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Juvie by Steve Watkins

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In early September, I wrote a post over at Book Riot featuring YA books about teens serving time. When I was doing my research for it, I ran across a book coming out in October by Steve Watkins called Juvie, which I immediately ordered for the library and put a hold on.

And I am so glad that I did. It was supremely satisfying.

Sadie and her older sister Carla find themselves in a bad place one night, after Carla convinces Sadie to come out to a party with her and be her designated driver. Carla has a bit of a history — she’s been in trouble before, and she was a teen mom to a daughter named Lulu. But for the most part, Carla’s pulled things together. She has a job and she and Lulu have their own place. Sadie believes this decision to take her sister to this party will be fine, especially because she’ll be the designated driver. She knows that means Carla will get home okay.

Except, things don’t go down quite that way.

Carla drinks a lot that night, and both Carla and Sadie find themselves face to face with a couple guys begging for a favor. Carla ensures Sadie that it’ll be okay to drive the boys to the 7-11. Sadie, unable to rationalize it all and unable to fight her sister or the pressure of the two boys, decides she’ll make the drive. But once they pull into the 7-11 lot, it’s clear those boys aren’t simply running in to pick up soda or beer. They’re there for something more troubling.

That’s the night Sadie and Carla are arrested.

Sadie’s always been a good girl — good grades, member of the basketball team, has a steady and solid boyfriend. That arrest marks the first time she’s ever been in trouble. And because of that, she’s pressured to do something in order to help save the reputation of her sister, as well as the rest of her family: take the fall for the entire evening’s activities so that Carla doesn’t find herself behind bars and little Lulu doesn’t have to lose her mother. Because Sadie’s record has been so good, she should have no problem with a short sentence, some probation, and having her record sealed. She’s under 18. Carla is not.

It’s a tough position for Sadie to find herself in, but it’s clear her love for Carla and her family’s well-being are what convince her to make the decision to take this deal. She could do a little jail time, have the records sealed, and move on with her life. Besides, she was there, she was aid to a crime, and, well, it shouldn’t be so awful, should it?

There is, of course, a twist. It comes in the form of a judge who wasn’t aware of how the case had been discussed already, wasn’t keen on the fact Sadie wouldn’t spill the names of the boys who caused the crime (she didn’t have names), and who felt she was being a little insubordinate at her trial. She’s sentenced to the full six months, and she’s ordered to report to her sentence on Monday.

It wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be, even though Sadie never believed it would be easy.

Juvie is set up very smartly: it’s not a straight narrative. The story begins with Sadie preparing to turn herself in to juvie, but then it cuts back and forth between the night of the incident and her time in prison. No details about prison life are spared, and in many ways, that’s what made this book so strong. There are cavity searches, there are hard and fast rules that must be followed, and there are cliques among the girls. There are fights and brawls. Juvie is no pleasant place, and Watkins has clearly done his research to make it clear this isn’t the kind of place a girl like Sadie should ever be in — nor the kind of place someone like Carla, who has been a girl with trouble in her past, would ever want to be, either.

Just because Sadie had been a good girl, though, doesn’t mean she gets special treatment. She’s like any other inmate. Except, she does befriend one of the guards. And it’s that guard who becomes an ally to her and that guard finds Sadie an ally, as well.

Watkins’s writing is pretty straightforward, but he doesn’t need to make the prose spectacular because the story itself shines. He’s developed a captivating character in Sadie because she is a good girl in a terrible situation, but she never plays that card. She believes it internally, but because she is a good girl, she realizes that following the rules inside prison are vital. And even more than that, she realizes that there are times when breaking the rules is also important. Or as she herself learns, there’s a difference between being not guilty and being innocent.

Juvie will appeal to reluctant readers, as it zips along and tackles a really interesting topic with a setting that is hard to make unappealing. That’s not to say this book won’t appeal to non-reluctant readers; it definitely will. I think there’s something here that has a wide range of appeal to readers who want hard realistic fiction that isn’t afraid to be honest and painful. Sadie’s a character who is easy to like, but she’s not easy to like because she’s put into this position. She’s easy to like because she’s relatable to many teens — she comes from a family life that, yes has some challenges (aside from her sister and sister’s child, Sadie’s father is very ill and her parents are separated), but it’s a family that still loves and supports despite those hangups. The position Sadie’s in, wherein she’s asked to make a choice that would impact her more than it would impact her sister, is one that readers understand she takes a lot of time to consider. And it’s one that weighs on her over and over — did she harm herself more in the end? Can she come out of this better? What would the future hold for her after six months in prison?

There are weaknesses in some of the characters in the book. I found the storyline with Sadie and her boyfriend to be underdeveloped. I wanted a little more of their backstory so that their separation had more emotional heft to it. Sadie and Carla’s parents could have been further developed, too, as I found their father’s story to be really fascinating. Of course, it wasn’t the point of the story, but it offered enough that I think a little more backstory there would have made this even stronger. I’d argue this book could have used more emotional connection, as well: we know how Sadie feels by her actions, but I’d have enjoyed a few more internal moments. We get some — particularly at the start of her sentence (she muses about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote about the dark night of the soul) — but even more would have taken this from a really good read to a great one.

The ending is entirely satisfying.

Pass Juvie along to readers who love stories about teens put into tough situations, particularly those who find themselves digging stories about teens in prison (your teen fans of Beyond Scared Straight or those who may have watched and enjoyed Orange is the New Black will find a lot to enjoy here). But more than that, this is a story about a teen forced to make an excruciatingly tough decision and who has to face the consequences for it — for better or worse.

Juvie is available now. Reviewed from a library copy. 

The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee

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Fifteen year old Rose Lovell has just moved to Leonora, a small town in Queensland, Australia, with her wandering father. They’ve been on the move since her mother died when Rose was six. Her father, who’s had a drinking problem for many years, finds sporadic jobs, but he mostly leaves them after a few months, packing everything up and moving on to the next place. Leonora is just the next town in the neverending string of stops, and Rose doesn’t intend to put down any roots or make any friends.

Pearl Kelly, though, knows nothing about Rose’s determination to avoid all human entanglements, and she insinuates herself into Rose’s life, practically forcing her into a friendship. Pearl is beautiful and sweet and kind and naive, and Rose can’t help but love her. Their friendship develops slowly, sweetly, and Rose begins to think that maybe there is a life for her here in Leonora.

Pearl convinces Rose to attend the Harvest Festival put on by their high school, which means she’ll need a dress. Not just any dress, either – one made by the local eccentric, old Edie Baker. Some speculate that Edie is a witch, living in her remote house full of strange, old things. But whatever else Edie is, she is firstly a dressmaker, and the price of a dress for Rose is simply Rose’s assistance in making it. As Rose helps make the dress – the midnight dress – Edie tells stories of her life, dating back to before World War II, which make the book a story-within-a-story.

It’s Rose’s relationship with these two girls/women – Pearl and Edie – that drives the story, though we get snippets of her relationship with her father, with a boy in her grade, and a few others. Hanging over the entire book is a tragedy, one foreshadowed from the very first page. Something terrible has happened in Leonora, we learn, and it has something to do with Rose, Pearl, Edie, and the dress.

The Midnight Dress is one of those books that a lot of people describe as magical – and some claim to have magical realism – but in reality, has no magic at all. It’s the quality of the writing that drives this description, I think. I don’t necessarily mean that it’s outstanding (though I believe it is). Rather, the way Foxlee tells her story makes it seem as if it’s all occurring in a completely fabricated place, where senses are heightened, emotions are felt more deeply, and wonderful (and terrible) things happen in a way they never could in our own everyday lives. There’s an insular feel to the story, as if the characters exist outside of the world inhabited by the readers, and we are only allowed a glimpse.

I don’t think Foxlee’s story is unusual in this regard, but she certainly does it very well. The techniques of alternating viewpoints and frequent switches in time contribute to this feel. It makes the story incredibly gripping, but in a very different way from a thriller or a romance. When the story was done, I felt as if I were emerging from a kind of fog. I had to go to work a few tracks before the end, and I could not get my mind off the story for the entire work day. This is quite unusual for me with audiobooks, which I usually listen to with about 90% of my attention.

An audiobook that can do this to me is obviously very well-narrated. Sometimes accents can get on my nerves, but Olivia Mackenzie-Smith is a native Australian and she sounds completely genuine. Her Pearl sounds naive, enthusiastic, and kind, while her Rose is just the perfect amount of bitter and, slowly, hopeful. She drops her voice for the male characters without making them sound like caricatures. It’s a very well-done production.

It doesn’t feel much like a YA book to me, though. It was initially published for the adult market in Australia and then bought for YA readers in the United States. There’s a certain distance to the characters, which prevents the reader (or listener) from really getting into their heads. I ached for them, but I didn’t ever feel like I was them. The narrative very much seemed like an adult telling the girls’ story – perhaps even Edie herself. It felt quite refreshing to read a book that seemed more adult, actually, which I don’t do much of lately. A lot of adult books follow this one’s structure as well – split timelines and a story within a story, with a mystery wrapped up in it all. I’d be curious to read what other people thought about the book’s “YA-ness.”

One final thought: the book is set in 1986, and an event that occurs in that year plays a minor – but ultimately very important – role. There are mentions of the Soviet Union and a lack of cell phones. The time period also makes it possible for Edie to have lived through World War I – and remember it – and still be alive and well enough to sew a dress in 1986. This would be impossible to do in 2013. I think the year is justified for the story, but it doesn’t really feel much like an historical book.

The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas

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I went to the Austin Teen Book Festival several days ago, and Sherry Thomas was one author in attendance. She described her book, The Burning Sky, as “Harry Potter with cross-dressing,” which is certainly pithy, but may actually set up many readers for disappointment.

Nothing is Harry Potter. And that is OK.

The Burning Sky is actually quite different. Yes, there is a boarding school, but the whole story is set in 1883, immediately setting a very different tone. (Historical fantasy! I love historical fantasy!) The boarding school (Eton) is also set in the non-magical world, and our protagonist Iolanthe has to pretend to be non-magical herself (as well as a boy) in order to not give herself away. She’s an elemental mage, you see, and she’s been coerced by Titus, the prince of the Domain – also a magical teen pretending to be a normal, though royal, person in the non-magical boarding school – into training with him at Eton, honing her powers, in order to one day bring down the Bane, a powerful, possibly immortal being who rules Atlantis, which in turn subjugates Titus and Iolanthe’s homeland.

It’s a classic fantasy storyline, but told very well. What I found particularly engaging was the world-building, which is quite creative and left me with a feeling that I really knew the place when I finished the book. Like in Harry Potter, the magical world exists alongside the non-magical one, unbeknownst to non-magical people. That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

In Iolanthe’s world, there’s an Inquisitor who works for the Bane, able to worm her way inside someone’s brain, not precisely reading memories, but getting what she needs nonetheless. There’s also a diary full of visions that only shows certain pages depending upon what the reader needs to know. The spells are interesting – there’s one that Titus casts which makes it impossible for Iolanthe’s image to be reproduced in any way, as well as one called an “otherwise” spell that makes it seem like a person named Archer Fairfax had been attending Eton for several months before Iolanthe arrived, when in fact no such person even existed up until that point. My favorite bit, though, is the Crucible: a book that training mages can go inside in order to train with copies of past rulers and great mages, learning how to fight dragons without any danger to their actual selves…most of the time.

I love reading about cool things like this. It reminds me of the possibilities of fantasy. Creativity needn’t be earth-shaking. Even small-ish details like these lend the book uniqueness amidst its often-trodden storyline.

Over the course of the story, Iolanthe and Titus do fall in love. It’s rather slow-burning, which is nice. There’s deserved and long-lasting bitterness from Iolanthe toward Titus. Titus is wonderfully tortured, and Thomas never makes it seem melodramatic. Her career as a romance author is in evidence – she’s very good at it.

I wish I knew more about what exactly Atlantis is. (I was fascinated by the legends of Atlantis as a teenager and am eager to see if Thomas just liked the name or if there is some connection.) We never learn how Atlantis came to power, what it is exactly they do to the citizens they control, or anything about the Bane other than he’s possibly immortal. There’s also a bit near the end that I hoped was more than a plot convenience, but turned out to be just that. It was lazy writing and seemed out of place with the quality of the rest of the book.

All in all, this is very well-done high fantasy and should please fans of the subgenre. It fits very neatly into the list of books we covered in our high fantasy genre profile – magic, mages, new lands, strange creatures, a fight against evil. I’m eager for the sequels, and I hope to see more like it in the future.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Burning Sky is available now.

Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi

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Maybe all I have is my own two feet. And the confidence that they can bear my weight when the world goes sideways. Maybe that’s enough.

Corey, Holly, and Savitri are best friends — Corey and Holly are brother and sister, while Corey and Sav have a relationship. Their bond is tight, and one of the activities that keeps them connected as a threesome is their interest and participation in freerunning through different areas of Chicago. It’s their favorite activity, right up there with being mega invested in comics.

The night the story opens, things look like they’re solid, or about as solid as they could be knowing what’s between them. The three of them are freerunning, and when their fun comes to an end, Corey and Holly hop into one car, while Sav hops into another. Lingering in the back of their minds, though, is the inevitable future. They’re going to be pulled apart because Sav wants to attend school outside Chicago, even though it means leaving behind her best friends and her family. But Sav’s torn about this, too, because she loves the city and she loves her friends and boyfriend.

That night, everything changes when the car Corey and Holly are in is approached by a gunman, shots are fired, Corey dies, and Holly falls into a deep coma.

Chasing Shadows is Swati Avasthi’s sophomore novel, and it’s a hybrid graphic novel, illustrated by Craig Phillips. Together, the pair write an incredibly evocative, engaging, and wholly different type of story about grief and, more interestingly, friendship.

The three friends in this story are well-drawn, and not only are they well-drawn both through the writing and through the illustrations, they’re interesting because they partake in activities and have passion for topics that aren’t always readily seen in YA. But what makes it noteworthy isn’t that they’re different. It’s instead that the story embraces these things about them in a way that makes them your typical, average teenagers. Sure, they engage in freerunning. Sure, they love comic books. Sure, Sav is a main character of color (she’s Indian). But it’s never about the fact these teen do things that are outside the norm of many YA characters. It’s instead that they’re normal.

Avasthi’s story is told through two points of view, and this set up is important to the underlying theme of friendship. Holly, who is in a coma and struggling not only with all-encompassing grief but also an unnamed mental illness — which may or may not have been brought up through the grief and coma — brings us into a really dark world. She wants to give up and die in order to be with her brother. Much of her voice is through the graphic elements, which ties into not just her love for comics, but also ties into her relationship with Sav and Sav’s heritage. As readers, we know there is something really wrong with Holly, too. Her thinking is marred by her grief, but it’s more than that. She truly believes she’s got nothing worth living for, and in her post-coma recovery, it becomes clear that she’s not the person she was just weeks ago. Something is off.

Savitri is the other voice, and she, too, is struggling with immense grief. She’s not only lost her boyfriend in the incident, but her best friend Holly is hurting and is ill. And it’s that illness which pulls Sav into considering the value of friendship. How much does a person give to another in order to make it work? How much do you have to sacrifice of yourself in order to be there for a friend? Does it change or shift depending on the state that that friend is in? Avasthi does a spectacular job of allowing the reader to not only consider Sav’s empathy for Holly’s situation but also forcing the reader to understand that Sav’s life and future can’t be put on hold for the sake of her friend, either. At what point does she make a decision to stay with her friend and help her through her illness and at what point does she have to walk away? The choice Sav makes is — spoiler — the riskier one, but it’s ultimately what made this book not just a good read, but a great one. I think too often there’s a desire to go for the easier, happier ending, especially when it comes to a story about grief and loss and mental illness. But Avasthi doesn’t do that here. She instead serves the characters in the way that they best need to be served.

The struggle and consideration and reconsideration of friendship is what stands out in Chasing Shadows, even more so than the grief element. In that respect, the comic panels are brilliant because they unify the two girls through their shared passions but these panels also divide them because of the stories within them and what those stories mean to them as individuals. For Holly, it’s a coping mechanism. For Sav, it’s part of her heritage. Avasthi never names a mental illness here, either, which gives it almost more weight than had she diagnosed her character’s pain. It’s dealt with with incredible respect and care, and in many ways, it’s that care and honor of the illness (and even more so the girl suffering with it) that makes what Sav chooses to do even more painful  . . .  and more honest.

Chasing Shadows is well-paced, but the writing is never sacrificed. This is a strongly written, gritty book which is only enhanced by the graphic aspect. It never feels like a gimmick; instead, it serves a marked purpose that further develops the characters and adds depth to their relationships. In many ways, this feels like a true YA novel to me. It has great teen appeal to it, and the hybridization enhances that. As noted earlier, too, Phillips’s illustrations are strong. They never felt like an afterthought.

Although this book makes use of the graphic elements and does delve into some mythology, it’s wholly contemporary. There’s nothing fantastical here. In many ways, it’s through those non-straightforward storytelling elements that the book is an excellent example of contemporary realistic YA. Readers who dug Avasthi’s debut novel Split will find this to be an excellent next read, and anyone who wants a gritty, painful story about loss, friendship, and about “what comes next” will want to pick this one up. Because this book delves into mental illness in a really unique manner, I would go so far as to say those readers who loved the way in which Nova Ren Suma explores mental illness in 17 & Gone will want to give this book a read, too. They aren’t at all the same, and the styles are markedly different, but the ways in which both books give an interesting glimpse into mental illness make them a worthwhile pairing.

This is a book that will linger in my mind for a long time, and it’s one that solidifies Avasthi as a must-read author for me. She gets tough contemporary YA so right.

Chasing Shadows is available now from Random House. Review copy picked up at ALA. Swati will be sharing a guest post later this week, too, on the very topic of friendship in YA and in her book. 

Dual Review: Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee

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Though we don’t have a formal horror series planned for October, Kimberly and I will be featuring a number of reviews and other fun features highlighting horror this month. We’re going to kick it all off with a dual review of a horror novel that generated a ton of discussion between the two of us because it does precisely what a good horror novel should do: it leaves you with a lot more questions than answers, and those questions beg to be talked about. The two of us enjoyed Engines of the Broken World so much that we invited the author to participate in an interview. So whet your appetite on the review, and then we’ll bring you an interview with Jason Vanhee tomorrow.

Kimberly Says . . .












Merciful and Gospel Truth’s mother has just died. They live on a farm in the country, and it’s been cold – and getting colder – for a long time. This means they can’t bury their mother in the hard ground. Instead, they put her beneath the kitchen table, which they know is wrong.

The Minister, the talking cat who lives with them, guiding their actions on the path of righteousness, tells them this is wrong. They must bury their mother, even if it means venturing out into the encroaching fog, the fog which eats away at their neighbors’ bodies, leaving nothingness behind.

But they don’t listen to the Minister. They leave their mother’s body unburied, and Merciful realizes what a mistake they’ve made when she hears her dead mother’s voice speaking to her. Her mother – or whatever is inhabiting her mother’s body – has something to do with the fog closing in on the farmhouse, closing out the rest of the world. The Minister is also involved somehow, and one of the greatest joys of watching this story unfold are the ways Vanhee leads the reader down so many different paths. What is the true nature of the Minister, of the fog, of Merciful’s mother? You’ll change your mind several times over the course of the story, and you may still feel like you don’t have all the answers at the end.

I like it when authors take risks with their content. There’s quite a lot of religion in this book, but it doesn’t come close to resembling what most would consider “Christian fiction.” Because Vanhee plays with Christianity in the way he does, twisting it into something one might call horrifying, I expect a great many readers would find his book offensive.

I love that. I don’t love it just because people are offended; I love that these kinds of stories are not off-limits despite that. I’ve written about this a little bit when I discussed Misfit and The Obsidian Blade. By experimenting with a religion so many of us subscribe to, Vanhee makes his story all the more terrifying, I think, and more personal as well.   

Engines is an apocalyptic story, but it’s markedly different from any other apocalyptic story you’ve read recently, I assure you. For one thing, it’s a small, intimate story. The cast of characters numbers six, and it diminishes quickly. The setting consists of the Truth home and a neighbor’s home, plus the land between them. This, too, diminishes quickly. The book gives off a very claustrophobic feel. Its huge idea – the end of the world – may seem at odds with the smallness of its cast and setting, but that’s what makes it stand out, and it’s a large part of what makes it so effective.



It’s also incredibly disturbing. One of my favorite moments is actually something I feared was an ARC mistake at first, involving the deliciously creepy and ambiguous Minister. (The Minister may be the most brilliant thing about the entire book.) If you choose to pick up this book after reading our review (and I hope you do), look for a moment where the Minister’s true nature becomes even more ambiguous than before – and then let me know if you were as creeped out by it as I was.

I loved this book for its creativity, for its daring, and for its writing – which is concise, atmospheric, and doesn’t waste a single word. This is an excellent choice for readers looking for something that will stretch them a little, something that’s different from anything they’ve read lately. I also think it would be a great pick to re-energize anyone going through a reading slump.





Kelly Says . . . 


A good scary novel in my mind leaves you wondering at the end, and I find it particularly enjoyable to wonder whether or not the ending is hopeful or hopeless. Vanhee captures this perfectly in Engines of the Broken World, as we’re left with a world that’s been literally shattered and destroyed. But Merciful Truth is such a trouper throughout the story, making some gut-wrenching decisions, and at the end, I couldn’t help wonder if the world has hardened her enough to make her actually feel hope or if she’s finally succumbed to the truth of the world in which she lives: it’s hopeless. Period. Because even though she has the chance to live now, the chance to get out and do things on her own terms, there are lingering forces in the world around her which she has no control over.

The fog isn’t going away. If anything, it continues to grow closer. The ending of Vanhee’s novel was absolutely perfect and just the way I prefer my scary stories because of this. I don’t want a cut and dry answer. I want to leave wondering. But I want to be left wondering enough that I also don’t want to reenter that world and discover an ending. I like that discomfort. I like there to not be a pretty bow at the end.

Kim and I talked a long time about the role of The Minister in this book when we both finished, and we’ve each our own take on it. I believe The Minister’s role was as the false prophet in the story: it’s a role he (it?) sort of takes on himself and yet it’s a role that both Merciful and Gospel choose to believe in when the times become exceedingly difficult for them. And it’s through their belief and worship of The Minister that their world becomes more confusing and challenging, rather than one in which they can believe stronger. For me, the role of The Minister as false idol/prophet came to a head when Merciful has to make a huge choice about taking control of the situation within the house and spirits haunting it — spoiler here — she has to kill The Minister. And with that comes the freedom to move on with her life and make her own choices without his guidance and his judgment of them. This act of agency was empowering for her, rather than one done out of desperation, though desperation certainly aided in her choice.

Overall, Vanhee’s novel is a lot of fun. Yes, I said fun. There’s definitely a body count, and there’s definitely a lot of scary stuff that happens within it, but what makes it fun is that it’s ballsy. Engines plays upon a lot of taboo topics and does so without backing off them. And there’s a cat who talks and is (in my mind) a jerk. It’s satisfying and rewarding as a reader since there are no cheap ways out. There’s bloodshed, there’s murder of family, and there’s possession, parallel worlds, and as a reader, you’ll find yourself feeling a bit paranoid.

I think this book will make some people angry because it does these things. But I think the real element of horror in this book comes because of that: if we strip away the sanctity of things in our world — death, religion, family, pets — and we instead look at them in another way, of course we’re going to be scared. And we should be.

Pass Engines of the Broken World off to your mature YA readers who want a challenging but satisfying scary book. This one should work well for those who love Stephen King, as well as those who love a story about other worldly spirits.