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Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

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Liz Emerson planned it all out. She knew what date she’d crash her car and kill herself. She plotted where it would happen, when it would happen, and then she allowed herself 7 days to change her mind. If she couldn’t find a reason to, she’d go through with the plan.

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang begins when Liz follows through with the plan. But this isn’t a story that’s told in a linear way. Instead, as Liz lies in the hospital, we’re given flashbacks and flash forwards into her life. What could possibly make her want to kill herself? For someone as popular and put together and respected as Liz, it seems like suicide would be the last thing she’d have on her mind.

This story is told through a surprising narrator, though readers will catch on pretty quickly to that. They may not be clear on who the narrator is until the reveal at the end, but this deliberate choice is why Zhang’s novel stands out from many others and why the book itself is fresh.

The narrator knows Liz and knows Liz well. And that narrator isn’t willing to lie about who or what Liz was in life. Liz, despite appearances as a popular and well-respected girl in her school, is far from a nice girl. She’s manipulative. She’s mean. And she’s persuasive. Those characteristics are precisely why she’s respected though — people don’t want to get on the wrong side of her because they know that nothing good could come from it. But even being close to Liz is a problem. Her best friends, Julia and Kennie, can’t escape her manipulations.

Thanks to Liz, Julia’s found herself with a bit of a drug problem and Kennie has had an abortion. While both girls make those choices for themselves, Liz’s persuasive power and the fear that acting against what Liz says they should do would be cause for worse, they follow through. They listen. They’re under her control, whether they like it or not.

Then there’s Liam. He’s a nice guy. A really nice guy. And he’s at the hospital almost immediately after Liz’s crash. Not because he and Liz are a couple and certainly not because she’s ever given him the time of day. In fact, Liz and her friends did something awful to Liam early on in their high school career that marred his reputation forever. But Liam, being a bigger person, saw through her actions and knew that maybe, just maybe, there was something bigger and something better lurking beneath Liz’s surface. He was, in fact, the person who knew it was her car that crashed. He recognized it and recognized Liz as the driver from the shirt she was wearing. Rather than allow himself to let her be, he instead decides to follow his own good heart and be there waiting for her, whether she recovered or not.

Liam is good, but Liam was also part of the problem, and not by his own choice.

Falling Into Place is fast paced, but it’s nuanced. What seems like a cut-and-dry story of a mean girl isn’t that straightforward. It’s easy to dislike Liz because she’s not likable. But her unlikable characteristics have some explanation. She is exceptionally lonely. With a father who died when she was really young by an accident she witnessed and a mother who travels all the time and finds Liz to be more of a pain than a child to love, she finds herself spending a lot of time in her home alone. Drinking. The mean things she does aren’t done as a means of being vindictive but instead, they’re ways to keep her entertained. To fill her own life with some kind of meaning, despite the fact that she recognizes and knows there are consequences.

Liz is filled with regret for her actions, but the problem is when you’re at the top of the social ladder and people respect you and fear you, admitting your weaknesses is an impossible thing to do.

During the seven days prior to her suicide, Liz tries to change herself. She goes out of her way to try to say the things she’s intended to say forever — she wants to apologize to people and she wants to reach out and ask for help. She tries, and as readers, we see that it’s not done as a means of seeking sympathy, but as a way of really, truly trying to change herself. We know she feels bad, and it comes through in little and surprising ways. There’s a moment when Liz reflects upon her decision and she notes that she has to kill herself on the same day her dad died to minimize the days per year her mother would have to grieve. She’s not doing this to make people feel bad; she’s doing this for the exact opposite reason. She wants people to be free of her being a bad influence and a problem.

She reaches out. During those last few days, she tries to change. She goes to her school counselor and asks for help, but the counselor unintentionally turns her away. She speaks up about feeling depressed, and she’s turned away. Not because the counselor doesn’t care, but because the counselor can’t do anything for her and, unfortunately, her reputation precedes her. Liam sees through her. But Liam also knows he can’t reach her. Kenna and Julia, despite what Liz believes, care deeply about her. They know her. But, as Liz notes, they might not be as perceptive to her inner turmoil as she wishes they could be, and reaching out, she thinks, would be an incredible sign of weakness. Would they care? With how she’s hurt them, why wouldn’t they hurt her back?

Worth noting that readers get to make the choice on whether or not Liz is redeemed in the story. Zhang doesn’t give us a solid answer, and because of who the narrator is, it’s further complicated. This was a smart, savvy narrative choice because it’s the kind of story that has no good answers at the end. It can only lay out the facts, and those facts are inextricably tied to the narrator sharing them, and that narrator shows both the good and the downright ugly. The narrator loved Liz, but the narrator didn’t love everything Liz did.

Falling Into Place is tightly written, and the complex structure works. This book is a fast-paced read, and it’s one that could easily be done in one sitting. Personally, I appreciated walking away a few times because there was a lot to sift through — Liz is anything but one-dimensional and holding the contradictory thoughts of her meanness with the sadness she felt inside required some away-from-the-page reflection. The writing is solid and at times really lovely, and while some of the renderings of high school and secondary characters can feel a little bit flat, it’s forgivable because of who the narrator is, how long that narrator has followed Liz, and, perhaps the thing worth noting but not lingering on, the author wrote this book when she was 18. Without being beyond her own high school experience, it’d be impossible to see the wider world. Which isn’t to say it’s bad — it’s far from that — but instead, some of the depictions read a little young and yet, they show really huge promise.

Zhang’s debut is a memorable one, and I can see this being a title getting some Morris discussion. It hadn’t been one I paid a lot of attention to, but I’m really glad I picked it up because it far exceeded my expectations and left me eager for what Zhang will write next. This book could be called If I Stay meets Before I Fall and that would be an accurate description, though I liked Falling Into Place more than either of those titles. There are shades of Thirteen Reasons Why in this book, too. While a mash-up of the three books may make this sound like it’s the kind of book that’s been done before, it’s not. Falling Into Place is new, different, and it will have huge appeal to readers who liked any of those prior titles without it ever feeling like it’s trying to be any of those titles. This is a book for your realistic YA readers who like complex characters.

Falling Into Place is available now. Review copy received from the publisher. 

The Vault of Dreamers by Caragh O’Brien

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The year is 2066. Rosie Sinclair attends the Forge School, the premier place for creative teenagers to hone their skills and get ahead in subject areas like filmmaking, acting, dancing, and fine art. Graduation from the Forge School is a guaranteed ticket to the good life.

But the Forge School is also a reality television series. All students who attend are on camera for twelve hours of the day. The other twelve hours, they’re put into a drugged sleep, a sleep they’re told will enhance their creativity. As any reader of dystopias (and this is a sort of micro-dystopia, if we consider the school to be its own community) will realize right away, everything is not as it seems at Forge.

Vault of Dreamers opens with Rosie fretting over the “fifty cuts,” the point in the television series (and the school year) at which the fifty students with the lowest “blip rank” (meaning popularity with the viewers at home) will be cut and sent home. Rosie is nearly number 100 (out of only 100 students), and she’s pretty resigned to not making it past the cuts. But it wouldn’t be much of a story if it ended with her going home, so I’ll give a grand non-spoiler and tell you that she makes it.

Rosie is a bit of a rebel, and because she figured she had nothing to lose, she decided to forgo her sleeping pill one night before the fifty cuts. She pretends to swallow it, then sneaks out of her sleeping pod and goes up to the roof, just for kicks. She also sees one of the doctors putting an IV in the arm of a sleeping classmate, which alarms her. Sneaking out one night is a relatively small act of rebellion, but it kicks off a series of similar acts. She starts skipping her pill more frequently, meeting up with a non-student who works in the cafeteria, and planting her own cameras around the school to determine what exactly is going on at Forge – because she knows the school administrators are not simply encouraging creativity in the students by making them sleep 12 hours at night.

This is an odd duck of a book. The premise is actually quite creative, particularly when the sci-fi reason behind the existence of the school and its enforced sleep is fully discovered (the title is kind of a spoiler, but it’s fairly complex, so there’s lots to puzzle out even if you already know it involves dreaming). At the same time, its creativity hampers it a bit. Because the explanation is strange, it’s harder for the reader to grasp, and I left the book feeling a bit confused still. The last pages – and I do mean the very last ones – take the book to a new realm entirely, and that’s where it finally lost me. I don’t need my endings tied up with a neat bow (nor do I need them to be happy, which this one isn’t), but I do think it’s important that the reader is not left saying “huh?” after she turns the final page.

2066 is probably still considered the near future, at least in terms of SF writing, but it’s far enough in the future that the references to Youtube and Facebook sprinkled throughout the book are jarring. They seem very out of place mixed in with references to new and unusual technology we’ve never heard of, and I think teens will rightly question O’Brien’s assumption that such things will still be around 50 years from now. Won’t they be replaced by something newer and shinier? How long did MySpace’s popularity last?

Those were my two biggest hangups with the book, one pretty major and the other relatively minor. There’s a lot this book does right. Rosie’s voice is done very well; she sounds like a teen, not like a world-weary adult (a lot of teens in futuristic sci-fi seem middle-aged cynical to me). This doesn’t mean she’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all the time, it just means she sounds her age: young. She’s naive, and even when it’s clear that the adults aren’t looking out for her best interests, she clings to the idea that they are still the ones to be trusted. It’s heartbreaking.

The fact that the school is also a reality series is an intriguing twist. There’s an explanation given for it partway through – at least an explanation for the public, not necessarily the real reason. The concept is relevant for today’s teens and explored fairly well. The students are encouraged to speak directly to the camera, and viewers at home can pull up their favorite students’ feeds whenever they like (there’s not a single camera creating a single story; each student can help shape their own story). Students use the cameras to their advantage in various ways, particularly as the fifty cuts approach, to gain popularity with viewers, which is also directly to “banner ads” that make them money they can cash upon graduation. There’s also the claustrophobic feel the cameras create: Rosie is sure she’s always being watched, but she can’t let that stop her from her quest. It just means she has to get more creative with it.

This is a thrilling read, fast-paced, with a lot of secrets for our protagonist to unearth. There’s a small dash of romance and a couple of subplots (a strange fight with a friend, Rosie’s rough home life) that add layers. The unsuccessful ending notwithstanding, this is a worthwhile read for fans of near-future SF and would make a good readalike for Lauren Miller’s Free to Fall or Rae Mariz’s The Unidentified, both also tech-heavy books set in highly-monitored schools where the adults turn the students into consumable products.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Vault of Dreamers will be published September 16.

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

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Biddy and Quincy are two special education students. Or at least, they were special education students until they graduated from high school. Now, they’ve been placed together in an apartment that sits behind a home of an older woman who they’re responsible for helping out. She’s almost like their overseer, but she’s really not (or at least, she’s not hugely invested in that role).

The two girls were placed together following graduation for legal reasons, but the caseworker who paired them together did so for very specific reasons. Ones which Quincy can’t make sense of and ones which leave her more frustrated than content.

See, Quincy is a rough-around-the-edges kind of girl. She’s got a facial scar, thanks to a horrific young home life, and she wears her hurt, her anger, and her defenses like armor. When she’s moved into this apartment, she’s given a job to work outside the home, at a local store. She’s capable of doing it, despite what others might think of or perceive of her skills because of her education. Though Quincy’s told she and Biddy are to share their home responsibilities — it’s a way for the two of them to both acquire new skills — Quincy is a good cook and takes on the cooking for all meals, rather than splitting the task with Biddy. In return, Biddy cleans.

Biddy is almost the polar opposite of Quincy. She’s exceptionally sweet and kind, with a large heart. This is despite her own rough past, one which comes through periodically in the story but isn’t fully exposed until it needs to be. Unlike Quincy, Biddy wears her scars internally, and her external persona is that gentle nature. She’s not rough. She’s not tough. She mothers a duck and ducklings that appear in her garden, taking extreme efforts to protect and nurture them, to ensure that the babies and mom survive in their out-of-place home. But Biddy is scared, and that scared comes out in somewhat unexpected ways.

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles is a dual-voiced novel, written with short chapters and in a style that reflects the authentic voices of these two girls. They don’t speak or think in entirely perfect sentences or use proper grammar — but it’s never once distracting nor is it belittling. In many ways, this choice in style is exceptionally respectful of these girls, how they think, and why seeing how they think this way matters. Never does it feel like the girls are being made fun of nor that their special education status makes them anything less than fully human.

This isn’t an easy read, though, despite the fact it is fast paced. It’s engaging, but the horrors both girls experience are unbelievable. Biddy, who is sweet on the outside, has been raped in the past. Not only had she been raped, but she had become pregnant and her caretaker at the time forced her to give up the baby for adoption. Though Quincy thinks of her as a slutty kind of girl initially — and Quincy is quick to judge the fact she’s fat to seeing her once with candy and snacks tucked inside her clothes — but as Biddy opens up to Quincy following something horrific that happens to her (spoiler: Quincy is also a victim of sexual violence, at the hands of a coworker who we know early on is suspicious), Quincy begins to see that Biddy’s exterior isn’t the whole of her.

There’s a lot to mine here in terms of armor and how we wear our scars. This is a realization Quincy comes to, too: she’s biting and tough in her words, and her scar becomes quite representative of how she feels on the inside. Biddy wears her wounds with her body. She eats — or did eat — for comfort and solace. While many times this character trait can be problematic in books, as it’s such an easy way to explain why a character is fat, rather than allowing them to be fat, Giles does a great job not doing that here. She’s giving an explanation, but she’s not making Biddy’s life about her body. Where it once was what Quincy saw as what defined Biddy, Quincy is the one who realizes what a crummy way it is to judge someone. She knows she wouldn’t want people to judge her by her exterior. Perhaps, too, it’s worth mentioning here that Quincy is a person of color, and that becomes a topic she broaches in her side of the story.

Girls Like Us isn’t perfect, despite how many things it does right. At times the format and the pacing mean that huge plot points are rushed over or shoehorned in in a way that doesn’t feel authentic. There’s a moment when — spoiler — the woman who Biddy and Quincy work for tries to reunite Biddy with the child she’d given up for adoption. This entire scene felt uncomfortable because it wasn’t fleshed out well, and while that is part of the point (Lizabeth hadn’t thought this through when she decided to pursue this), it felt like one thing too many in a story that had been handling a lot of issues very well.

That said, one of the best parts of this book, and why I keep thinking about it long after finishing it, is that Giles wrote a book about girls. There’s not a romance here, and even when boys become a problem within the story, they’re not turned into enemies — Biddy’s fearful of them, but she’s not hateful toward them. More importantly, girls aren’t enemies, either. There aren’t “other girls” in this book. There aren’t girls who are special or more valuable or more different than others. These are two girls who learn how to work with one another and who come to love one another for their strengths and for their flaws. These are two girls who, despite being so different, have a shared core to them. Quincy and Biddy build one another up and they are there for one another through some really tough stuff in a way that empowers their relationship and in a way that empowers them individually. They’re not saved and they’re not saving. They’re respecting each other and learning how to grow and become individuals. This is a powerful and all-too-rare message in YA. Though these girls have been a part of special education, they aren’t any less human than anyone else.

Giles respects these girls so much, and it’s through Quincy and Biddy’s voices that we begin to understand how labels such as “differently abled” and “special education” or any other euphemism can be useful and can be hurtful. As Quincy says to one of her coworkers, she’s not dumb. She’s just been given a different education because some things are hard for her to grasp. It doesn’t mean she’s unable to function in the world; she just has to adjust her functioning to suit her strengths and accommodate her weaknesses.

Pass Girls Like Us off to readers who like gritty novels, as well as those who like a fast-paced book. This will appeal to reluctant readers, as well as more advanced readers, and it certainly should be given to those who are seeking stories set after high school and not in college. These girls are part of the working class, and Giles knocks the economics of this out of the park. Likewise, readers who are looking for books about girls, about friendship, about tolerance, and about how those with learning challenges operate in the real world will find so much to enjoy here. By far, my favorite Gail Giles read.

Girls Like Us is available now. Copy picked up from the library. 

Palace of Spies by Sarah Zettel

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I love historical mysteries set in palaces, particularly when the sleuth is a girl spy masquerading as a servant or lady in waiting. I feel like there are enough books fitting this particular mold out now that it can almost be considered its own subgenre within YA: historical female spy palace mysteries? Over the weekend, I read Sarah Zettel’s excellent Palace of Spies, which kicks off her series of the same name. I read these sorts of books for the palace intrigue, the historical details of court life, and the intelligence of the amateur sleuth; Zettel’s book did not disappoint in any of these aspects.

One of the hallmarks of these stories is the teenage sleuth thrown into a life of espionage through desperation or blackmail – it doesn’t usually happen by choice. Such is the case with our protagonist, Peggy Fitzroy, an orphan who decided to refuse marriage to the wealthy jerk her rich uncle had picked our for her. Kicked out of said uncle’s home and with nowhere to turn, Peggy decides to accept an offer from the dubiously-named Mr. Tinderflint. He convinces her to pose as Lady Francesca Wallingham, who was very recently a lady in waiting to Princess Catherine (wife of George, the Prince of Wales, who would go on to be George II) – until her unfortunate death of a fever several weeks ago.

As Peggy bears more than a passing resemblance to Francesca, the deception isn’t difficult to pull off. She’s instated at Hampton Court Palace with no one the wiser, instructed to observe and report back. What precisely she is to look for isn’t deemed knowledge she needs to know, though she is told she must pay careful attention to the games of cards that the noble men and women entertain themselves with nightly.

Peggy is a smart girl. It doesn’t take her long to realize that not only is Mr. Tinderflint hiding something from her, but so is nearly everyone else at court. But the truly alarming realization is that Francesca did not die of a fever; she was murdered. It only follows that the murderer may come after Peggy next, thinking to finish the job.

As with any good palace mystery, there are a lot of threads to the story. The main mystery involves a Jacobite plot to instate the Stuart King James II to the throne of England, removing the Hanover King George I. It’s up to the reader (and Peggy) to puzzle out which subplots are integral to this central mystery and which are distractions (but interesting distractions nonetheless). Mixed up in this is the mystery of Peggy’s own past – her mother may have been a spy herself, and her father left them when Peggy was a young child. And of course, there’s plenty of court gossip to keep the reader entertained as well.

Peggy’s voice makes this an above average mystery. She’s sharply observant and learns quickly, making her ideally suited to her deception. She’s got a bit of a wry sense of humor, too, and sometimes lets her desire to one-up her court rivals get her into hot water. Watching Peggy try to puzzle out Francesca’s life without letting Francesca’s acquaintances catch on brings its own share of amusement, too, particularly when Peggy is greeted by what appears to be Francesca’s secret paramour in her bedchamber.

Zettel’s writing is confident and the story is well-plotted. Mysteries often hinge strongly on the final reveal at the end, and Palace of Spies has a great one, speaking to the way society underestimates the will and intelligence of teenage girls (both in the 1700s and today). Like all good mystery series, it also leaves a few questions about Peggy’s family’s past unanswered, giving Zettel fodder for future installments.

Hand this to readers who have enjoyed similar books in this historical female spy palace mystery subgenre (I’m gonna go with it) like Jennifer McGowan’s Maid of Secrets, Michaela MacColl’s Prisoners in the Palace, or Y. S. Lee’s The Traitor in the Tunnel. It’s also a great choice for readers interested in learning more about this period in England’s history – there aren’t many books that tackle the early 18th century and I know Jacobitism would fascinate many teen historical fiction junkies.

Tomboy by Liz Prince

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In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how I enjoy getting my nonfiction via graphic novel, and I read two spectacular ones over this past weekend. Coincidentally (or maybe not), they were both graphic memoirs about growing up as a girl in America.

Liz Prince’s Tomboy addresses this topic a bit more bluntly than Telgemeier’s Sisters does. Prince characterizes her identity as a tomboy as something she knew from almost the moment of birth, though she didn’t know how to articulate it right away. She hates wearing dresses, enjoys playing sports, doesn’t play with dolls, and looks down upon the “girly girls” who dress up like princesses and seem obsessed with makeup. The book takes Liz from her infancy up through her adolescence and into her later teen years, tackling friendship, bullying, dating, and other rites of passage. While it focuses primarily on Liz’s struggle with her gender identity, the book is also a story about family and art, much like Sisters is.

Liz’s preferred method of gender expression didn’t make things easy for her. While attending Catholic school, she was forced to wear a dress for monthly mass, and it was tortuous. She was teased a lot, called derogatory names, accused of being a boy or a lesbian (and these were definitely accusations from her tormentors), and never felt she fit in. She wanted so desperately to be “one of the boys,” but the boys wouldn’t ever allow it, and of course, she never felt like she fit in with the girls.

Savvy readers will pick up on the fact that Liz herself pigeonholes people, buying into the very system that she rails against. At one point, she reads about a girl in a magazine who describes herself as a tomboy, but this girl wears a pretty dress to go on a date with a boy, and Liz instantly decides this makes the girl not a real tomboy. Liz puts boys on a pedestal, believing their interests and values are more worthy of respect than girls’ interests and values, and this is part of what drives her desire to not be a girl.

Near the end of the book, Liz meets Harley, a woman who forces her to realize that she’s unwittingly become a part of the problem, too. She’s placed boys in one homogenous group and girls in another. Through Harley’s guidance (plus Harley’s encouragement of Liz’s artistic skills), Liz learns to see herself as a girl and embrace that identity, even if she doesn’t express that identity in traditional ways. This realization opens a door for Liz, allowing her to finally accept herself and settle into a personal identity that brings some happiness rather than discontent.

While both Sisters and Tomboy are about growing up as girls, they’re also about growing up as girls who like comics. These kinds of books are especially important for artistic girls who have a passion for these kinds of things that are often relegated to the field of “boys’ interests.” I can just imagine a pre-teen or teenager becoming inspired by Raina or Liz, seeing them struggle and emerge victorious. After all, the books are proof of the victory!

This should resonate with teens who struggle with gender non-conformity,
even in relatively minor ways, and get them to think more deeply
about the damage caused when we label people as one thing or another. Fitting in is the perennial topic for teens’ books, and for many, it’s a struggle that dominates their lives for years. Finding your place, your people, your passion is hard, especially when it seems everyone is out to stop you from doing it. Even those teens who express their gender in traditional ways usually have trouble fitting in elsewhere, and consequently, they should have no trouble relating in some way to Liz’s story.

Liz’s age through most of the book, the themes addressed, plus some minor swearing and drug use make this a memoir best suited for teens. When Liz finally finds her people near the end and is able to develop her passion for comics, it’s a gratifying moment. I think it’s a moment that happens to a lot of teens right around the time it happened to Liz. It gives the book a nice coming-of-age arc and provides satisfying closure. This is a stellar example of what the graphic format can do – it’s accessible, insightful, and fun to read. Highly recommended.

Finished copy provided by the publisher. Tomboy is available September 2.