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Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

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Naila is a first-generation American, the daughter of conservative Pakistani immigrants. Her parents allow her a fair amount of freedom, they think: she can choose her friends and what she studies in college and what her career will be, but boys are off-limits. They will choose her husband.

But Naila has fallen in love with a classmate, Saif, a boy of whom she knows her parents will disapprove. When they find out, they are disappointed, angry, outraged. They decide to visit Pakistan over the summer, ostensibly to help Naila learn about her culture and her heritage. Naila actually enjoys her time there, getting to know family she has never met and a place she’s never been. But her parents keep delaying their return to the United States, and Naila eventually learns the reason for the frequent visits from families with young sons: her parents intend to marry her off, and Naila will not have a choice in the matter.

This is a nail-biter of a book. It’s under 300 pages with relatively large text and short chapters. Naila’s knowledge of her impending forced marriage comes rather late in the book, but it’s something the reader has known all along (provided they read the jacket flap). I think this actually heightens the tension, allowing us to keep our eyes peeled for clues and hoping against hope that Naila will figure it out soon enough. She doesn’t. Her escape attempts are harrowing. Saeed is very good at getting us inside Naila’s head, letting us see just how terrifying it is to be alone, in a country you know very little about, where no one seems to wish you well. Where your own family treats you as less than a person.

The following paragraph is somewhat of a spoiler, but I think it’s important to discuss in my review, so you can feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you want to go in relatively blind. Once Naila’s marriage actually happens, the book takes a turn into some very dark territory. She’s deposited on her new family’s doorstep, and now lives with him and her mother-in-law plus two sisters-in-law. None of them are sympathetic to her. None of them care that she didn’t want this marriage. None of them even think to ask. (“Life is full of sadness. It’s part of being a woman. Our lives are lived for the sake of others. Our happiness is never factored in,” one of her new sisters-in-law tells her.) Her mother-in-law has no patience with Naila’s sadness and treats her cruelly. Her husband rapes her. She becomes pregnant. She has no passport and no visa and no method of transportation. Her immediate family has returned to America. She becomes resigned to her new life. It’s hard to read about, but it’s honest and wouldn’t have been a believable part of the story otherwise.

Despite the book’s brevity, Saeed packs a lot into it. Her writing style is simple, but it works for Naila’s story and the voice is authentic. Her descriptions of Pakistan, of the markets and the food and the buses and the packed house with visiting aunts and cousins, sprinkled with Urdu words, paint a vivid picture. It’s not difficult to see why Naila falls in love with the place and with her extended family.

Saeed’s own experience with a happy, arranged marriage (not a forced marriage, as Naila’s is) adds interest to the novel. Along with Saeed’s deft descriptions of Pakistan and the people not directly involved in Naila’s marriage, it helps prevent the book from being an indictment of Pakistani culture for non-Pakistani readers (not necessarily the most vital thing, but important when providing windows to young readers). It’s also important to note that arranged marriages (by choice or forced) happen in many cultures, including Western ones, which is something Saeed addresses in her author’s note.

Written in the Stars is a debut novel and it’s not perfectly polished. Some transitions happen too quickly or seem awkward, and the ending is rushed. Despite the imperfections, this is a heck of a book, one that I read in a single sitting and that should have high appeal to teens. I think the concept sells itself, particularly when I consider that it’s written like a thriller but actually happens to teenage girls (not the case with a lot of thrillers). It’s fascinating, intense, horrifying, and ultimately hopeful – a novel packed with love and a great deal of nuance. Definitely worth a read.

Written in the Stars will be published March 24. I received a finished copy from the publisher.

The Only Thing to Fear by Caroline Tung Richmond

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Alternate histories fascinate me. Most of them, it seems, involve a war going a different direction than it actually did, and it’s usually the Nazis winning World War II. I think for many readers, both adult and teen, World War II feels like the easy war – easy to understand why it was fought, easy to know who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. It’s also still firmly lodged within our collective memory as Americans. That other war we fought with clearly recognized “good guys” and “bad guys” – the Civil War – happened so long ago that no one who remembers it is still alive. Not so World War II. Our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents fought in it, or remember growing up as it raged around them. This societal memory is less prominent in the generation following mine (the ones who are teens now), but it’s still there.

I mention all this as a preface to my review of The Only Thing to Fear, Caroline Tung Richmond’s debut novel, because I think it’s important when considering the book’s accessibility. Alternate histories can often be niche reads, requiring knowledge of some lesser-known bit of history to fully understand. But when you write a book with the premise that the Nazis won World War II, your readers are right there with you, no explanation necessary. You have ready-made antagonists and no need to convince the reader they’re really the bad guys. And for teens who dig history, this is a question they’ve probably posed to themselves before: What would our world look like if the Nazis really did win the war?

In Richmond’s story, they had help: genetically engineered super soldiers. The Nazis now control the eastern United States and the Japanese control the western United States. Zara, our protagonist, lives in Nazi-controlled territory. Her father was Japanese and her mother white, and she’s hated by pretty much everyone around her. The white Americans hate her because the Japanese are allied with the Germans, and the Nazis hate her because she’s of mixed race. Zara also has a secret: she has abilities like the super soldiers do, and if the Nazis discovered it…well, it wouldn’t end well for her.

Zara’s extended family are part of a rebellion trying to free the United States of Nazi occupation, and that’s where the focus of the book lies. Zara wants to help out, but her uncle keeps telling her she’s too young and inexperienced. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from getting involved anyway.

Readers who have read some alternate history before may be bored by the plot of the book; it doesn’t go anyplace very new. The super soldiers could have been interesting, but they don’t really add much to the story beyond the reason for the Nazis winning the war in the first place. Zara’s experience as a half-Japanese, half-white teenager caught in this new, awful world is more compelling, and it – along with the rebellion – creates plenty of tension on its own without the super soldier angle.

For readers new to the concept of alternate history, though, this is a good entry point. The premise is easy to grasp and it’s got lots of broadly appealing elements: action, Fighting the Man, a dash of romance. It’s not the best example of alternate history I’ve ever read, but Richmond’s answer to the “What if?” question is interesting and worth a read for teens who have ever considered it themselves.

Book borrowed from my library.

Realistic YA Review Round-Up: This Side of Home by Renee Watson, I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios, and Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles

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I’ve been reading a lot lately and I’ve been really enjoying what I’ve been reading lately. It’s been interesting though, as the more I’ve enjoyed books, the less I’ve wanted to sit down and write lengthy reviews of them. Instead, I’m eager to pick up the next book and cross my fingers it’ll be as good as the one before. Which isn’t to say I don’t want to review anymore nor do I want to quit talking loudly about really great books. Instead, it’s easier to talk about a pile of recent reads at once and make sure I talk about something relating to them before forgetting to mention them at all. More about this later in the week.  

Here’s a look at 3 recent contemporary/realistic YA titles I’ve read and what makes them solid and worthwhile.

Renee Watson’s This Side of Home is about twins Maya and Nikki — both named after the poets — and what it’s like to be living in their Portland neighborhood which has seen significant gentrification over the last few years. The story picks up when Maya’s best friend, who had lived across the street from her, moves to the other side of Portland, and in move a family that’s much different than she’s used to. They represent the changes going on in her community, and she doesn’t want anything to do with it. 

Maya is very reluctant to embrace her community’s changes, where her sister Nikki is more willing to try out new places to eat and shop, and she’s much more accommodating about educational and relationship changes going on around her. There isn’t a message here about whether gentrification is good or bad, and neither Maya nor Nikki are made out to be correct in their attitudes. Instead, this is a story about degrees of change and about sociopolitical and economic changes and how the impact individuals so differently. 

But it’s not all heavy. There’s also a story here about Maya, Nikki, and best friend Essences’s changing dreams. Maya, as readers won’t be surprised to discover, is frustrated when the dreams she and her best friend had to attend the same historically black college together aren’t shared forever. Where she thinks she knows the right thing for everyone, Maya learns that she can only ever control her own future and destiny, and that understanding she can’t push her dreams and expectations on those around her is how she grows her relationships even stronger. 

Maya is stubborn, hard headed, and it’s those things that drive her to be ambitious. This is an outstanding — and fairly quick — read about embracing one’s heritage while being open to change and new experiences. Readers who are seeking stories about race and class issues, especially in an urban setting, will want to pick This Side of Home up.

One side note: while I LOVE the cover, it’s not representative of either Maya nor Nikki. Watson is fairly explicit in how the girls wear their hair on numerous occasions in the story, and neither of them fit the image above. It’s a great cover, but this isn’t either girl in the story. 

This Side of Home is available now. Review copy received from the publisher.

I like a good military-themed YA book, in part because I don’t think there are a whole lot of them out there. Heather Demetrios offers up a fresh story in I’ll Meet You There, which follows Skylar Evans as she begins a relationship with a veteran named Josh who comes back from the Marines. 

This is a romance, which usually isn’t a thing I care about in a story, but it works really well here. Set in a lower class town in California, Skylar works to help keep a roof over the head of her and her mother. When Sky’s mom loses her job, the responsibility put upon her gets even heavier. It’s so heavy, in fact, that Skylar’s wondering if her dreams of getting out of town and going to college will be squashed. 

While working at Paradise, a local motel, Sky “meets” Josh — she knew him before, but it wasn’t until he was working at the same motel where she got to know more of who he is and why it is he’s back in town. His injuries from Afghanistan put him on leave, but as readers learn through the diary entries included in between Sky’s chapters, there’s much more going on with Josh internally. He’s suffering from PTSD and being back home is making him rethink what his future might look like on numerous levels. This isn’t romanticized at all, despite the fact there’s respect for his service. 

Sky isn’t exceptionally defined in this book, but that isn’t a huge mark against this book because there’s so much else going on that is really well fleshed out. The look at class and status here is rarely seen in YA — and interestingly, I read this book immediately after reading My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp which also features a lower socioeconomic class girl who might have to skip her college dreams because of a parent’s job loss — but more, the writing is smooth, breezy, and enjoyable. It could have done without some of the too-modern references, as it might date the book quickly, but readers who enjoyed Trish Doller’s Something Like Normal will enjoy this. 

Bonus points in this one for a very forthright consent scene between Josh and Skylar. What made it stand out wasn’t just that it was Josh seeking consent from Skylar. She seeks consent from him as well. This was a well-drawn look at trust, sexual exploration, and healthy conversation. 

I’ll Meet You There is available now. Review copy received from the publisher.

What is the significance of the middle finger? What does it mean when it’s thrown at you? What did you do to deserve that gesture? 

Jo Knowles explores the lives of ten characters in Read Between the Lines, tying them all together with the flipping of a middle finger. It begins when Nate, who is an unpopular kid at school, gets hurt in gym class. From there, we see that he lives in a not-so-friendly home environment with a father who is disappointed in him. He’s broken his middle finger and dad’s annoyed he has to take his son to the hospital to get it healed. 

Knowles then offers up nine more stories of people who attend this relatively small high school, ranging from the girl who feels like a complete outsider in her tight-knit group of friends, the girl who thinks she’s too fat to be a cheerleader (and experiences the small slights people toss at those who are overweight), to a gay couple who has to keep their relationship a secret from those around them, to a recent graduate of the high school who is counting down the days until he can pursue his dreams, to a teacher who encounters these students and what her experience is as a “replacement” teacher for one who killed himself. While it sounds complicated, it’s relatively straightforward; we get a snapshot into each of their lives at that moment, and in each of the stories — which are short — the character experiences a middle finger at some point, for some transgression they’ve committed. 

Like Siobhan Vivian does in The List, we’re forced to see a community from multiple sides of the story. We meet and re-meet these characters throughout the short glimpses, and because we’re given both their perspective, as well as the biased perspectives of their friends and peers, we are the ones left to make a decision on whether their actions were justified or out of line. 

All of the characters have distinct voices, though not all of their stories have the same resonance. That’s not a flaw of the book, but a feature. Different readers will connect in different ways, 
seeing bits of themselves in some places more than others. But ultimately, Read Between the Lines is about empathy and understanding the complex internal and external lives people are living beyond the setting they’re in currently. This is about how complexity itself is a complex idea. 

Readers who love connected short stories will love this, as will fans of Siobhan Vivian and Laurie Halse Anderson. Knowles sits in a sweet spot between those two voices. 

Read Between the Lines is available tomorrow, March 10. Review copy received from the publisher. 

Bandette by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover

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I was craving a good heist story and was recommended the comic book series Bandette by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. It’s a creator-owned comic published by MonkeyBrain, and the first trade is out now. It features the world’s greatest thief, a teenage girl named Bandette, who steals from the bad people to give to the good people (while keeping a little back for herself). She’s also often called upon by the local police to assist with solving various crimes, though not even the police know her real identity. She’s like Batman if Batman also stole things and didn’t have all that angst over his dead parents.

Bandette herself is supremely confident (she proclaims she is the best thief, and does so without shame for believing it), but she also delights in finding a rival who is worthy of her. She flirts with her friend Daniel, who in turn goes starry-eyed over her. She’s always hanging upside down, grinning hugely while encouraging her friends to get in trouble with her. She loves being a thief and she does it because it’s fun for her, and because she’s good at it – and isn’t that what we all want out of our careers?

The first volume collects issues 1-5 and mainly deals with Bandette and her urchins (sidekicks) going after a crime syndicate as a favor to the local police. The crime syndicate is also going after her, having decided she’s been a thorn in their side for too long. She teams up with her biggest rival, simply named Monsieur, who has himself been recruited by a mysterious woman to steal from the aforementioned crime syndicate. Each issue builds upon the prior one, though there’s a handy recap at the beginning of each, and the story never really becomes all that complex (which is part of its charm).

The book is fun and whimsical and doesn’t take itself very seriously. One of Bandette’s main weapons is a bottle simply labeled “Knockout Spray.” No need to think too hard on it. The evil organization has the acronym FINIS and its principal villain is named Absinthe. Bandette’s main sidekick rides a motorbike called Rad Thai. Her library has one bookshelf for “First Editions: Purchased” and one for “First Editions: Liberated.” There’s subtle humor like this on practically every page, both in the dialogue and the art. The art is blessedly free of scantily-clad women and is a bit simpler and more painterly than traditional comic book art. It fits the mood of the story well – light-hearted and fun.

Long-time readers of this blog may know that I have a weakness for heist stories. I want an all-female Ocean’s 11 sort of book so badly. (Ally Carter’s Heist Society books probably come closest.) Bandette helps to satisfy this itch. It encapsulates so much of what I enjoy about heist stories: how clever the capers are, that the thieves are the good guys and they always win, the overall theme of sticking it to the man and getting rich at the same time, all the witty banter, the friendship between the thieves. It’s all good fun. This particular title is perfectly suitable for a YA audience and it’s a welcome addition to the growing collection of female-led books.

Personal copy.

Romance Roundup – Sarah MacLean Edition

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I’m still super into the romance novels lately. I’ve been reading a lot of Sarah MacLean, working my way through the Smythe-Smith Julia Quinns, and bemoaning the fact that my library doesn’t have more Sherry Thomas on audio. For this installment, I’m going to stick to MacLean’s oeuvre, which I have strong feelings about.

Let’s start with the good stuff. With one notable exception, I’ve liked everything I’ve read by MacLean. Her first series is called Love By Numbers, and just to confuse everyone, it starts with number nine. Alas, there are not eight previous novels in the series. Too bad. I liked the first two, but the third is hands-down my favorite of the series. It’s called Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart. Say that three times fast. Anyway, awkward title aside, this is a pretty great book. The heroine is an Italian woman named Juliana Fiori. She has the unfortunate luck to be the daughter of a woman who abandoned her proper English husband and went to live with an Italian man…and then abandoned him, too. Now Juliana’s father is dead and she’s moved to London to stay with her half-brothers. Through no fault of her own, London society considers her a walking scandal, which is exactly what the Duke of Leighton (our hero) wants to avoid.

Leighton appears in the previous books and he does not make a good impression. He’s called the Duke of Disdain. He’s so utterly focused on propriety and reputation, and he’s incredibly arrogant and looks down on women like Juliana. When Juliana flees a party and hides in his carriage, he thinks she’s there to trick him into marriage. I was doubtful that MacLean could make him sympathetic, but she does it. It helps that I like my romance heroes a bit on the arrogant side – you know, as long as there’s evidence for the arrogance. He also has a backstory that explains how he developed in such a way. He and Juliana are really well matched. She helps him to learn some compassion and not care so much what others think, and he in turn helps her learn how to accept who she is. It’s funny, too. Juliana gives the duke a good dressing-down multiple times. There’s really good chemistry, it feels natural and unforced. It’s also especially satisfying to see the difference in Leighton between the first two books and the end of this one. There’s a character arc for him through the whole series, which is unusual in romances.

In contrast, the first book of MacLean’s next series, A Rogue By Any Other Name (the series is called The Rules of Scoundrels), introduces us to a romance hero whom I could not sympathize with. Oh how I loathed Bourne. It begins with Bourne kidnapping the heroine (Penelope, the woman who was previously engaged to Leighton) in order to make it seem like he’s ruined her and therefore she must marry him. Wait, let me back up. It actually begins with Bourne losing all of his land gambling and then that land eventually becoming a part of Penelope’s dowry. Hence why he wants to marry her. Who cares what she wants? I have zero sympathy for rich men who lose it all gambling. Strike one. And then the kidnapping? Strikes two and three.

This is not unusual in historical romances, actually. There are way too many kidnappings. I try to avoid them. But I kept reading this one in hopes MacLean would convince me that he’s actually not such a bad sort. But he is. He is a terrible, terrible person. He uses her and has no sympathy when Penelope tells him over and over again that her whole life has consisted of men using her for their own ends and she’s tired of it. He just keeps using her. I wanted Penelope to push him in front of a cart. Alas, she never did. She fell in love with him. Unbelievable, since she is a good sort of person and he treats her terribly. Now if she were just as bad as him, I’d believe it a bit more. Alas. (At least his characterization is consistent; he’s an asshole in the next books, too.)

The next two books are good, not great. The heroes are scoundrels, but not without merit, at least. But the last book. The last book. Be still, my heart. It might be my favorite romance novel ever. It just might. It’s called Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover and I am in love with it. Since this information is revealed in the synopsis on the back of the book, I feel comfortable sharing it here. It features Georgiana, the younger sister of Leighton who became pregnant at 16 and was shunned from polite society from then on. She eventually grew tired of everyone treating her like crap and decided to get revenge on them all. She opened up the Fallen Angel, the club at which all the previous heroes in the series work. She masquerades as a man – the elusive Chase whom no one ever sees and only speaks through his emissary, the prostitute Anna (who is also Georgiana!). The first three books carefully avoided pronouns when referring to Chase so this came as a surprise to long-term readers.

Ugh, this book is so good. So many of my stories as a teenager and an early 20-something were basically thinly-veiled revenge stories wherein I wreaked vengeance on anyone who was ever cruel to me. And Georgiana does exactly that here! Membership in her club requires that the men share secrets (theirs, or their family’s, or their friends’), and she uses those secrets to hurt the ones who have hurt her, all terrible people. I LOVE THIS. She busts pre-Victorian stereotypes about women and finds a way to be powerful in this restrictive time period.

Her hero, Duncan West, is a good match for her – he’s the owner of a number of newspapers, successful but untitled. Georgiana has decided that for the sake of her daughter, she will try to repair her public reputation. She intends to find a titled husband who will be able to shield her daughter from her scandal. West agrees to help her by publishing puff pieces about her in the scandal sheet of his paper. And they fall in love. He learns early on that Georgiana is Anna, but he’s clueless about Chase until nearly the end. It’s cute seeing him try to convince Georgiana to “leave” Chase when they are one and the same. He’s dislikes her relationship with Chase because he thinks Chase mistreats her, not because she sleeps with Chase for money. And when he does find out that she is Chase, he accepts it so easily. Of course she is. She’s brilliant and devious and he loves those things about her.

If you love romance, do yourself a favor and read this book. It is spectacular. It breaks the mold of historical romance in the best way possible. Plus it’s wonderfully written, completely sigh-worthy, and has a perfect ending that is completely true to Georgiana’s character. It’s fantastic and I’ve read it twice already.

I am super excited for MacLean’s next series, Scandal and Scoundrel, which kicks off with The Rogue Not Taken (see what she did there?) later this year. Let’s hope the hero is less Bourne and more West. And that the heroine is even half as awesome as Georgiana.