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The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

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I wasn’t hugely impressed by April Henry’s The Night She Disappeared, though I could see its appeal for other readers. The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die is a bit of a step up for me – it’s a little more suspenseful, a little more of a genuine mystery, and feels a little more substantial.

Our initially-unnamed protagonist wakes up in an isolated cabin with no memory of who or where she is. (Yes, it’s one of those stories.) What she does know is that there are two men who are deciding whether they should kill her. She’s tied to a chair. Her hands are in pain and she realizes her fingernails have been pulled out.

The argument between the two men ends: she is to die. The girl is dragged outside the cabin by one of them, but due to some quick thinking and sheer luck, she’s able to knock him out and get away. She runs. She doesn’t know where to go; she doesn’t even know her own name.  

As in The Night She Disappeared, there’s a skater boy who believes her wild story and decides to help her out. The two hunt down clues even as the murderers hunt them down, and it makes for quite a suspenseful ride.

The amnesia is a cheat, though. There’s no real mystery beyond what is locked in the girl’s mind, and when her memories all come rushing back at the end – as you knew they would – all is revealed. It’s not my favorite kind of mystery. It feels cheap, like all of the hunting for clues I did as a reader alongside the protagonist during the bulk of the book was pointless.

Still, it’s a fun, fast-paced read, and the amnesia aspect didn’t ruin it for me. When the memories do come back, at least they’re mildly surprising and overall fairly interesting. I appreciated that the details of the story weren’t pedestrian as I found those in the The Night She Disappeared to be. Here, we get conspiracies and biological warfare alongside your usual murder and kidnapping.

April Henry’s books remind me of 21st-century versions of Joan Lowery Nixon’s mysteries, which I loved as an early teen. Both authors’ books tended to feature girls caught in bad (usually violent) situations who rely on their own quick thinking in order to unravel the mystery. There’s usually some double-crossing and a few red herrings, but the stories are never long and they’re always suspenseful and quick reads.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die will be published June 11.

Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith

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This summer, Kiri’s parents are on an extended vacation, leaving her to her own devices at home. She’s poised to spend it hanging out with best friend/bandmate/crush Lukas making music and competing in battle of the bands. She’s also made plans to practice piano because she’s quiet accomplished and only wants to get better and better. Really, not that awful a summer.

But it’s a phone call from a stranger who changes everything. He says he has some of her dead sister’s things. 

The sister who died years ago. From an accident. But it wasn’t an accident like Kiri was told it was. Sukey died under more mysterious circumstances.

When Kiri goes out of her way to pick up those things, she learns it’s not about the things her sister left behind. It’s about the people who she runs into on the trip to pick up those things and the people who help her work through the grief she thought she’d packed away so many years ago. 

Wild Awake, Smith’s debut novel is fresh, alive, and has a helluva voice. Though at heart this is an exploration of grief, it never once falls into feeling like a “grief novel” (arguably nothing does, but I use this phrase to suggest this isn’t a sad story). Kiri is a little bit off kilter, driven not only by wild hormones, but she’s driven by freedom. Together, she tries things and acts in odd, erratic, but completely believable ways. She’s consistently inconsistent, as anyone grieving would be. She dabbles with drugs and alcohol, which helps her remove herself from her time and place as it is. When she’s had the rug pulled out from under her, it’s the way she can best cope. All the years of thinking she’s processed her sister’s death are now up for questioning. Was she lied to? Was her sister hiding something deeper? Why did her parents shield the truth? 

Moreover, Kiri suffers from mania — it’s impossible to diagnose her mental illness because she doesn’t diagnose it herself, but she goes through periods of intense highs with intermittent lows, though they’re not low lows. The drugs aid in leveling her in many ways, too. 

Even though she believes it to be the case at the beginning of summer, it’s not Lukas who ends up capturing Kiri’s heart. It’s Skunk, the guy who fixed Kiri’s bike on that first trip downtown to collect Sukey’s things. When she thinks nothing of him then, it’s through getting to know him better she discovers he has depths to him that speak to her deeply. He’s passionate, he’s into music, and he’s mentally unstable. The love and acceptance Kiri has for someone like him, who could break at any moment, speaks volumes not only about Kiri and Skunk, but also about the importance of relationships and the things that keep them growing and thriving. Even though the two of them don’t bond over their mental states, there is a connection between them relating to this anyway. And maybe that connection is less than the two of them each suffers, but instead, that everyone in the world suffers from something — for Kiri, it’s both grief and it’s her mania. Skunk suffers through his illness, in addition to other things. 

In other words, this book is about how there’s no singular element that can define and thereby reduce a person into a thing.

Of course, this relates right back to Sukey and what happened to her, as well as what happened to the things that made her who she was when she was alive. 

There is a real beat and infusion of sound to this novel. It’s pulsing and bright and alive. This isn’t a mystery and it’s not a story with great Depth and Seriousness. But because it’s none of those things, it speaks volumes about the human experience, about living and loving, and about being present in the moment. In many ways, Kiri reminded me of Felton Reinstein of Stupid Fast — they’ve both been thrown for a big loop, they’re both navigating change without ever being a Lesson in the values of Change, and they’re both alive and active by bike, at night, and through their respective talents. And at the end of the day, both are also about the importance of relationships, whatever way they come. 

I usually don’t share quotes from books, but this one had me marking a number of them because they were so good, and they speak to the story: 

“Every disaster, every whim, every seemingly random decision came together to make this night happen. There are no mistakes — just detours whose significance only become clear when you see the whole picture at once.”

“It’s amazing how well you can get to know a person if you actually pay attention. People are like cities: we all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.”

“The universe, I realize, is full of little torches. Sometimes, for some reason, it’s your turn to carry one out of the fire — because the world needed it, or your family needed it, or you needed it to keep your soul from twisting into a shape that’s entirely wrong.”

Wild Awake tackles so much and does so while maintaining a real voice and perspective that feels new and exciting. When I finished the book, I felt refreshed and happy. Sure, there’s heavy stuff here, but Kiri’s likable, even if it’s imperfect. In fact, I’d argue her imperfections and her willingness to work with those imperfections are what make her so likable. The romance here is sweet and doesn’t feel shoehorned in. While there are elements of the story that require suspension of disbelief — like Kiri’s family leaving her alone for the summer when they know she’s not entirely stable — it’s okay. There is far more to enjoy here than to nit pick, and Smith’s writing stands on its own. 

In terms of voice and style, Kiri reminded me a lot of Juno from the movie Juno, and I think readers will see many similarities with Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere as the stories pertain to grief — though Smith’s novel is a bit lighter in tone. Wild Awake is contemporary, but it contains elements of mystery, with a strong elements about music, about sibling relationships, mental illness, and what can happen over the course of a single summer in a teen’s life. 

Review copy received from the publisher, via the editor. Wild Awake is available today.

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

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Cia lives in Five Lakes colony, the region of the country that used to be the Great Lakes, but is now a blighted region thanks to the Seven Stages War, a terrible conflict that killed millions and left most of the world environmentally destroyed. The United Commonwealth is now focused on revitalizing the country, clearing out the deadly toxins from the water and forcing the Earth to grow food again. 
To do this, the country needs leaders. When they graduate from school at 16, all children become eligible for the Testing, a series of rigorous tests that determine entry into the the country’s (apparently only) college. Cia is one of the select few chosen to compete. She has no choice in the matter, but she’s happy to go; she knows it’s the only way to get into college and she’s eager to help lead the healing of the Earth.
But the Testing is not what it seems. Before she leaves, Cia’s father – who participated in the Testing – tells her that though all participants’ minds are wiped of memories of the Testing to ensure no inside information can be given to others, he’s been plagued by disturbing half-memories. He remembers violence, death, terrible things children did to each other. He warns Cia not to trust anyone. He tells her that most people who go to the Testing – the ones who don’t pass – aren’t ever seen again.
So, does this synopsis sound familiar to you? It should – it’s basically the Hunger Games. And I don’t mean that in the way Divergent or Legend are like the Hunger Games. Those two books certainly have strong similarities, but The Testing takes it to a whole new level. The bulk of the book involves, unsurprisingly, an arena-like test where the teens must make it from one part of the blighted country (human-made obstacles included) to another, and only a certain number who make it will be admitted. They quickly learn that it’s to their advantage to thin the herd. There’s also another boy from her colony who Cia may or may not have a crush on, but can she trust him? Is his affection just a clever ruse?
I think it’s interesting that Kirkus (usually the more unforgiving of review journals) claims that Charbonneau “successfully makes her story her own.” I don’t agree with that statement completely. It’s not a carbon copy, but the aspects that are similar are eerily similar, in a way that seems to verge worryingly close to theft. I realize this is a pretty strong statement, and I thought a long time about how I’d remark on it. I felt it was important to share, though, so there you have it.
Despite all of that, though, this is a fantastic book. I know. If the Hunger Games didn’t exist and I’d never read it, I’d be shouting this book’s praises all over the place. But the Hunger Games does exist, I have read it, and The Testing owes so much to it (including its very existence, most likely). We don’t read in a vacuum, and I can’t and shouldn’t pretend that we do. But I also feel it’s important to judge a book on its own merits without necessarily comparing it to something else, and on its own, this book is fantastic.
Actually, I liked it more than the Hunger Games, which I enjoyed but didn’t love immediately. I found the premise of the Hunger Games a little harder to believe and its depiction of the terrible things adults force upon the children in their care a bit heavy-handed. The Testing couches its violence in something that I think is more immediately relatable to teens – the competition for admittance to college – and shows the consequences of what we do to our children (intentionally or not) in a slightly more nuanced way.
Enough with the Hunger Games comparisons, though. The Testing affected me in a visceral way, and I can honestly say that no other book in recent memory has gotten my heart rate going quite like this one has. I resented having to go to work in the morning because all I wanted to do was read this book. Charbonneau is a master of suspense, of creating tension so taut that it hurts to keep reading but hurts just as much to stop. I wanted to turn the pages faster, faster, but at the same time I had to force myself to slow down because I didn’t want to miss a single word. This is the kind of book that makes readers bite their fingernails until their fingers bleed, tug bits of hair out, shout at their significant others to leave them alone because goddammit they are reading, can’t you see?
Beyond that aspect, there are some truly creative things going on here. I found the tests prior to the main survival round hugely interesting and quite unique in their own right, particularly the third round one involving teamwork. It’s a great example of some creative plotting as well as character-building, and is the first real opportunity we get to see how ruthless children can be. The way Charbonneau gradually moves the tests from completely innocuous to more and more sinister is masterfully done.
The Testing does have its weaknesses. Cia isn’t a hugely memorable character (though neither is she flat). There’s not much background about the Seven Stages War, which is something that frustrates me in any dystopia I read. Some elements of the plot are easy to see coming – betrayals, alliances, deaths. Still, Charbonneau throws in enough twists to keep readers thoroughly engrossed, and like I mentioned before, it’s nearly impossible to stop reading it once you start.
So, obviously, this is a perfect book for your fans of the Hunger Games and other action-packed dystopias. I’d love to discuss it with other readers and get their views on its similarities. This is one I see people having very strong reactions to one way or the other. For myself, I’m really looking forward to the sequel.
Review copy received from the publisher. The Testing will be published June 4.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

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Archie always believed in doing the smart thing. Not the thing that you ached to do, not the impulsive act, but the thing that would pay off later.

How did I feel about Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War five years after reading it for the first time?

Much, much differently.

But I say that as a matter of my only real opinion last time was that this book wasn’t as controversial as I’d once suspected and that I didn’t like the way the boys in the book thought about girls. And now, with a few years of reading YA under my belt and a few years of actually working with teens, I think I went in with different expectations. I also got to leave the book with different reactions, too.

When Jerry is tapped to become part of The Vigils, a secret/not-so-secret society of sorts on the campus of his all-boys private school, he’s given the initiation challenge of refusing to take part in the annual fundraising chocolate sale. He has ten days to say no when his name is called and he’s expected to talk about how many boxes he has sold.

But when day eleven and twelve roll around, Jerry continues to say no. He continues to not participate.

Not only does this get everyone in his class riled up — it’s an act of defiance for the long-held Trinity tradition — but Jerry’s refusal to take part in the sale also defies the Vigils. He shouldn’t be messing with the school and his peers, let alone the Vigils.

But Archie, who isn’t president of the Vigils but who takes the lead in figuring out who to recruit and what it is the recruits will have to do to prove they’re worthy of the group, handles this calmly. Even though he’s agreed to have the Vigils make this the best sale year ever (it’s a favor to Brother Leon, who asks for the favor), Archie isn’t going to act immediately. Yes, Jerry needs to do his part in the chocolate sale. It’s important. It reflects on the Vigils. But for Archie, the easy way out would be for him to beat on Jerry. The easy way out would be to corner Jerry, intimidate him, and make him follow the rules.

Archie waits. And plots.

Jerry, meanwhile, becomes the target of bullying. Yes, he’s beat up, but the real torment comes in less physically-aggressive means. He’s laughed at. He’s prank called over and over. These are little things, and while Jerry continues to stand up for not wanting to take part in the chocolate sale, they do start to get to him mentally. It comes out in little ways — he feels bad that his father, for example, knows about the phone calls. When he summons the energy to call the one girl he’s been eyeing, he doesn’t have the strength to actually talk to her for fear of what she might say. It comes out, too, through Goober, who decides that he’s going to take a stand with Jerry. And even though Goober is much more open about his feelings, and he’s tried to convince Jerry to get on board selling, he still supports Jerry’s decision making. Jerry’s impacted because he feels weird. He doesn’t feel sad about not participating. He doesn’t feel guilty for it nor guilty for how Goober’s reacting. He just feels weird.

Maybe that weirdness is empowerment. It’s taking the stand for what it is he does and does not want to do.

So now we have Archie, who is plotting to do something big to get back at Jerry, and we have Jerry, who continues to say no to selling the chocolate. We also have a handful of other male characters but for me, they weren’t as interesting as these two. And I think what made these two so interesting to me was not just the power dynamics — they both want to prove themselves — but how representative they were of the school as a whole. So Brother Leon wants to have the most outstanding chocolate sale this year because he wants to prove his own leadership capabilities. He’s second in command at Trinity, but with the head of the school unable to participate, this is Leon’s chance to prove his worth. Which is precisely Archie’s position, too. He’s second in command of the Vigils. If he can pull of the chocolate war and bring a good image to the Vigils, he can prove his worth too.

Except unlike Leon, who is a begger and wants things done quickly, Archie is a much more precise and deliberate thinker. Their methods of wielding the power they have and reaching for the control they want are so different.

Archie’s plans to take the chocolate sales to the next level comes through in his initially-stated philosophy: he’d do the thing that paid off most, rather than the thing that he ached to do. Jerry did the thing he ached to do. He disturbed the universe by not selling the chocolate and by defying his test by the Vigils. He wanted to be his own person and act according to his own wants and desires. Archie, on the other hand, may have wanted to skip out on selling chocolate or helping Brother Leon. He may have wanted to slug Jerry and have that immediate gratification. But he knew the true pay off would come through making a smart choice, rather than the one he really wanted to make.

That smart choice was putting Jerry in a physical battle with Janza, another member of the Vigils who is trying to prove himself. Who had been part of the crew trying to take down Jerry in the first place as a means of proving the power of the Vigils as a whole. And while Archie tricks Jerry into showing up to the fight, Archie also knows Jerry won’t back down from it because that’s just the kind of person Jerry is. He’s going to see things through to the end. Janza was a no brainer, though, as a boy who wanted to prove himself and as someone who would love nothing more than to annihilate Jerry. And through selling chocolate bars and the opportunity to call the shots to be made by each of the boys in the ring, Archie made the money for the sales.

He also set up the entire event so that it’d be broken up by authority and he’d be in good with the Brothers still.

What captured my attention in The Chocolate War this time was less the plot and much more the characters and what their goals were. I wanted to know what the stakes were. I wanted to see what drove them to behave how they did. The ultimate take away is bleak — even if you stand up for what you believe in, even if it’s something that hurts no one else, like Jerry did, you will face the consequences of authority and the establishment. We get this early in the story with the role playing scenario in Brother Leon’s class with Bailey, and we get it in the end with Jerry being bruised and broken following the fight.

Jerry doesn’t walk away a hero in the story. If there’s a hero at all to this story — and let’s take “hero” as a stretch here, defined as someone who got what they were going for the whole time — it’s Archie. He learned his opponents’ weaknesses, then he took advantage of them to further himself. And even if Brother Leon is considered a hero too — he did manage to make the highest grossing, most successful chocolate sale in the history of Trinity — he’s still overshadowed by Archie and the Vigils. It’s Archie himself who says at the very beginning of the novel what might be one of the biggest truths of the book: “Most grown-ups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.”

Archie found that vulnerability in Leon and ran with it.

Even if Jerry learns the hard truth that standing up for what you believe in leaves you open to invasion, to attack, to unrelenting scrutiny, it is hard as a reader not to love him for what he does. And I think because he’s strong in his convictions and a target because of this, it makes the messages and truths he learns even more difficult to take. How come a nice guy, one who is harming no one ends up the victim?

I loved how uncomfortable this book made me this time around.

Is it controversial? Maybe. Thinking about my initial reactions and thinking about the experiences I’ve had in the last five years through reading YA and working with teens, I think my perceptions of controversy have changed. I think my initial reading was about the things which could trigger heated debate, rather than my reading now, which considered the controversial elements of the story to be those very hard to digest truths about character, about power, about motivation, and about being true to yourself in a world which wants you to crumble and conform. Those are huge ideas. Those are not easy things to think about or read about. Part of it is because in the context of the book, those who are hurt hardest are the characters who are doing the least harm. But I think a bigger part of it is that these are the things we deal with every single day as living, breathing, working, thinking people. The systems we fight against do hold us down and do force us to conform. It’s not necessarily with fists and kicks, though. It’s much more subtle and much more psychologically debilitating than we want to give it credit for. Not to mention it’s also about peer pressure.

I’m still not a fan of how women were represented in the book. But it makes sense, too. This is an all-boys school, so of course there aren’t many females around. And it makes sense that the boys in this story would think about girls in very sexualized ways — they’re stuck in an all-male system, and it’s through their imagination that they can find some way to get rid of that frustration. Plus, they are teen boys and they are hormonal. I give Cormier huge kudos for being open about this and for putting his characters in those positions, especially when they’re compromising. Part of why Janza relents to Archie is his fear that Archie has a photo of him in a precarious position. And what’s interesting is that it’s Janza earlier on who says this: “People had a fear of being embarrassed or humiliated, of being singled out for special attention.” And here, that’s exactly why he’s willing to bow to Archie’s power.

But back to the women in the book — we have a dead mom and we have the girls near the bus stop. Jerry tries calling one of them, but that’s all we have of ladies in the book. Jerry, in fact, considers his crush’s body as an object of desire when masturbating, too. And yes, the line about one of the boys raping the girls with his eyes still bothers me a lot, but taking it in the context of the story, in context of male hormones and testosterone flowing, I get it.

Considering this book published in 1974, I applaud Cormier’s honesty in not just his big messages, but in his ability to be open about sex, about masturbation, and about the ways that teen boys think about women and girls. It’s not always pretty. But more than that, I think this book stands out among even recent titles in terms of being unflinching in honesty about these topics. We all like to think that teen boys are saints without urges and inappropriate thoughts but it’s also important to remember they’re teen boys.

I could say a lot more about this book in the context of bullying, too, but the important parts to me were that the bullying here was at times physical — which is how we associate boys and bullying — but so much more was psychological and subtle — which is how we associate girls and bullying. Cormier makes it clear that being nasty doesn’t have a gendered approach.

I’m unable to get to the movie or the sequel to The Chocolate War before this week is up, but I’m almost glad. This reading experience was really worthwhile and opened my eyes a lot not only in terms of the book, but it opened my mind up to seeing and understanding how much I have grown as a reader. It’ll be fascinating to revisit this book in another five years and see what stands out, too.

Reviewed from a purchased copy.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen & Faith Erin Hicks

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I have two descriptions that sum up what Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks’s graphic novel Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is about: robots and high school politics.

Charlie is captain of the basketball team and the boyfriend of superhot popular cheerleader Holly. Nate is Charlie’s unlikely best friend, president of the robotics team. The story begins when Charlie’s been dumped by his girlfriend and Nate drops the news that the student activities funding, which will decide whether to spend their money on a national robotics event for the robotics team or on new uniforms for the cheerleaders, is being left to the student council. 

Nate decides he’s running for student council president so he can delegate the money to the cause he thinks deserves it more: his own.

The hitch in the plan is that Holly now wants to use Charlie to further her own cause for the cheerleaders. Yeah, they’re broken up now, but Holly could bring Charlie’s popularity down faster than anything if he doesn’t listen to her. And her plan is simple, too: Charlie’s going to run against Nate for student council president.

Enter a funny political battle. Except as funny as it is, it’s also painful for Charlie and Nate, as their long-standing friendship is tested. 

But when the principal gets wind of the backstabbing and the shenanigans going on in the election (because of course there is plenty of that — we’re talking social politics here of geeks vs. cool kids, of cheerleaders vs. robotics team members), he decides that the funding won’t be left to the student council. Now both Charlie and Nate scramble to figure out what to do next.

That’s where this story turns to robots! When there’s a robotics competition with a grand prize of $10,000 — enough money to cover both the new cheerleading outfits and the robotics event — the two sides pitch in to build the strongest, baddest robot in order to win. But do they even have a chance on such a national level?

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong was a fast-paced, fun story and both Nate and Charlie are well-developed. Charlie has a nice backstory going on with his family that didn’t feel tacked on. Even though he’s posited as the “popular” boy, there’s a lot more to him than that; his parents aren’t talking, and they haven’t in a long time. His mom hasn’t been in his life in a long time, and now she’s sprung a new marriage on him. He’s struggling with that and being the “nice guy” who has been strung along with Holly’s plans and quest for popularity and superiority on the cheerleading squad. Nate, who on the surface looks like a quintessential geek, is more than that, too. It makes sense why these two are friends, and there are little moments in the illustrations that highlight it so well — like when both boys are under Charlie’s bed during a party-gone-wild at Charlie’s parentless home. Even though this could tread the easy territory of also being a story about how cheerleaders are bad, Shen and Hicks avoid that stereotype, too, as is seen when they join in for the robotics competition and maybe even enjoy themselves while they’re at it. 

Shen’s story is relatable for teen readers, and it’s fun. The robot competition is a blast to watch unfold, and I love the subtle gender threads sprinkled through the story — girls can kick ass in the science and robotics world, even if it’s stereotypically boy-land. Hick’s illustrations are appealing and enhance the story, rather than detract from it. The balance of story and paneling is done well: there’s enough to pick up in both when they stand alone or when they’re paired. The attention to details such as offering a diverse cast of characters was great, too. It’s clear that Shen and Hicks worked well together.

Readers who enjoyed Raina Telgemeier’s books and who are ready to read something at a little bit of a higher level will love this. It’s a contemporary story with male friendship at the core. Also, did I mention there are robots? Because there are robots. 

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is available now.

Review copy received from the publisher. Stop back tomorrow for a guest post about the collaborative process from Shen and Hicks themselves.