STACKED

books

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang

|

I am always so charmed by everything Gene Luen Yang writes, and his newest graphic novel, Level Up, is no exception.  His latest centers on Dennis Ouyang, a high school student whose parents desperately want him to become a doctor.  Dennis, on the other hand, would much rather play video games – maybe even professionally one day.  Dennis makes it into a good college, but when his dad – the person who exerted the most parental pressure on him – dies, he slacks off, staying at the arcade until all hours, skipping school, and failing his classes.  He’s placed on academic probation and eventually kicked out of college.
That’s when three angels show up and begin exerting that same pressure – plus a healthy dose of guilt – to become a doctor on Dennis.  They’re able to convince the dean to reinstate Dennis, and they also convince Dennis that he should make it his goal to work hard, get into medical school, and become a gastroenterologist (a poop doctor).  They tell him this is his destiny.  
Just as in the two previous works I’ve read by Yang (American Born Chinese and The Eternal Smile), things are not what they seem.  All is revealed at the end, and of course I can’t say anything more because that would spoil things.  But the reveal is a good one, giving the reader insight into the characters of both Dennis and his father.  It’s also heartwarming and a little weepy.
Like any good story, there’s more than one theme at work here.  We learn a lot about Dennis’ relationship with his father, which is certainly the primary aim, but we also see the development of Dennis’ friendships with his classmates in medical school and see how a teenager strikes out on his own to become an adult (something rarely seen in books – so few are about 20-somethings!).  Typical for Yang, there’s also a good dose of humor.
The art is done by relative newcomer Thien Pham.  It’s nothing hugely remarkable – cute without being childish, with a lot of soft colors that emphasize how adorable the angels are.  It’s nice to look at and he clearly has talent, I just tend to prefer bolder colors and firmer lines.
This is such a great book for 20-somethings (like me). Dennis starts out as a teenager but grows into an adult in medical school, making him around my age near the end.  Beyond the age equivalency, though, is the inclusion of the videogames: the front of the book is an old-school gameboy, and Dennis talks about playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System frequently, both of which my generation is very familiar with.  Today’s teens are a little too young to have grown up with these (relative) pioneers in gaming.  While there are no references to Duck Hunt or blowing on game consoles, Dennis does play Pac-Man and other arcade and NES games extensively.  Despite its YA designation, I feel like Level Up was written more with my age group in mind.
Copy borrowed from my local library.

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

|

I had a conversation with my book club kids a couple weeks ago about the power of one summer. We’d just finished reading Siobhan Vivian’s Same Difference and I was curious whether they believed one person could change radically over the course of one season. I’m a believer in the notion that people can, given the right situations and right circumstances, and I was pleased to hear my teens thought the same thing. In fact, they believe people can change completely, even in just a couple of weeks.

The reason I bring up this idea is because it’s the big thing at play in Geoff Herbach’s debut novel Stupid Fast. This book might easily be at the top of my 2011 favorites list, with its fantastic story line, strong voice, well-played themes, and for its incredible appeal for both guys and girls.

Felton Reinstein is a loser. I mean, the kind of guy who loser movies and books are written about. He’s never been the biggest nor the strongest and he’s even earned himself the nickname of squirrel nuts (for reasons I hope I don’t need to explain). Fortunately, Felton’s got about the best friend he can have in Gus — that is, until Gus’s family takes a summer away in Venezuela and things tumble inexplicable out of control.

But in a good way.

Suddenly, Felton’s no longer the scrawny guy. He’s no longer the guy that people pick on. He’s become, in his own terms, stupid fast. He’s become a jock extraordinaire, and he takes his talents out to the football field, where he suddenly becomes the MVP. For real — this guy can outrun and outplay anyone, and now there’s even the possibility of being scouted by big name university football coaches.

And lucky for Felton, despite his best friend moving away from the summer, he’ll be making a new friend. But not the kind of friend Gus was. No, this time he’ll be making a girlfriend in Aleah, the girl who, along with her family, is renting Gus’s house for the summer. And maybe, just maybe, Felton might fall in love for the first time.

Stupid Fast is the kind of story I love, as it tackles the challenges of growing up in such a realistic, funny, and honest way. But more than that, this story delves into some really heavy issues, including interracial dating and social class. Herbach’s story takes place in a small town in western Wisconsin (which, by all my bets and knowledge of western Wisconsin, is modeled after Platteville). It reminded me a lot of one of my all-time favorite books, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s The Dairy Queen, incidentally also set in small town Wisconsin.

Let me start by digging into the structure of this novel. It’s told in a diary format. The thing is, since it’s told through the “diary” entry of a guy, it’s nothing like a typical diary. Instead, it’s much more candid and much less reliant on what Felton was feeling. It’s, if you will, a play-by-play of the events that led up to the moment he started writing. The entire diary is the set up for the story, and the entry is written over only the course of one night. But the book itself chronicles more than one night — it chronicles the entire summer before (and then some). Felton’s at a turning point in his life, and he knows it. That turning point is one he knows he has to face head on, and the only way he can do it is by reflecting upon the events that helped turn him from the class joke to the class jock. Herbach gets this sort of epiphany perfectly, and it’s entirely suited to who Felton is as a character. We learn with him as we reflect with him, and we’re able to appreciate the entire journey of his summer with him step by step. But the thing is, we’re not handed the story through Felton, either: we know there is something incredibly heart breaking that he is trying to figure out and understand as it relates to his family, and we’re not entirely privy to it. We have to work along with Felton to put the pieces together and come to understand why this reflection is necessary.

Felton as a character is one of the best male leads I’ve read in a while. Never does he sway into being too emotional and never does he sway into becoming too much of a joker. One of my biggest pet peeves in a story that’s male-voice driven is that it can too easily go one way or the other; often, I think authors rely too much on making their males too funny and too stereotypically “guy.” Felton isn’t. Felton has a good sense of humor but it’s never over-the-top, and he’s got the right balance of seriousness with emotional insight. We understand how Felton feels when it comes to romance, to his best friend, and to his staggering physical changes, and we understand why he feels so out of place in his family. It’s well paced and well developed. He’s a typical guy’s guy, and the things he goes through are, without doubt, relatable to the vast majority of guy readers. Moreover, though, this is the kind of male voice that appeals to female readers, too, since it’s not overly macho and not overly immature. Herbach strikes just the right balance.

Moreover, the character growth in Felton is enjoyable to watch. Although he’s fixated on the physical changes — which are naturally the most easy to see for him — as readers, we experience first hand the emotional changes, too. And this brings me back to a point I brought up earlier: what this book does so well is integrate huge issues into the story without making them Huge Issues.

Felton falls in love in this story. He meets Aleah, a girl who is a piano prodigy and who is spending the summer in this small town while her father takes a visiting faculty position at the local college. But Aleah is so different from himself. For starters, she’s African American. Not only that, but she’s in an entirely different social class than he is. Felton’s nervous to not only be attracted to someone so different from him and so different from everything he’s been exposed to in his life, but he’s also making himself more nervous by actually following his heart and getting to know Aleah better. Before that summer, Felton wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it. He would have let the opportunity pass him. But this summer? He goes all out for love, and in the process, learns that the things he thinks are hurdles to overcome are nothing but mental set backs he uses as excuses not to put himself out there and try new things.

The romance in this book is incredibly sweet and a little heartbreaking, too. It’s a very guy romance, as well, and I don’t think guys will have a problem reading it. I loved Aleah as a character, and I feel like she’s really the balance Felton needed. The setting, too, is pitch perfect for both the romance and for the transformative growth Felton experiences.

There is so much more I could talk about in this book, including the powerful family story that occurs, but I won’t because this is a book you need to read and unravel yourself. This is a richly layered story with huge reader appeal. It’s well paced, funny, and it will appeal to fans of realistic coming-of-age stories. It’s fairly clean, meaning that this is the kind of book I’d feel comfortable giving to readers 12 and up, and it’s one that I think would make an excellent book club choice for teen readers. It reminded me a lot of Murdock’s Dairy Queen series, both because of setting and because of the use of sports and family as a vehicle of growth. This book is one that I sure hope gets some Morris consideration this year, as it’s a debut of note.

Bonus: this is an original paperback release title, too, meaning it’s budget friendly.

Finished copy picked up at Book Blogger Convention. That means it’s available now!

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

|

If your whole life has centered on your faith and your religious convictions, is it possible for one person to change your mind about those beliefs? That’s the question Melissa Walker tackles in her thoughtful, well-paced, and exceptionally even-handed new title, Small Town Sinners.

Lacey Anne has lived her whole life in her small town, and one of the biggest components of her existence is her religion. She’s a good girl who goes to church, believes and follows in the word of God, and has two of the most supportive friends she can imagine — Dean and Starla Jo — who also subscribe to deep religious beliefs. And now, what Lacey’s been dreaming about for a while now might be just within her grasp: playing the abortion girl in their church’s Hell House.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hell House, it’s similar in set up to a Halloween haunted house, except that instead of being creepy features in different areas of the house, different Biblical sins are acted out in a means to open the eyes of attendees toward the word of God. For Lacey, being the character who portrays the role of a girl getting an abortion, one of the most emotionally-wrenching scenes for both the actor and the audience, meant a lot.

She doesn’t get the role. At least, not immediately. When secrets begin unraveling in the small town, and sinners are sent to handle their problems in private, out of the public’s eye, Lacey has the opportunity to take the role she’s always dreamed of. The thing is, when Ty arrives in town, he’ll challenge her every belief and ask her to reconsider her ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, and faith and truth. She’ll even reconsider whether she belongs in this powerful role or not.

Walker’s book is nothing like her prior titles, and I am so excited to see such a change in the type of story she tells here. While I enjoyed both her Violet series and Lovestruck Summer, what she does in Small Town Sinners is something powerful: she manages to tell a moving, honest story without passing an ounce of judgment. It’s a fine line to toe, especially when a story contains religion as a core element. Fortunately, Lacey as a character is fully fleshed — she’s not just a religious girl. She has passions and interests, and her personality is defined far beyond her beliefs. And Ty, who represents the opposite beliefs as Lacey, is actually not that much different from her. He attends church service, too, and he hasn’t entirely shut religion out of his life. Instead, he’s experienced things in his life that caused him to think about what he believes.

All of the characters in this story have strong heads on their shoulders, and the interactions among them are believable. The relationship that emerges between Lacey and Ty is paced well, and I love dialogs in which they engage. Ty challenges Lacey without bullying her, and Lacey returns those challenges with equal grace. In one instance, he asks Lacey to consider her best friend Dean and the reasons he may be bullied at school — when he suggests that Dean may be gay, at first Lacey denies passionately (because how could someone who is gay also be devout) but in reflecting, she comes around to realize that her best friend is made up of much more than his belief in God. The ah ha moment is not immediate, but when it comes, it really moves Lacey to think. And that’s ultimately the point: this is a book about thinking.

What I loved about these characters and this story so much was that it left me with more questions than answers. I felt at peace with how the story progresses, despite how uncomfortable I felt at times with both the assertions Lacey made with complete conviction and the way the adults in particular treated their children and their children’s beliefs. So many will see themselves in this position, either right now as teens or as adults thinking back to what it was like to be a teen.

More importantly, there’s not a right or wrong answer in this book. The restraint in writing echoes the story itself. Walker embraces the muckiness of religion and the gray areas where no answers exist. She doesn’t pick a side and devalue the other, which would have been incredibly easy to do, particularly with the use of the Hell House. Instead, she chooses to offer both sides and let the readers consider ideas from both perspectives. She asks us to use our own intellect and experiences to draw conclusions while along the way begging us to immerse ourselves in both sides of the story. She asks us to think. How can we decide what’s right and wrong and be passionate about that belief without being fair and open minded to other possibilities? The truth is we don’t need to throw out everything we believe in in order to believe in something else.

My biggest challenge with the book was that it is slower paced and the book’s strength really lies in its second half. Some of the dialog and set up felt a little clunky at the beginning, but once the book hits its stride — I’d say by page 75 or 100 — these smooth out significantly. Although it bothered me as a reader, I know it’s necessary. We have to be put into this world, and for many readers, it’s a wholly unfamiliar world of religious devotion. The other reason this is challenging is that these characters are well fleshed; stock characters who serve little more than as puppets to one belief or another would have been easier to write though ultimately unfulfilling.

Although this is a story that focuses on religion, it is not a story about religion — the ideas here are much more universal and powerful. Pass this book off to fans of Dana Reinhardt, particularly to those who loved The Things a Brother Knows. This book reminded me a lot, too, of Donna Freitas’s This Gorgeous Game, which also deals in slight with religion. Without doubt, Small Town Sinners will be a title you want to discuss, and it’s one I think teens will connect with and pull a lot of meaningful ideas from. Beware, though: even though it’s a clean read, big issues such as abortion, alcoholism, and homosexuality are discussed throughout. They need to be.

Review copy received at ALA Midwinter. Small Town Sinners will be available July 19.

Entwined by Heather Dixon

|

I’m glad to see bumpits exist in Azalea’s world.
In Heather Dixon’s debut novel Entwined, Princess Azalea’s mother has just died, leaving behind twelve daughters and an emotionally distant husband.  The king grieves for his dead wife but leaves his twelve daughters to their own devices, his only real interaction with them occurring when he institutes a mandatory period of mourning, to last an entire year.  For that year, the girls are not allowed to go outside, they must wear black, they must cover all mirrors, and they are not allowed to dance.  This last requirement is the worst, since dancing is one of their true joys and something they shared with their mother.
The old, ramshackle palace the girls live in has some magic in it, though, and one night, Azalea and her sisters find a secret passage to an underground place where the sun shines and the Keeper, who lives there, allows them to dance all night to their hearts’ content.  But the Keeper is more malevolent than he seems, and he has plans for the girls, for the king, and for the kingdom in which they live.
I’m a sucker for fairy tales re-told, and the Twelve Dancing Princesses has been a popular one lately.  It’s not one of the best known, so it hasn’t been done to death like Cinderella has, but it does present some unique challenges.  For one thing, if you’ve chosen to write this particular fairy tale, you’ve automatically saddled yourself with twelve characters.  Making each of these characters distinct from one another without resorting to cliches has got to be a monumental challenge, and authors have attempted it with varying levels of success.
With Entwined, Heather Dixon succeeds at this better than others I’ve encountered recently.  For one thing, she doesn’t take the easy way out and completely marginalize all but one of the princesses.  Azalea is clearly our protagonist, but there are two nice subplots involving the next two eldest princesses.  There’s also enough interaction between the sisters that the reader gets an idea of at least some of their personalities, although not all of the sisters are fully realized.  Putting myself in the shoes of the author, though, it makes me slightly panicky thinking about how to make twelve characters three-dimensional in a single debut novel.
One thing I really enjoyed about Entwined was the description of the dances.  I’m not a dancer myself and have always envied those who were able to move with such grace.  Reading Entwined, I was able to see each of the dances in my mind’s eye – they’re beautiful and have their own more metaphorical magic, in particular the “soul curtsy” which is featured in a pivotal moment in the book.  Dixon’s writing shines at these points.
Of course, there were a couple of sticking points.  First and foremost: the story dragged in the first 100 pages or so.  There’s a lot of exposition and it seems to take quite awhile before Dixon buckles down and gets to the meat of the story.  It’s important to set up the background and establish the character’s relationships, but ideally these aspects should be developed over the course of the story, not crammed all into the first section before the real story begins.  Once I was past those first pages, though, I was hooked.
Dixon also tries to do something different with both the magic and the kingdom’s government.  This can be risky since the reader doesn’t already have a frame of reference to absorb the new information.  The author must be careful to explain such nuances of the world clearly and precisely, otherwise it won’t be understandable.  I’m afraid I never really did understand how the magic in Dixon’s world worked, and neither did I fully understand how the world’s system of government worked (there’s their father the king, who has some power but no money, and then there’s a prime minister, who appears to have lots of money, and another political party that opposes the king, and it’s more than a little confusing and I never did figure it out).  It’s clear that Dixon tried to make her world markedly different from the carbon copies seen in fairy tale re-tellings, but she didn’t quite succeed.
There were a few other small things that niggled at me, but all in all, Entwined is a good addition to the long list of these types of stories.  There’s three (yes, three!) sweet romances and a nicely creepy baddie.  There’s no real question how it will end, but the journey there is an enjoyable one, made more enjoyable by the interesting characters and often funny subplots Dixon incorporates.  I read Entwined about the same time as I read Merrie Haskell’s very different middle-grade twist on this same fairy tale, The Princess Curse, which publishes in September (and I’ll have a review for that one a bit closer to that date).  It’s interesting to compare the two, but I admit I’m done with the Twelve Dancing Princesses for awhile.
Copy checked out from my local library.

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

|

In Uncommon Criminals, Ally Carter’s sequel to the fun and well-written Heist Society, fifteen-year-old Katarina Bishop is back for another heist.  This time, she’s been directed by “Visily Romani” to take a break from returning priceless stolen works of art to their rightful owners to steal the famous Cleopatra emerald, which had been stolen from an excavation in Egypt many years ago.  Visily Romani’s messenger tells Kat that the emerald will be given back to an Egyptian museum, and Kat is all too willing to undertake the job, even though the emerald is rumored to be cursed and impossible to steal.  After all, even her Uncle Eddie wasn’t able to steal it when he attempted it years before.
But Kat is smart and a very, very good thief, and she sets in motion a heist that is sure to work.  She has Hale with her, of course, as well as Gabrielle and eventually the Bagshaw brothers and Nick.  Things aren’t what they seem with the pseudonymous Visily Romani and his messenger, though, and the book quickly takes a turn – Kat and her crew must steal the emerald once more, and also exact a little revenge on someone who conned them.
I really enjoyed Heist Society.  It’s the kind of popcorn book that I’ve always loved – a fun, fast-paced story, snappy dialogue, sarcastic characters who banter with each other endlessly, and a promise that everything will turn out alright in the end.  Nothing about it was terribly realistic, but that’s not really why I read most genre fiction anyway.  So, I was excited to get my hands on its sequel and I sped through it in a day.  I enjoyed it a lot, but I had a few gripes.
Uncommon Criminals, while a fun follow-up, feels too slight.  Events happen so quickly that there’s hardly any time for the reader to process them, making the twists and turns not as impactful as they should have been.  The crew from the first book are all back, but only Kat and Hale really have any development.  The Bagshaw brothers, Gabrielle, and Nick all make token appearances, but it felt they were only included because it was expected.  Gabrielle, who turned out to be a surprisingly complex character in Heist Society, is here reduced to comic relief.
This is not to say that Uncommon Criminals wasn’t a fun read.  It does have its moments.  Carter gives us more tidbits into certain characters: Uncle Eddie’s background is illuminated a bit more, Kat and Hale’s relationship grows, and the history of the thieving families is expanded upon (very slightly).  The central plotline is certainly entertaining, albeit a bit too breakneck for my taste.  I often complain that thrillers or spy novels written for adults are too long-winded, but Uncommon Criminals could have taken a page (or maybe a hundred pages) from them and given the reader more: more time to understand the heist, more insight into the secondary characters, more of that witty banter and narrative style so prevalent in Heist Society.  
Overall, this is a definite recommend for fans of the first novel, but Carter can do better.

Copy borrowed from my local library.