I’ve definitely not been reading at the pace I usually do this year. Part of it is life stuff, and part of it is that I haven’t been finding myself falling in love with a whole lot of books. I’ve liked what I’ve read well enough, but little has consumed my attention completely. I keep picking up books and hoping that it’ll be the one which changes my reading and gets me back on track, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m trying to really respect that, especially as my normal tactics for getting out of a slump — changing genres, changing formats, diving into things I’m really eager about — hasn’t worked, either.
That’s probably not an ideal introduction to a series of short book reviews, but I wanted to get that out there because I’ve found that my enthusiasm for writing reviews has waned a bit in that light, too. Which isn’t to say none of the books I’m about to talk about are bad — in fact, one of these books will be making my best of 2014 list, for sure — but rather, it’s to say I’m less interested in a lengthy discussion of these titles and more interested in a quick look at what worked and didn’t work.
Torn Away by Jennifer Brown (available now) might be my favorite of Brown’s books to date. The story follows what happens in the wake of a devastating tornado that not only tears apart Jersey’s home, but leaves her without a mother and a little sister. Without shelter or her family, she’s sent to live with her father who is terrible and she’s put into a situation where her own life isn’t safe. In that environment, she’s unable to do anything she needs to do for herself on a daily basis, let alone do what she needs to do in order to properly grieve the immense losses in her life.
Fortunately, things change when she’s able to move in with her material grandparents, who she never met because her mother did not get along with them. In this move, Jersey comes to have space to not only grieve, but she’s able to work through building new relationships with people who she had been led to believe didn’t care about her nor her well-being. That process exposes her to a host of truths about her mother. Brown does an excellent job of not only exploring the depth of grief that Jersey has to work through — she lost everything here — but she also does an incredible job of exploring the idea of perception vs. reality when it comes to people who are or are not in your life. This is a complex family with a layers upon layers of relationship twists and turns, and while many could easily say that it’s “too complicated,” I found it refreshingly real and honest. Brown gets some extra points in this story because Jersey isn’t a skinny girl, but her fuller body is never, ever an issue. She doesn’t hate herself nor is she uncomfortable in her skin. Instead, this fact about her — and it’s a fact about her — is woven into the character development in subtle and authentic ways.
Hand Torn Away to readers who have loved Brown’s work in the past, appreciate complex family dynamics, or who love a story about disasters. This could be an interesting pairing with Lara Zielin’s The Waiting Sky.
Katrina Leno’s The Half Life of Molly Pierce, available July 8, was a title I saw pop up as a read alike to Stephanie Kuehn’s forthcoming Complicit, which I read and loved (the review will come later this month). The comparison isn’t without merits, but in many ways, that comparison was a heavy one: it put some high expectations on Leno’s book for me, since Kuehn’s knocked it out of the park.
I can’t talk a whole lot about this book since it would be all spoiler, but this psychological thriller is about mental illness, and I saw the twist of the story coming one chapter in. It’s hard when you have that idea in mind to not spend the rest of the novel gathering evidence for your conclusion and feeling both satisfied and frustrated when you come to the end and see you were right. It’s satisfying because you as a reader knew all along but it’s frustrating because the strings to get from point A to point B are too clear in the novel. It felt too obvious to me from the onset, and I’d hoped that my intuition would be wrong, but it wasn’t.
This is a book about a girl who has little memory of her past, and as she’s putting it all together with the help of those around her, the story becomes more complex and much scarier for Molly. Could it be that she never understood who she was to begin with? Or that everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie? How do you pick up the pieces of your own experience when you can’t remember much of what you’ve experienced?
Molly Pierce will appeal to readers who like psychological suspense, who like stories about mental illness that aren’t necessarily about mental illness, and those who may want to wade into this genre of book and don’t have a whole lot of experience with them, since the story will seem more fresh and surprising to them. It’s a very short book and it’s fast paced, so it’s one that would appeal to more reluctant readers as well.
Guy In Real Life by Steve Brezenoff (available now) is, hands down, one of my favorite reads this year. The story is told through two points of view, that of Lesh and that of Svetlana. The two of them literally crash into one another on a street corner in St. Paul, Minnesota one night and from then on, they can’t seem to stop bumping into one another in some capacity.
Lesh and Svetlana are anything but stereotypical. Lesh is an all-black wearing Goth-type but he’s much more than his appearance may let on. He loves his music metal and he has recently fallen in deep love with video gaming. So much so that after his run-in with Svetlana, he creates an entire character in his game based off her — he plays as a girl named after Svetlana. Real life Svetlana herself is a role playing girl and a dungeon master who embroiders skirts and listens to music like Bjork for fun. In other words, a nerd who is way more than that label would ever suggest. She’s not interested in Lesh the way he is interested in her, but over the course of their getting to know one another, her feelings change.
The story alternates chapters within each of their voices, and it also offers chapters told from the video game itself as Lesh is playing. It’s a bit meta in that way, but it works. At heart, Brezenoff’s novel is about gender expectations and by seeing how Lesh plays the role of a girl in the gaming world, he’s forced to reconsider what gender may mean in the real world. Can he build more empathy for females in the real world, as he’s learned how tough it is to be a girl in the virtual world? And how does that exploration of gender impact how he relates to Svetlana?
As for Svetlana, she, too, plays against those gender roles not only in who she is and how she presents herself, but she’s a leader for her role playing club and has to take on roles that don’t necessarily jive with what is often expected of girls. It never comes across as a message, nor does it feel inauthentic. In fact, what makes this novel so strong and memorable is that these characters are teens we all know. They’re immensely complicated, rather than defined by whatever label is slapped upon them, either by themselves or by others. “Nerd” and “Geek” and “Gamer” and “Girl” and “Guy” are all explored here in thoughtful and fun ways.
Is there romance? Sure. But I wouldn’t necessarily label this one as a romance. That’s one element, but it’s really a book about identity and about relationship building more grandly. Pass Guy In Real Life along to readers who are gamers, who are interested in gaming culture, who love books about gender and identity, or those who dig stories told from multiple points of view. You do not have to be a gamer at all to appreciate this book nor to appreciate the chapters told through the game itself — I’m not, and in many ways, I think because I’m not involved nor knowledgable in that world, I took a lot away from it. I have a feeling readers who loved what Rainbow Rowell tried to do in Fangirl will eat Brezenoff’s book up.
Last but not least is Amanda Maciel’s Tease (available now). This is a bullying story told from the point of view of the alleged bully, who played a significant role in the suicide of a girl at her school. Sara, the main character, slowly reveals what happened at school which caused her to have to face a judge and potential sentencing for Emma’s death. Told in alternating time lines — the present and the past — we get a glimpse into all of the things that Emma did which led Sara to act in the manner she did.
What makes Maciel’s novel not an average bullying novel is that it’s told from the point of view of the girl being blamed. Sara isn’t the hero here. She’s the one facing serious charges in the wake of Emma’s suicide. Where she shouldn’t be a sympathetic character, though, she does become one readers do sympathize. We see why she took the actions she did and why she bullied Sara as she did. Never are readers expected to forgive her actions; instead, we’re given the other side of the story, the one which rarely gets told (the only other novel I can think of which allows the bully’s voice to be the one we hear is Courtney Summers’s Some Girls Are, which is certainly a great read alike to Maciel’s book).
In reading from Sara’s point of view, I found myself conflicted. She did some awful, terrible things to Emma. But she was also not the person coming up with these ideas. She was being fed ideas and encouraged to pursue them by another girl, and in Sara’s desperation to maintain that friendship and save her own face, she acted. It doesn’t make her guilt free, but it changes the motivation behind her actions. I felt bad for Sara because she did those things to keep her own reputation going and to protect her own interests. It was far less about ruining Emma’s life and more about keeping her own secure.
However, I found the ending of this book exceptionally disappointing. I was all on board and really enjoying the conflicting emotions I had in reading this until the very end when — spoiler — Sara is redeemed entirely. She gets a way-too-easy out of the story, and I never once believed that she felt the way she claims she did. The way it’s written, too, doesn’t invite the interpretation that she might be sarcastic or insincere; it’s too clean, too clear-cut, and too pretty a bow on an otherwise powerful read about bullying culture. I’d still heartily recommend Tease, especially for readers who like intense, thought-provoking novels that will spur discussion and discomfort. But that ending was a total disappointment in an otherwise noteworthy book.
