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Love Drugged by James Klise

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It’s rare a book surprises me with what it has to offer. There are a lot of good reads and a lot of interesting, insightful, exciting characters and stories. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s rare when a book hits on a topic that is so rich with something that just feels new, and it’s not just about being new, it’s about being important, too.

James Klise’s debut Love Drugged may make my short list in 2010 for favorite read. The back of the book has a question as its copy: If you could change who you are, would you? Should you? That’s the entire crux of this book.

Jamie Bates, a 15-year-old Chicago native, lives in the same condo as his grandparents do, as his mother and father can’t keep a stable job (though to be fair, they’re working at gift wrapping and shipping at the time). He just wants to get through high school and get on with his life. It’s rough in the high school world, but he’s been lucky: no one knows the biggest secret about him — he’s gay. No, no one knows the secret because he spends a lot of time with Celia Gomez, one of the most attractive girls in school. She has a total crush on him, and he might have one on her too. They might be dating too. It’s not super clear to him, either.

When Jamie spends more time with Celia, he learns that her father is a druggist (by that, he creates pharmaceutical drugs to help with different physical ailments). And eventually, he learns that her father is working on an experimental drug to help cure gay people of their homosexual feelings and beliefs. It changes the brain chemistry — or at least that’s what the goal is. Despite not knowing the side effects, the dosage, or the consequences involved in such a drug, Jamie steals some in an attempt to keep fitting in and sliding by in school.

Love Drugged is a well-paced book and one that almost feels straight out of the headlines. Klise spoke at the Anderson’s YA Conference I attended, and he was told by his editor that the story was funny. He wasn’t so sure about that assessment, and I’m going to agree: I don’t really think that this is a “funny” book. There are certainly funny moments, and I think many teens might get a humorous feeling out of some of the events that happen (not to mention Jamie’s parents and the job situation therein), but this is a book with a lot of depth and a lot of issues with which to grapple.

What really stands out in this book is Jamie as a character. It’s rare to read such a real character, but Jamie here is one. He has all of the feelings of insecurity and the despite to just “slide by” like a typical teenager, but it’s also real that he’s troubled with the knowledge he’s gay. He doesn’t dislike being gay, but he also doesn’t want to be loud and proud about it. That idea scares him, as is seen in an episode where he finds out someone he’s been talking with through a few gay chat rooms is another student in his school. Fear permeates. Likewise, Jamie’s decision to take the drugs is less about the wanting to not be homosexual than it is about just wanting to get by without trouble. Jamie has fantasies and dreams and goals like all other teens, and I think Klise has a rare ability here to make a very real and relatable main character.

Dialog works well in this book, and I particularly found a lot of the character interactions worthy of consideration (and worthy of discussion). When Celia’s dad talks frankly with Jamie about the purpose of the drug, I think there are a million discussion points worthy of being made. Celia’s father is *not* against homosexuals; instead, he said he chooses to work on this project in order to help homosexuals fit in. In the back of my mind as a reader, I could buy that but I could also buy the thought swimming in Jamie’s mind about the potential profit from such a “miraculous” product. Jamie, at the end, thinks back on this but is able to now consider the ethical issue of whether it’s okay to change who he fundamentally is or not.

Is this the perfect book? Of course not. I found some of the characters to be more furniture like than fully fleshed and some were used merely as a way to move along a subplot. However, our three main characters — Jamie, Celia, and Celia’s father — along with the engaging, sometimes enraging, situations make this work so well. I’m not a terribly interactive reader, but I found myself at times talking to Jamie as he did or thought through things. And boy, did this book feel refreshing and different after the string of dead parent stories I’ve read lately.

Love Drugged brings up some politically delicate issues but does so in a manner that allows teens to think for themselves and ones which homosexual teens will understand 150% because they live them every day. This is the kind of book we need to see more of. It’s an empowering book, and one that will linger in the minds of readers for a long, long time.

If you’re a librarian, please add this to your library. The cover will hook readers, but the content will keep their minds hooked.

Losing Faith by Denise Jaden

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Brie’s life changes the instant she gets the phone call from her father to hurry to the emergency room. Brie’s at a party and is completely clueless as to what awaits her just a few miles away.

Her sister died.

The circumstances were suspicious, too.

Now Brie is on the path to figuring out what really caused her sister’s death. Did she take her own life in a fit of passion or were some of Brie’s new and mysterious friends the cause of her death?

Losing Faith was a quick paced read that blended everything there is to love about a contemporary novel with an element of mystery. This is the kind of book that, as a lover of contemporary, I would hand to those who aren’t as jazzed about the genre; the mystery is the heart and the pulse of the story without making this book a mystery novel.

Brie is one of the more interesting characters I’ve read lately. She had a strong enough voice to lead me to care about her story and her determination to find the cause of Faith’s death. To me, her voice felt authentically high school and her experiences rang true as well. One minute, she’s deeply in love with a guy and ready to lose her virginity with him, and a couple of days later, he has sort of fallen out of her line of sight. The same thing happens with her “best friend.”

A key element of this story is the idea of a religious cult: Faith had been a deeply devoted follower of god, and she had been heavily involved in her church. What didn’t really work for me as a reader, though, was how this wasn’t played up all that much until the end of the story. I wanted more of this element, ala Hush, and I wanted to know a little bit more about Brie’s new friends, Tessa and Alis. The two of them were very shadowed while they were in the book, and both of them had a vault of knowledge associated with this cult. Tessa had a bit of a wickedly criminal mind I would have loved to get to know better.

That said, I thought that the unraveling of Faith’s death was compelling and twisted enough to keep me reading and to leave me feeling satisfied at the end of the book. I thought Jaden walked a fine line with her messages of faith and following beliefs and I think she did some masterfully. The conclusion came together quite nicely and didn’t try to push any message on the reader.

The grief in this book can, at times, be a bit overwhelming for readers; Jaden tempers this quite a bit through her development of Brie and Faith’s mother. Following Faith’s death, mom became withdrawn, distraught, and completely beside herself in life. Rather than let her flounder as a character, she continues to emerge, and at the end, Brie does something to really bring her mother back to life. What she does happens to be precisely what it was that made her fall into her depression in the first place. It was — and I gag at typing the word, trust me — heartwarming. Losing Faith is a story with a strong family structure, and I think that the depiction of a family that fluctuates with its highs and lows does readers a service in a book world full of dysfunctional families (ah but don’t worry, there is a dysfunctional family here, too, it’s just not central).

Hand this off to fans of Sarah Dessen for the relationship aspects, particularly when it comes to families. Those who loved Holly Cupala’s Tell Me a Secret will want to run to this title, as there are many parallels in the story lines (and enough diversions to never feel like the same story). Fans of contemporary fiction will eat this title up, and the mystery will be a bonus.

Nothing Like You by Lauren Strasnick

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Holly lost her mother six months ago to cancer, but she’s not stuck in her mind about it. She’s lucky to have a loving father, Jeff, and her best friend Nils is her next door neighbor with whom she spends most days in the backyard tool shed together, talking.

But Holly IS mourning her mother’s loss deeply, even if she thinks she isn’t. She’s involved with Paul, having sex, despite the fact he has a girlfriend. Then things get complicated with Nils, and Holly finds herself making enemies with her female friends. When things come tumbling down and the secrets of what Holly’s been doing spill, she’ll finally have to fess up to her grief and make solid decisions about who she is and what she wants in her life.

Nothing Like You is a character-driven story, and Holly is the type of girl you want to continuously give hugs to. She’s not acting as she acts for attention; she’s not entirely conscious of her actions, despite the fact she knows what she’s doing will eventually hurt people she cares deeply about.

The relationships among characters in this book are well done. Holly and best friend Nils have a very believable friendship. Quite frankly, their friendship development reminded me a lot of what friendships were really like in high school. It moved in waves and some times, they spent hours together and sometimes they went days without seeing each other, and it was okay. Holly has a wonderful relationship with her father, and it’s actually quite a refreshing thing to see. And not only were the established relationships well done, but Holly opened herself up to meeting new people in forging a friendship with Saskia, a girl she’d once judged as out of her league and annoying. From the beginning, too, we know exactly what the relationship between Holly and Paul would be, and it remained in that state throughout the book.

Plot wise, there’s really not too much going on here, and because of the strength in character development, it’s not necessary to have a heavy plot. Instead, this is a book invested in feeling, and Strasnick gets those feelings spot on.

Throughout the book, I both liked and disliked Holly. More than that, I think I really sympathized with her: she’d had a great loss not too long ago, and it was a loss with which she had to grapple even further because it was to breast cancer. It’d linger in her mind forever that she, too, might fall victim to the illness down the road. I really disliked some of the other decisions Holly made when it came to keeping secrets and not fessing up to her wrongdoings at any of the opportunities she had, but I still couldn’t necessarily be mad at her.

My only criticism of the book is that it’s not particularly memorable in a sea of books that feature similar elements: strong characters, parental loss, and finding oneself. The writing is efficient, and while the emotions are real and the situations feel authentic, it’s probably not going to stand out in my mind too long.

This is a quick read, and it’s one that readers will fall into quite quickly and not want to let go of until finished. Fans of Sarah Dessen, Siobhan Vivian, and Elizabeth Scott will find a lot to appreciate here. There is a lot of sex and drinking — more than what is featured in these similar authors — but I think because Holly realizes what she’s doing is not okay, readers will not get too tangled in this.

Despite what sounds a little depressing, Nothing Like You does have a positive and optimistic ending that will leave readers feeling hopeful. Rooting for Holly will pay off.

The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex

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While I was disappointed with Fat Vampire, Adam Rex’s sophomore novel for teens, I liked his writing style enough for me to pick up his much-lauded first novel for teens/tweens, The True Meaning of Smekday.  It was a good thing I did – the book made me laugh out loud the whole way through.
Sometime in the future, aliens called Boov invade the Earth.  After the occupation, Earth is renamed “Smekland” in honor of the great Boov leader who led the invasion.  Christmas is renamed “Smekday,” hence the title of the book.  Twelve year old Gratuity “Tip” Tucci is assigned a paper in her class: she must write a five page essay on the true meaning of Smekday.
The rest of the book consists of Tip’s essay, which is basically one long flashback.  Tip’s story, naturally, takes up much more than five pages.  
In her essay, all humans are being relocated via rocketpod to Florida, and since Tip’s mom has been abducted by the Boov, she has to get there on her own (accompanied by her cat, Pig).  She decides to forgo the rocketpod and instead elects to drive.  Along the way, she meets a Boov named J.Lo who transforms her car into a hovercraft, and the relationship between the two characters is both touching and hilarious.  The journey isn’t smooth – the group ends up having to fend off a second alien invasion (the Gorg) before the end of the book, and it turns out J.Lo is a bit of a renegade Boov, meaning he’s being hunted by his own kind as well. 
Like in Fat Vampire, Adam Rex has thrown a lot into this book, but here it all works.  It’s a road trip book crossed with a buddy book set against the backdrop of an alien invasion.  Not only is Tip trying to make it to Florida safely, she’s also trying to find her mother.  When she and J.Lo make it to Florida, she discovers the Boov have changed their minds – all humans are now being relocated to Arizona.  Tip and her crew also run into two ineffective human rebel groups (both came up with the acronym BOOB to describe their organizations entirely independently of each other), a theme park that flips upside down at night, and a replicator which they use on Pig to create a room full of cats (why not?).
Plus, there’s pictures – photographs, comic strips, doodles…and they’re all funny.  J.Lo’s comic depiction of the history of the Boovish race is particularly amusing.  The True Meaning of Smekday is a great book for reluctant readers (if they aren’t put off by the length – 423 pages), and Tip’s voice is the perfect mix of snarky and sympathetic without ever getting annoying.
Despite Tip’s terrific narration, J.Lo is really what makes this book awesome. His alien speech patterns as he attempts to learn and speak English are hilarious, in particular his references to American idioms and habits that we don’t even give a second thought to.  J.Lo’s dialogue just begs to be read aloud. Here’s an example:
“If you are tolooking for the pink squishable gapputty, it is smooshed in the gloves box.  You will have to use brown.”
It makes sense in the context of the book, I promise.  Here’s an exchange between Tip and J.Lo as Tip tries to explain the concept of human families:
“So…the humansmom and the humansdad make the baby all by themself,” J.Lo said slowly.  “Aaand…afters they make the baby they…keep it?”
“Yes.”
“As like a pet.”
“No.”
“[With the Boov] nobody knows their offspring, and nobody knows their parents.”
“Nobody?  Well, that’s one thing we humans do better than you Boov.  Families are better.”
J.Lo shook his head as much as an alien with no neck can do that.  “I haveto seen human families.  Some of them, the peoples, they stay in family they do not like.  Some humans do not have an easy living with their family-mates.  The brothers and sisterns, especiably.”

I could quote passages forever, but I wanted to give you an idea of the tone of the book and why I enjoyed it so much.  This is easily one of my favorite reads of the year.  The thing I’d like to stress most is that it is really, really funny.  My review can’t do it justice, and neither can little snippets from the novel.  You don’t have to be a science fiction fan or even someone who reads a lot of YA or middle grade to like it.  You’ve just got to enjoy a good story and not mind getting weird looks from strangers since you’ll be chuckling to yourself every few seconds.  I loved this book and it’s one of the few I can see myself re-reading later on.

Secondhand Charm by Julie Berry

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I’m not usually a reader of much fantasy, and in my reading years, I’ve definitely neglected the fairy tale sorts of fantasy. They don’t really appeal to me. However, I know that there are a number of writers that teens love in this genre: Mette Ivie Harrison, Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George, and more recently, thanks to The Amaranth Enchantment, Julie Berry. Because I know this is a popular genre, I wanted to give Berry’s newest, Secondhand Charm, a shot. I’m glad I did.

Evie lives in a small, secluded village with her grandfather. She’s been blessed with the power of healing, too. She herself is rarely, if ever, sick and when a poor villager or visitor falls ill, she is able to nurse them quite quickly back to health. Oh, and the stonemason’s son has taken quite a shine to her, even if she hasn’t noticed. Evie wants to do a little more in her life, especially since she has a bit of a natural talent, but living in such a remote village won’t permit her to do so easily.

That is, until the big announcement that the King is coming to their village’s festival. When the townspeople scramble to put together the festival and the king arrives, Evie’s intellect and skills catch his attention when one of his footmen becomes ill. Her offers her the chance of a lifetime by extending her the money and admission to the University. The only catch, of course, is she must get there.

While at the festival herself, Evie purchases three charms from a gypsy, and those charms might be just the things that help or hinder her trip to the University. Is Evie the possessor of serpentine powers that she’s never known about? Could this unravel truths about why her mother is gone or help her see what the stonemason’s son could offer her life?

Secondhand Charm, despite not necessarily being the genre I’m comfortable with, was an enjoyable read. I felt the world was pretty easy to fall into because it was more fairy tale than fantasy. Evie was a great character, and I rooted for her throughout the entire book. She gets into a couple of tough positions on her way to the University, but I was always on her side. It’d be tough not to like a girl who has drive and desire to be a healer and get to school. Catching the attention of the king for her intellect, rather than simply beauty, just made me like her that much more.

The mythos of the serpentine powers worked quite well, too. I did find some of these passages in the story a little clunky, which may be the result of my inexperience as a reader, rather than the author’s writing. As far as plotting, this story does it well, moving at a solid pace as Evie travels, then encounters a bit of a challenge in actually getting to the end point. Even the road blocks that come up — a ship fight, a marriage between two people who shouldn’t be wed, the discovery of a horrible scene to steal land from the king, and the whole keeping a serpent hidden under one’s clothing for protection — don’t come off too quickly or drag too long. The only challenge I did have was a bit too much “tell” when Evie learns of potential serpentine powers from Annalise. The use of the charms Evie picks up on a whim works conveniently, as readers will discover at the end of the book. I quite liked this element of the story, as I wondered to myself more than once when certain charms would show up.

Because this is a clean story, with no language issues, and because it falls into the fantasy/fairy tale genre, this is a perfectly good story to hand off to your younger readers. The book suggests the audience as 10-14 year olds, and I think that’s spot on. Older teens will appreciate it, but I think this might be a true “tween” book. There seem to be few stories of this ilk aimed at that audience (much more traditional fantasy tends to be published here). Plus, isn’t this the age that dreams like Evie and hopes to change their lot through fantasy? Fortunately, they’ll discover that it’s truly Evie who held the reins entirely, changing the course of her life with her own intelligence and strong will.