The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

June 22, 2016 |

After reading Amy Lukavics’ excellent Daughters Unto Devils (Kelly has a brief review here), I was craving more good horror reads. I liked the concept of Dawn Kurtagich’s The Dead House, which is told in a found footage style via journal entries, video transcripts, therapy recordings, and other notes. The dead house of the title is a teenage girl’s mind, so this is not a haunted house story – rather, it’s a mishmash of psychological horror with a nice sprinkling of demonology and a dash of gore (just a couple scenes). I can’t watch horror movies because I’m sensitive to blood on the screen as well as the “make you jump” trick so many filmmakers pull, but I can handle most YA horror novels. I wouldn’t recommend this one to the more squeamish readers, but it’s not the most disturbing horror novel I’ve ever read either.

It centers around two identical twin sisters living in a single body – at least that’s how they describe it. Carly is awake during the day and Kaitlyn lives during the night. Their therapist, Dr. Lansing, has diagnosed them with dissociative identity disorder, frequently called multiple personality disorder, and says that Carly is the true personality and Kaitlyn is the alter. Dr. Lansing believes the split happened when Carly’s parents died in a horrible car accident as a way for Carly to cope with the trauma. But Kaitlyn has always been there, even before the accident, and there’s much more going on with the two girls than Dr. Lansing could imagine.

The story begins in a psychiatric facility and then moves to a boarding school that doubles as a transitional home for mentally ill teens who are re-acclimating to normal life. One of the first things we learn is that a terrible fire destroyed this school over ten years ago, and the students all claimed a girl named Kaitlyn Johnson was responsible – though no Kaitlyn Johnson was ever enrolled, of course. The rest of the book is a flashback leading up to those events. Most of the story is told via Kaitlyn’s diary, and through it we get a very intense look at this troubled teenager. It’s never clear to the reader whether Kaitlyn is “real” or not, as she insists, and as the story progresses, Kaitlyn herself even begins to doubt. When Carly’s personality disappears and Kaitlyn is conscious 24 hours of the day, Kaitlyn’s mental health deteriorates even further and she searches in desperation for any way to bring back her sister. It’s at this point that The Dead House really begins to blur the lines between psychological horror and supernatural horror.

Because we get such a close look at Kaitlyn’s mind, both through her diary entries as well as analysis from her doctor and others who come into contact with her, her hallucinations (or are they real?) and paranoia (is it paranoia if it’s true?) come across as exceptionally creepy. Carly’s best friend, Naida, eventually learns about Kaitlyn and tries to help bring Carly back – she’s fully on board with the idea of Carly and Kaitlyn inhabiting the same body. Naida’s methods involve black magic and she believes Kaitlyn is inhabited by a demon…which may or may not be true. Everything is moving along nicely, with a delicious creepiness, as bit by bit Kurtagich enhances the horror. The first truly gruesome scene involves someone cutting off their own tongue with a knife after a misguided exorcism-type attempt, and it’s at that point that readers will realize they’ve left the intro to horror far behind. From then on, it’s a bloodbath, with Kaitlyn driven to violence by the demons (or her own mind?) and eventually realizing an awful truth about someone she loves. Everything comes to a head the day of the fire, culminating in a violent, out of control conclusion that brings the story full circle.

By the end of the book, the reader is unsure whether Kaitlyn/Carly’s illness was responsible for what happened, or whether something supernatural actually had a hand in it. The answer is probably a little bit of both; it’s meant to be ambiguous and isn’t unsatisfying left so.

Kurtagich’s debut novel is ambitious and succeeds on many levels: as a character study of a fascinating and troubled teenage girl; as a horror novel that may keep you up at night; as an interesting way to tell a complicated story. I thought the supernatural aspects were a little weak; the mythology behind it was somewhat muddled and I found Kaitlyn’s mind much more interesting. But for the most part, the elements all work together in harmony. The creativity on display is impressive. I listened to this on audio, and Charlotte Parry, who reads Kaitlyn’s parts, does such a good job of bringing Kaitlyn to life. She draws sympathy even as she terrifies. Highly recommended for horror fans.

The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

June 8, 2016 |

I read the first book in Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ political thriller series for teens, The Fixer, when I picked it up at TLA last year (2015) and thought it was pretty great. The “Scandal for teens” tagline is very apt, though I would say it’s a bit less soapy (at least in comparison with the first season of Scandal, which is all I’ve watched). And then the sequel, The Long Game, was available at TLA this year and I dove in immediately.

Right away, I knew this one was even better than the last. But I had no idea how it would blow my mind about two-thirds of the way through. It’s a twisty, fast-paced read with revelations around every corner right from the beginning…and then in the last third, Barnes seriously steps up the ante even more and the book was impossible for me to put down until I finished. I’m not sure I even breathed for those last 150 pages or so.

The Fixer introduced us to teenage Tess, whom we discovered was the daughter (not the much younger sister) of Ivy Kendrick, a famous Washington, DC fixer. She goes to school at Hardwicke, where most of the children of Washington’s elite also attend. There, she helped unravel a conspiracy to murder a Supreme Court Justice while also helping her fellow students with their own fixes.

The Long Game starts off with Tess coming to terms with the realization that Ivy is her mother, and her parents (who have been dead for some time) are actually her grandparents. And of course, there’s another job for her: Emilia, the sister of Tess’ friend Asher, wants Tess to help her win the student council election. Tess doesn’t like Emilia that much, but she’s running against John Thomas Wilcox, who is kind of like a flying Texas cockroach, but worse. So she agrees to make it happen.

Like in the first book, Tess’ fixing “job” at school overlaps with Ivy’s own machinations. A bomb goes off at a local hospital and the terrorist they arrest has ties to the President’s eldest son. At the school, John Thomas steps up his game and starts threatening Emilia and Tess and their friends with whispers of blackmail. When researching how John Thomas might have come into possession of such information, the trail leads back to John Thomas’ father, a senator, who also may have some sort of connection to the arrested terrorist. Everything appears to be connected in some way, and Tess tries to figure out how and why as the stakes continue to rise. And Barnes pulls no punches in what she puts her characters through.

You know how in a lot of thrillers, the plotting is mostly good, but occasionally the only way to communicate necessary information to the reader is via infodump, or to have the main character do something stupid and out of character, or to have the villain monologue near the end? Barnes doesn’t need to do that. She is a master plotter and could school every other thriller writer whose work I’ve ever read. The details build on every single page, and they all cohere and make sense. Tess is smart and what she discovers fits with what she has learned before. There are multiple red herrings and possibilities, but then the puzzle pieces all come together at the end. Something you thought might be a throwaway line actually has meaning later on. A small, loose plot thread other authors might have left dangling turns out to be important. There are so many things going on, so much to figure out, that even if you guess some of it on your own, there’s still so much to be revealed. When I think of Barnes writing this novel, I envision her with a huge whiteboard and lots of lines connecting different ideas and characters and events together.

Not only is the book brilliantly plotted, it’s peopled with interesting, complex characters, Tess primary among them, but also Emilia and Henry, Tess’ potential love interest. The relationship between Tess and Ivy also deepens and possibly begins to heal, though it remains imperfect. There’s one big, unanswered question by the end, an opening for the third book, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

The Long Game hit shelves yesterday, and you should all do yourselves a favor and pick it up.

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

May 25, 2016 |

I described Julie Berry’s newest, The Passion of Dolssa, as “a slow burn of a book” on Goodreads. I wasn’t fully engaged initially, but by the end, I was totally immersed, and I can’t put my finger on exactly when that happened – it just happened slowly, over the course of this multilayered, character-driven, wholly unique novel.

It’s 1241 in Provensa (now called Provence, an area in France), and the people are still reeling from the Albigensian Crusade, one of those crusades ordered by the Pope where people killed their own countrymen in the name of God. It was a way to not only cleanse the area of heretics, but also to seize land and grow wealth (which Berry and her characters point out was often the true goal). The Albigensian Crusade ended in 1229, but “heretics” are still burned and the people still live in fear.

Into this fraught environment comes Dolssa, a gentlewoman and mystic who has a personal, almost romantic relationship with Jesus, whom she called her beloved. She’s a teenager who speaks frequently of her beloved to those around her. She’s revered by those who receive her message, and she’s believed to have worked miracles. She eventually catches the attention of church leadership, who aren’t about to allow a woman to hold such religious power. Dolssa is labeled a heretic and sentenced to death, along with her mother. Her mother dies, but Dolssa escapes (thanks to what she believes is the assistance of her beloved) to the town of Bajas in Provensa, where she’s taken in and protected by Botille and her two sisters, who run a pub.

Most of the story is told from Botille’s perspective, though we also get large sections from Dolssa and the obsessed friar pursuing her. There are also occasional snippets from people the friar interviews along the way. The whole book is a frame story, bookended by another friar who is reading about the incident (the story is meant to be the testimony of Botille and the other characters) and feels uneasy about it. Tacked on to the end is a note from the “author,” a modern-day scholar who claims to have found these papers and assembled them; she adds an epilogue that is haunting and will give you chills.

When I read about a book that people describe as “character-driven,” I often find that it’s code for “plotless” and therefore boring. Not so in this case. These people are fascinating and funny and I would love to be friends with so many of them. Botille’s voice is a treat. I listened to the audio version, so I mean that in two ways (Jayne Entwhistle reads Botille’s sections). She’s snarky and hands out as much shit as she’s given (and as a young woman in 13th century France, she’s given a lot). She’s a loyal friend and sister, always does what she thinks is right, and works hard. She’s an entrepreneur too – a lot of the humor in the story is derived from her matchmaking, which she makes a good amount of money from. And she’s good at it! She has a knack for knowing whose personalities will match in the long run, despite her tender years. She loves without judgment, too, most notably her drunk stepfather (her mother died some time ago) who can’t take care of himself or any of the girls but is seen as no less of a person worthy of care. His speech near the end of the book is one of the most moving – you might cry. In fact, there’s remarkably little judgment on the part of most of the characters in Bajas, who are fiercely religious and rally to protect Dolssa when it becomes clear that she does miraculous things and is being hunted because of it.

At times, the book has a magical realism feel, but I wouldn’t categorize it as such, nor would I call it religious fiction. The miracles that Dolssa performs are viewed in the context of the characters, who completely believe that she can do wondrous things – and Dolssa herself believes she can as well, working through her beloved, and that she has an obligation to do so. Berry writes about these miracles in such a way that the reader is free to decide if Jesus intervened or did not – and ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the reader decides. What matters is that the characters believe it, and that’s what propels the story.

Berry sprinkles her novel with lots of Old Provencal, the language spoken by her characters. It’s a little jarring to hear at first. To me it sounded like the audiobook narrator was badly butchering French words. But that’s not the case at all, and the meanings of the words are obvious in context (and probably faster to pick up in print). It’s just another way that Berry adds a feeling of authenticity to her story, making the reader feel as if she’s fallen into another time and place entirely.

Often when I read historical fiction, I find that books fall into one of two camps: the language and behavior of the characters has been modernized so much that they no longer feel historical; or the language and behavior feel so alien that it’s impossible to really understand the characters and their motivations. There’s a fine line that must be walked, and Berry is a master of it here. The beliefs of the people in Provensa, and Dolssa’s beliefs in particular, are not modern. Yet Berry does such a good job of getting us inside their heads that we understand these beliefs and how they lead to actions that we would never take ourselves in our 21st century context. These characters feel like inhabitants of another world, but they also feel immediate and real.

Berry’s author’s note at the end is a must-read, but it won’t completely quench your thirst for more. This is one of those novels where I immediately went to the internet to read more about this time and place, and I’m still curious and thinking about it weeks later. I feel as if my knowledge of real people who lived then has been expanded, and that my understanding of humankind in general has been enhanced as well.

I always yearned for more medieval-era historical fiction when I was a teen, in the vein of Catherine Called Birdy but for older readers. Not that this is a readalike (the tone and subject matter are very different), but teens who want to read more about the Middle Ages after having their interest piqued by Birdy and others should definitely seek this out. It’s also a great pick for historical fiction fans tired of the same eras being written about over and over again (World War II, the Renaissance), and for any thoughtful teen who wants to fall completely into another time, place, and way of life.

Round-up Reviews: YA Edition

May 16, 2016 |

I’ve purposefully not been writing reviews since the beginning of the year and I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, I’m really enjoying reading a lot more, perhaps in part because I feel no pressure to talk about what I’m reading unless I really want to (either because it was a great read or because it wasn’t a great read). But second, I’m reading far less than I have in previous years. At least some of that can be attributed to tackling edits and copyedits for Here We Are and working on a couple of additional side projects, but not all of it. I do think by not writing reviews, I don’t feel the pressure to always be reading something so I have something to write about. It’s sort of liberating, even though it’s also sort of weird to “only” have read about 50 books so far this year. I recognize that most people don’t read 50 books in a year, let along 50 books in five months, but that is still a slow reading year for me.

Since I know a lot of readers still love book reviews, both for their own reading purposes and for talking about books with young readers, I thought I’d offer up a periodic round-up of reads with short reviews covering the salient points of the story and what the verdict of it might be. Book Riot does a weekly series, “Buy, Borrow, Bypass,” which has really made me think about the way I recommend books and I think it’s a worthwhile way to give a quick talk about a book’s merits and whether it’s worth your money, worth your trip to the library, or worth skipping all together.

Here’s a look at some YA reads I’ve picked up recently and have thought about for a while. Most are available now, and if not now, in the very near future.

Frannie and Tru by Karen Hattrup (May 31)

This is a quiet book about a quiet girl named Frannie whose cousin Tru is sent to live with her family for the summer. Frannie believes his coming has to do with his conservative, Catholic parents being bothered by his being gay. There’s something else at stake, though, which Frannie learns far later in the book, and unfortunately, it’s a bit of a let-down in terms of plot and lead-up what that “big secret” really is.

What works in this book is that it explores racism from the point of view of a privileged white girl realizing these very things. Her parents are going through a hard time financially, so she’s going from a private Catholic school to a public magnet, where she’ll be one of the only white people there. Tru introduces her to some of his friends, many of whom are black, which opens Frannie’s eyes to challenges she’s never seen.

These elements are really solid, but it was impossible not to think about the greater context of the story and setting: this is set in modern-day Baltimore, and not once are racial tensions throughout the city explored. Periodically, one of the black side characters will say something, but it’s not in a bigger capacity. It felt like a really huge missed opportunity in a book about racism and race, and one where the fact that this family is up on the news (that’s a thing mentioned more than once, since the family cut off internet and cable for the summer). The book is good, but it could have been great were those aspects explored further and pushed harder. It was all right there. For a debut though, a pretty good read, and the quiet girl story will likely resonate with “quiet” readers. Borrow this one, unless you’re seeking more books on race and prejudice from a white point of view (that’s in sincerity, not in snideness!) and quiet, literary YA, then go for the buy.

Keep Me in Mind by Jaime Reed

Told through alternating points of view, Reed’s romantic YA novel explores an interracial relationship that’s been made tense because of an accident that occurred while the couple was together. Ellia, a black girl, is struggling with amnesia, following a fall after a run. She doesn’t recognize the boy who has been coming around, who keeps talking with her, who keeps wanting to relate to her.

Liam, a white boy, doesn’t necessarily feel responsible for the accident that turned Ellia’s life, as well as his, completely upside down. In part because it wasn’t his fault — as readers, we know he struggles with guilt, but it’s far less about what happened and far more about losing Ellia’s love and the challenge that exists now that he’s The White Boy who hurt her in the eyes of Ellia’s parents. Likewise, Ellia begins to fall for another boy, one she’s meeting at therapy.

What makes this book really strong, though, is Liam’s dedication to Ellia. The book begins and weaves throughout the story of their romance, as written by him. It’s a way to sort of “relive” that romance for Liam, as well as a way for him to tell her what happened and to help her remember what they’d once had.

This is an easier read, despite the heavy topics of amnesia and interracial romance explored. Reed balances this nicely and all of the characters are wonderfully fleshed: they’re real, they’re flawed, and the romance that you want as a reader is kept just far enough away to make you want to keep reading. The ending of this book is a great one, too. If you like love stories or are seeking books that feature interracial couples, this is a buy.

On a superficial note, that cover is so great. Not only does it feature the interracial couple, but they look like teenagers, and the black girl in the image has wonderfully natural hair. I see black girls picking up this book on that cover alone.

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

In technicalities, this isn’t a YA book; the story is set post-high school, and it came from a small press that doesn’t publish YA-specific titles. That said, this book has tremendous teen appeal and I think could be easily included in a YA collection. And it should be.

Juliet is an asthmatic Puerto Rican college student from the Bronx who chooses to spend the summer in Portland, Oregon, living with and working as an assistant to her favorite writer, Harlow Brisbane. Juliet came out to her family recently, and she’s decided to leave home for a while, not sure how her family is going to handle the big news.

Brisbane is Juliet’s idol, in part because she’s so open and honest about feminism, the female body, and other things that appeal to Juliet’s budding acknowledgement of her sexuality. But as the story unfolds and Juliet begins learning more about her idol, as well as she begins learning more about her own identities, things aren’t going to be as smooth this summer as Juliet anticipates.

Even though it at times the book becomes a little too on-the-nose with feminism, intersectionality, race and queer theory, these are things so many readers, especially young feminists, are so hungry for. They will love Juliet’s coming to learn things, question things, find herself hurt intentionally and not. That final anthem to herself is the kind of thing you read and want to punch your fist in the air. The writing can be a little stilted when the passages exploring these big topics appear, but it’s okay. This isn’t a textbook and Juliet’s voice and desire to be a sponge, picking these things up, makes these small stumbles in the writing easy enough to overlook.

This isn’t a perfect read alike to Isabel Quintero’s Gabi, a Girl in Pieces but readers who loved that book will absolutely eat this one up. It’s got tremendous appeal in that it’s told through the eyes of a college student, but the eagerness she feels for learning and discovering herself really captures the YA perspective. Juliet Takes a Breath deserves your shelf space, hands down.

Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers

May 11, 2016 |

Sarah Ahiers’ debut novel, Assassin’s Heart, features a girl who belongs to a culture where murder is worship – provided it follows the correct procedures. Lea Saldana is seventeen years old and already practiced at killing people in service of her death goddess, Safraella. She belongs to the Saldana family, one of nine families in Lovero who are assassins for hire. They often kill people who most would say “deserve” it, but the reasons don’t actually matter in Lovero: as long as the price is paid, the assassins will do the job.

The premise of this one is similar to Robin LaFevers His Fair Assassin, but it is much more difficult for me to swallow. The morality of the characters is pretty foreign to most of our societies, I would say. Even in the His Fair Assassin books, the murders that the girls commit are ostensibly ordered by their god and therefore just. In Lea’s world, all that is required is money. It is the act of killing, not killing for the right reasons, that is the worship. Mitigating the harshness of this somewhat is the belief by Loverans that people killed as worship of Safraella will be reincarnated by her later. Therefore, death is not really permanent, though reborn people will have no memory of prior lives.

When Lea’s family is killed by the Da Vias, one of the Saldanas’ rival families (the families mostly kill each other too, forming and dissolving alliances repeatedly), Lea goes on the run to another country and formulates a plan for revenge. She seeks out a long-banished uncle who did something unspeakable (at least according to the Saldanas) and teams up with another young assassin-in-training, Les, both of whom assist her to different degrees.

The religion of the book is messy, though certainly unique. And the fact that it’s messy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since most of humanity’s religions are pretty messy in real life too. It’s one of those religions in fantasy books where it seems like it may just be a set of beliefs the characters hold and then morphs into the kind where the gods and goddesses actually appear on the page and do what the characters believe they can do. It’s interesting and nuanced in some ways.

But.

Ahiers never got me to fully suspend my disbelief – that such a powerful culture would exist where this kind of thing was de rigeur and generally accepted. Real people certainly use religion to justify all sorts of terrible things, including murder, but I would say such people are generally fringe and condemned by the majority of believers. Of course, the fact that the culture Lea belongs to is not a copy of a real one can be argued as a positive, and Ahiers does provide a counterpoint in the culture of the country Lea escapes to, where her form of worship is considered barbarous. But I just never bought into it, and I think a lot of teens will have a hard time with it too.

That said, this book does have a lot going for it. The premise, while not perfect, is an engaging one. It’s a revenge story with a lot of action, a little romance, and a few twists. Ahiers’ writing is solid throughout, and while I had a hard time buying into the idea on the whole, I did believe that Lea’s motivations were real, and I didn’t have a hard time rooting for her, despite her contradictions (at one point in the story, someone points out to her that the murder of her family was also an act of worship, and shouldn’t be OK with that considering her own beliefs?). This is an interesting, imperfect book that may find a divided readership.

Book borrowed from my local library.