twist right in it. I hadn’t read the jacket copy before I dove in, but about half way through reading, I flipped the book over and gave it a read.

The twist was ruined for me. And while it didn’t ruin my reading experience, it was incredibly disappointing to have it spelled out right there on cover copy for me. Perhaps it won’t spoil the story for all readers. The reason it did for me was that the title likened to Casella’s book is one I am familiar with, and therefore, I knew immediately what was going to happen. 

Which is to say, there are spoilers in this review, but you are going to be spoiled reading jacket copy, too. At least that was the case on the ARC — I hope that the finished copy doesn’t have that major spoiler on it. Proceed as you wish.

Marsh’s twin brother died in a car accident a few months ago; Marsh was the driver. It was only a couple months following that when Mrs. Hansel, Marsh’s neighbor, died. She was the older woman that Marsh and brother Austin used to do community service for, and she was the one who introduced the boys to the concept of the thin space — the portal where souls enter and leave the body, where it’s possible to traverse time and space and be reunited with those who’ve passed on. Now that both Austin and Mrs. Hansel are gone, Marsh has become the crazy kid, looking for this thin space.

He’s convinced there is a thin space in Mrs. Hansel’s old home, since she was born there and died there. 

The grief consumes Marsh, and he’s finding himself acting out of character. He’s being aggressive, getting involved in altercations, wandering around barefoot, careless. When Mrs. Hansel’s home is sold to a new family, he finds himself making quick friends with Maddie, one of the new kids who moved in. He’s not so much taken with her in a romantic sense; he knows that getting to know Maddie means he can get into the house and seek out this thin space. 

Of course, he begins to fall for her. It’s slow but earned. However, it’s not without complications — Logan, Marsh’s girlfriend, isn’t ready for them to break up. And it’s not entirely clear whether or not Marsh is ready for that relationship to end either. Because that relationship reminds him of Austin and Austin’s relationship with Katie. The four of them would double date.

The four of them had been on a double date the night Austin died.

Little by little, Marsh opens up to Maddie, though, and he learns that she, too, is dealing with loss in her life. That she, too, would love to find a thin space to reconnect with her departed father. And the night that Mrs. Golden, school counselor, wanders into Maddie’s house on the promise of delivering treats, Maddie discovers that the counselor is also looking for the thin space. And she has found it.

And then, the marvelous, smart, savvy twist occurs — skip down a paragraph if you don’t want it. See, Marsh isn’t Marsh. In fact, that’s the bigger point of the story: Marsh really hated being a twin. He despised the fact it was so easy for him and Austin to be confused with one another, for them to be seen as the same person, despite being so different from one another. It was easy to trick Logan and Katie into believing Marsh was Austin and vice versa. And the night of the double date at the movie theater — the night of the accident — the boys had gone all the way in their identity swapping. Austin assumed the role of Marsh and Marsh, the role of Austin. So when Marsh discovers the thin space with Maddie, what happens is the true unravels: Marsh is actually Austin, and the dead twin is actually Marsh. Everything that Marsh had lived and experienced post-Austin’s death had actually been Austin living as Marsh instead. Because even the boys couldn’t separate their own selves from one another, and the weight of grief — not just of the loss, but the grief in knowing that the truth would further harm relationships and the people who loved the boys — kept Austin from telling everyone about their own history of deception.

The writing here is good, and the pacing is spot-on. The story kept me hooked and eager to see how much Marsh would reveal and how much he’d hold back. I wanted to know what would happen, what could change, the moment he got to see Austin through the thin space. The story was wholly satisfying and solid, and it’ll appeal big time to readers who loved the parallel worlds of Emily Hainsworth’s Through to You, as well as those who love the whats-real-what’s-supernatural elements of Nova Ren Suma’s books. While it is not as lush in the writing aspect, it is similarly structured in plot. This is a book that tiptoes the line and begs the reader to wonder whether or not there is a thin space or whether or not that thin space is simply a matter of narrative choice of truth vs deception.

I see this being really popular with readers who love ghost stories, who love stories about grief and mourning, and who like there to be just a tiny touch of romance. This isn’t about finding and falling in love with someone else. It’s about finding and appreciating the love that’s already around you and coming to terms with what it is you have to do to maintain and sustain it. For Marsh, it meant games of truth and games of deceit. For Marsh, it’s about dealing with grief in its many ugly, confusing, frustrating forms. Jody Casella’s Thin Space is satisfying, well-written, and compelling, with loads of reader appeal. I really look forward to seeing what she writes next. 

Thin Space is available now. Review copy received from the publisher.