Admittedly, the title is a little misleading, but I was trying to think of a way to tie together these three book reviews, and the one thing I kept coming back to was the feeling a bit isolated. I think it’s maybe a bit of a strong word, but in each of these stories, the main character feels removed from his/her world in some way. So here are three shorter reviews with three characters dealing with being on the outside. Kind of.

Nina LaCour’s sophomore novel The Disenchantments follows Colby as he pursues his post-graduation dream of hitting the road with his best girl Bev’s band, The Disenchantments. Colby’s not in the band himself but is one of their roadies. After their stint along the west coast, the two of them plan on ditching America for a year-long travel extravaganza in Europe. So they can get out together and see the world before doing the college/job thing. The thing is, as soon as their trip along the coast begins, Bev drops the bomb: she’s ditching their plans to travel. She wants to do her own thing.

Colby feels cheated now and he’s hurt. He’d planned his post-school life around Bev, knowing they’d made this promise to one another. Much as it’d be easy for him to ditch her and the band now, he doesn’t. Instead, he uses this as the opportunity to figure out who Bev is, what his relationship with her really is, and maybe most important, he has to figure himself out. What will he do now that the plans he’d prepared for are suddenly tossed out the window?

LaCour’s book took me a really long time to get into, and even when I was finally able to fall into the story, I never found myself connecting emotionally with the characters. I liked Colby, and I believed his loss when Bev tells him she wants to do her own thing after the tour. However, I didn’t find myself necessarily invested in him. Colby was good enough but he didn’t compel me beyond that moment. He’s stuck in the past of what he and Bev were (understandably) but it takes him way too long to move forward and upward. Because of that, the novel is slow and has little forward movement for quite a long time. I also wasn’t entirely sold on Colby’s voice, but because I liked him enough and I liked the premise of a story where a girl breaks the boy’s heart, I let it go.

Colby feels himself isolated now, and he comes to realize that resting his own future upon the future of someone else wasn’t very smart. When he finally wakes up and realizes the world is sort of before him, the book does move forward. The Disenchantments sort of reminded me of Kirsten Hubbard’s Wanderlove when it comes to the ideas of the importance of travel and exploration, both of the physical world and of the internal, personal one. LaCour’s writing is good, despite the challenges I had, and this book will no doubt appeal to fans of music and travel.

Brian F. Walker’s Black Boy, White School offers up another male voice in a story about Anthony (Ant), who lives in East Cleveland. It’s not a nice area, and he too often knows the victims of the neighborhood’s violence. It’s not just that, though. His family’s not necessarily the most stable either, and he and his mother want nothing more than for Ant to escape this place so he can have a brighter future. That future comes in the form of Belton Academy, where Ant’s been given a scholarship and an opportunity to start fresh. Belton’s deep in Maine, so it’ll be a huge change for him, and it’s a huge culture shock when he gets there.

Ant’s used to being the black boy in a sea of other people who look like him, but at Belton, he’s a minority, and he feels it acutely. Much of what he feels is real, but a lot of it comes from his own mind. He’s having a hard time adjusting to life at the new school and in a new social world. Yeah, there is some racism and discrimination, but the bigger issue at hand is really the one in Ant’s own head. He doesn’t feel good enough and that’s NOT because of the racism/discrimination, but his own past keeping him back.

Walker’s story lacks in writing, though, and because it’s told in third person past, there’s a level of being removed from the story. I never connected much with Ant, and I felt like most of the characters weren’t well fleshed out. The moments where there should have been emotional intensity, there just wasn’t. However, I give Walker credit with the story here, and I think that’s what will make this book resonate with teen readers. It’s reminiscent of Walter Dean Meyers, and I believe reluctant readers will enjoy this title, too. The urban life will feel real and I think the kids who will appreciate this story will be the ones who come from and understand a world where poverty, violence, and drugs are prevalent and almost unavoidable. Although it’s not as strong as Quick’s Boy21, there were many similarities in the two stories and this title could be a nice lead in to giving Quick’s a try.

Emily M Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post weighs in at almost 500 pages, and while I’m usually a believer in cutting down a story that big, I’m not sure what could be taken out of this one and still have it be successful. As soon as the book opens, Cameron loses her parents in a car wreck and she’s almost happy about it because it means she doesn’t have to tell them what she’s done. She’s kissed a girl.

Let me back up and say this is 1989 in rural Montana, so it’s kind of a big deal she’s done that. Except — and this is a big except — she’s not going to get off easy at all. Cameron’s being sent to live with her aunt Ruth who is extremely conservative. The girl Cameron kissed is kind of out of the picture.

Fast forward to 1991 and Coley moves to the same town Cameron lives in, and now she and Cameron are seeing one another. They’re more than friends. They’re feeling things much more intensely, and when they think things are going to be okay, that their feelings and their time together has been well-covered, it’s not. The secret hasn’t been hidden at all.

Cameron’s aunt decides to take action and send Cameron to God’s Promise to fix her. It’s a conservative church program to degay Cameron. And while there’s ripe opportunity for this to become a story where there is a right and a wrong, where the Promise program is made into the sort of thing that readers would laugh at, Danforth is successful in making it a place that’s scary but not unrealistic nor judged as entirely wrong (even if we as readers know it is).

This is a book about being isolated physically and emotionally, as Cameron is unable to fit into her conservative family and world because she’s a lesbian. But more than that, Cameron herself sort of struggles with what her sexuality is, if it’s anything at all. The experience at Promise, which is rapt with all sorts of less-than-angelic behavior from her and other attendees, puts more questions than answers in her mind. It’s well-done, despite being lengthy. And I think the ending of this book might be one of my favorite endings in a long time — it ties the story right back to Cameron’s loss and grief over losing her parents and her freedom in exploring who she really is. The ending made the problematic elements work for me.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, as I mentioned, was long, and even though I don’t know if anything is extraneous or in need of editing, I found that it was slow paced and took a long time to get into. Moreover, it’s a quieter story, despite tackling a large issue. That’s not in and of itself problematic, but given the quiet nature and the fact this book is set in a quiet world and the fact it’s set in the early 1990s makes me question whether it will have wide teen appeal. I see this as a true coming of age novel that adults may find themselves enjoying a lot more than teens. While the time period is a framing device for local events that sink the story into the setting, it didn’t work for me. I also found many of the secondary characters, particularly those at Promise, to be a little thinly developed. Cameron herself, however, was a well-done and rounded character.

All copies provided by the publisher and all titles are available now.

I like dark books. It’s not really a secret. For some reason, though, I’m always surprised when I finish a very dark, very gritty book and walk away liking it as much as I did. Especially when there are flaws. That was my experience with Margie Gelbwasser’s Pieces of Us.

Brothers Kyle and Alex and sisters Katie and Julie live in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, respectively, but every summer, their families get together in upstate New York. Their grandparents were close, and it’s an escape for both of their families and a chance to spend time away from their home lives. Over the course of getting together every year, they’ve forged friendship, but never quite in the way they seem to have this year.

It’s their play place. 

Let me step back though. The story doesn’t begin in the summer. It begins during the school year. All four of the characters have their own story lines, and they tell their personal horrors. Horrors is a nice word, I think, to describe what these characters are dealing with. Alex and Kyle are dealing with the death of their father, who killed himself. Alex, who is the older brother, blames their mother for his father’s death because in his mind, she’s a tramp who pushed his father away. Kyle’s not a happy camper either, but his anger is much more directed toward Alex than toward his father or mother. Alex, for all the anger and resentment he carries about his parents, is no angel. He’s more than willing to use and abuse the girls in his life — he’s not afraid to have sex with them, tease them about being sluts, then let them loose. Alex badgers Kyle to do the same, to let his anger out through sex and dominance, but he has no interest. Kyle’s say means nothing though, as Alex makes him perform a sexual act that not only puts Alex in a role of power, but it furthers Alex’s reputation as a user. More importantly and more painfully, though, he robs Kyle of his innocence.

Life at Katie and Julie’s house is far from ideal, too. Katie has finally achieves popular status in high school. She got it through her role as a lead cheerleader, and she maintains it by acting the way she believes she has to act. She’s got a boyfriend, and he’s one she thinks she has a good relationship with. Except, she doesn’t. Turns out, there’s something more sinister going on and she’s been entangled in a scandal that starts after a night of too much drinking. Of being unable to say no to the advances of another guy because he promised to shatter her reputation if she says one word about what happened. I can’t talk too much more about this particular scene nor what the power struggle becomes because it’s what sets the last half of the story in motion, but it’s disturbing. Katie’s been raped, and not just in the physical sense. Worse is she has to keep her mouth shut about it for fear of losing her status in school, as well as the approval of her mother, who dotes upon Katie because she is a queen bee.

That leaves Julie. Julie’s not popular, and her mother doesn’t care about her. Julie’s pretty much left to fend for herself and she has no chance, living in the shadow of her sister. She’s basically become a forgotten person both in school and to her own mother. There’s also a secondary character worth knowing about in Katie and Julie’s life, and that’s Marissa. She’s one of Katie’s friends, someone who helps her maintain her social status, and she’s engaged in a sexual relationship with a teacher.

When the school year ends and these characters have been put through the ringer, both as abusers and the abused, they return to their summer retreat. The thing about the summer house is that it’s where these teens can leave behind everything going on at home and be themselves. They can wear a different name, a different persona. They don’t have the reputations following them that follow them at school. Except, of course, they can never really escape their baggage. Unlike previous years where they’ve been friends in the summer, things are different now. Things are much more tense. Alex and Katie gravitate toward one another. For almost obvious reasons.

While Kyle and Julie drift toward one another, it’s Julie making slight — and very innocent — gestures toward him. She’s interested in having a relationship, but he’s withdrawing. He’s afraid to, not just because she’s Julie, but because he’s trying to avoid the pressure Alex places on him to be with her. To be with any girl, really. But eventually he breaks and sleeps with Julie. It’s not because he loves her or cares about her. It’s revenge against Alex, and as much as the act empowers him emotionally over Alex, he is rapt with guilt over using Julie for his revenge. In this moment, it’s clear how damaged all of these characters are (it’s obvious before there is damage, but for me, it was this particular scene when it all comes to a head).

This moment is also when there’s a change in Julie. When she earns a bit of her own voice in the story. Now that summer’s ended, the girls go back to their home and the boys to theirs. Things don’t get easier; they become even more complicated as Alex and Katie attempt to maintain a relationship long distance, as do Kyle and Julie. For the first time, it almost looks like there’s something really good going on for Alex with Katie. He may be changing a bit, becoming a more respectful guy. The teens even get together outside of their traditional summer get togethers

But then, Julie makes a mistake that topples Katie from her popular position. That drags out her old baggage. That totally and utterly ruins her. And it doesn’t just ruin her. It ruins what she has with Alex. When they get back together the next summer, Alex seeks his revenge on her in the worst possible way. In a way that literally made me sick to my stomach. In a way that made me realize Alex never did get better. That Katie never got better. That both Kyle and Julie are witnesses, but because both of them are aching themselves, they don’t have the courage to do anything.

If it hasn’t become clear at this point, Pieces of Us is a story about sex and its role in power wielding. It becomes a tool in this story for gaining and advancing, as well as falling and breaking. And the way it’s done is uncomfortable, stomach-turning, and powerful. There’s not a redeemable character in the story, and at the moment when it seems like there’s potential for a character to act, to turn around and stand up for themselves or someone else, they don’t. Rather, they continue to abuse one another and abuse themselves. Gelbwasser is clever in how she approaches the story, and she’s relentless. There are moments when it seems like there’s a possibility a character has a break, but then something comes back to haunt them and sends them stumbling back again. These aren’t likable characters, and it’s debatable whether or not the reader ever particularly cares about their outcomes. But the story is so gripping, so intense and horrific, it’s hard to look away. Even in the moments I needed to stop because I was so uncomfortable, I found myself needing to get back into that world pretty quickly.

One of my favorite parts of the story came through a connection I couldn’t put together until the very end. When the story begins, we learn that one of the first moments these teens bonded together at the summer house came when they met the chicken man as children. He comes every summer to deliver chickens to the families, and they weren’t chickens used for pets. The first summer, Katie and Alex watch the slaughter. But following that summer, Katie had nothing to do with the bloodshed. Instead, it’s where Julie and Alex bond. It’s a metaphor that makes sense when you close the book and one that haunted me through the entire read because I was desperate to know the connection between who watches the slaughter and who shies away.  

I found the writing to be a real weakness in the story. For a long time, it’s difficult to distinguish among the characters since their four voices sound quite similar. It becomes easier as the story progresses, partially because characters become identifiable by their wounds. I found Kyle’s use of second person quite distracting, and despite the fact it makes sense in the context that he’s so far removed from the situations around him (he’s controlled by an outside party), I didn’t think it worked. There were also pacing and passage of time issues throughout, and it was a bit problematic given the length and scope of time the book covered — two school years and two summers.

While the writing was at times problematic, the story kept me going, and the story is what ultimately wins in this case.  This is a risky read, but it is going to appeal to readers who like dark, gritty, intense and uncomfortable reads. Yes, this is a book where teens have sex and where there are really painful sexual moments. There’s no getting around it and it’s integral to the plot. It’s integral to the characters, too, and it isn’t just because they’re experiencing the physical act, but because it is part of their recovery and their understanding of the baggage they carry from other aspects of their lives. As much as this is a bleak book, there is a spot of hope in the end of the story. It’s not resolved and it’s not clean, and had Gelbwasser offered an easy solution at the end, the power would have been lost. But there is a little something redeeming to walk away with, even if the bulk of what’s horrifying and painful about the story lingers long after the book ends.

Review copy received from the publisher. Pieces of Us is available today.

Fern is twelve years old and just entering middle school. But while other kids her age are dealing with issues like what to wear to school and which lunch table to sit at, Fern has to deal with the fact that her father, owner of Harry’s, the local ice cream parlor/restaurant, is suddenly obsessed with using his family’s image on all of the local advertising. I mean, what twelve-year-old would actually want her image splashed on a delivery truck or plastered on cartons of ice cream in the local markets? How embarrassing!

The Alice Marshall School for Girls is set in a sprawling and remote area of wilderness in Idaho, and it’s where girls who need to escape their past are sent to discover themselves. It’s sort of a last-chance resort, but it’s not anything luxurious or enviable. The girls live in basic cabins, have virtually no rights, and have to endure countless hours of therapy (which in this case isn’t always traditional).

Lida arrives at the camp after something bad has happened in her life. That’s about as vague and as descriptive as it comes, of course, but for good reason. She’s rooming with Jules, a girl who Lida feels doesn’t belong because there’s no way she has a broken past, and she’s also rooming with Boone, a girl who has burned a building down and who Lida learns has earned quite the reputation around school. She’s experienced some of Boone’s terror herself when she wakes up after her first night in her room with a new hair cut. One Boone gave her.

Not much happens, aside from Lida’s settling in, until another new girl arrives at Alice Marshall. New girl Gia’s captured the attention of nearly everyone at camp, but she attaches herself to Lida quickly, and Lida couldn’t be happier. In fact, she’s so happy to have garnered Gia’s attention that she finds herself unable to avoid thinking about Gia. During one of their group therapy sessions, despite keeping the truth about what brought her to Alice Marshall locked up and kept only in her own notebook, Lida feels comfortable enough to let Gia in. To be fair, it’s less about comfort here and more about the fact their group leader forces girls to pair up and spill their Things. But it becomes more about comfort when Gia admits to not having her Thing written down and won’t be sharing it. Instead, she just reads and absorbs Lida’s, and Lida doesn’t question. She accepts.

Lida also finds herself telling Gia something she knows about Boone — something she shouldn’t have spilled — and it’s in this instance everything unravels.

The Girls of No Return can’t be summed up simply or easily because it’s a complex novel about friendship. I don’t really think the flap copy does much for describing it, either. It’s a twisted story, set up in a non-traditional format that is at once perplexing and straightforward. It comes down to the fact as readers, we know as little about Lida as anyone else does. From the beginning, we’re on the outside looking in, despite the story being told from her point of view. We know there’s something wrong with her because she’s at this camp, but we’re never sure what. She doesn’t tell us, and she doesn’t tell anyone else around her. See, even in the big reveal moment with Gia, we don’t get anything. Lida doesn’t tell us what’s wrong with her; we only get to know Gia knows.

But then Gia turns around and uses that knowledge against Lida. First, it’s in the bathhouse. Then, it’s during another group session as payback for an incident involving Boone. In both of these scenes, we finally see Lida’s bricks start to crumble. As she starts to fall apart and her Things start to fall out of her control, we witness Lida understanding why she’s at Alice Marshall and how attending this school for troubled girls is exactly what she needed.

Saldin’s debut is dark, but I found it took quite a while for the threads of the story to come together enough to buy into the premise — as I mentioned, the flap copy didn’t do much for me. It describes the book as dark, but I didn’t believe it for nearly 250 pages. There were elements of darkness, but they weren’t necessarily at the forefront because Lida didn’t want them to be. Whatever she suppressed from herself she also suppressed from the reader. It’s an interesting approach to the story, and I think it’s effective, but I found myself bored through a number of scenes because nothing really happens. Lida’s so removed from everything and she removes the reader, too. While it’s smart and makes the end work well, the book was a little too lengthy to pull it off as strongly as it could have.

Before I go on, I’m going to warn the next few things could potentially be spoilers. I don’t think they are, but I can’t be certain since this is the kind of book that will be read many different ways. The trick to the book is whether you believe Lida or not. She’s not the most reliable narrator, and we know this from the beginning. The book’s not a traditional narrative structure: the end comes first. Or what we think is the end comes first. And then it comes again. And again. And again. So the question becomes what’s really the beginning, what’s really the story, and what’s really the end.

I found my answers to everything in the chapter preceding the final one. I felt like I pulled together the resolutions and quite liked how I was able to connect them, but then the final chapter came along. While many who don’t pick up on the clues may find the last chapter to be the right conclusion, I thought it was too much. It over explained, and for how little we actually get spelled out throughout the book, I was a little let down. Does it fit Lida? Definitely. Did it work with everything she learned from Boone? Sure. But it was laid out a little too nicely for me. It almost detracted from the darkness of those final few scenes in the book. (This is the definite spoiler area, so skip down to the next paragraph if you’re sensitive to that) — it works out exactly as Boone laid out in her discussion with Lida about how she can always write her stories the way she wants to if she’s not accountable to anyone else. It’s all a game of possession, one between friends and one between stories. Boone would know a lot about that, seeing she’s one who has that same possessive magic as Lida but in a more physical, rather than mental, way. So by starting the book at the end, the reader is twisted and reconsiders everything and whether or not it was the real story or the story Lida simply wanted to tell. The faults are everywhere throughout the book in leading to that sort of reading and interpretation (including the changing relationships among all the girls, the changing relationship between Terri and Lida, the cutting in and of itself). Moreover, the idea of trust and betrayal work even more in that sense. My disappointment comes in not the actual conclusion but in the fact I felt tricked and strung along for a long time here. I almost feel like I was cheated out of story. Had the last chapter not happened, I’d have been more satisfied. Not because it’d resolve any more answers, but it would have maybe left more questions open.

What stood out to me throughout the book was Saldin’s writing — it’s strong, and she is able to paint a portrait of rural wilderness in a way I haven’t read in a long time. Setting plays a large role in the story, and Saldin offers it to us in the best way possible. Not only that, but she weaves in metaphors that, when you catch them, settle earlier, fragmented bits of story right into place. There are no shortcuts here.

Character development and the relationships among the girls rang true to me. It’s not outright cattiness, but it’s more subtle how they get to one another. The relationship between Lida and Gia reminded me a lot of Grace and Mandarin in Kirstin Hubbard’s Like Mandarin, though in Saldin’s book, there’s less a question about which side of the road either girl stands on when it comes to friendship vs. romantic interest. It’s not just hinted at; it’s laid out blatantly (there are a series of lines about how a place like Alice Marshall makes girls interested in other girls).

It’s not a short book nor a quick read, and though I think this will find a readership among girls who like stories about friendship, it’s not a mean girls story. Flap copy says this one would appeal to fans of Cut or Speak, and while I agree with that, I don’t think it’s going to appeal as broadly as those two books do. This is much more literary, much slower of a build, and much less conclusive than either McCormick or Anderson’s books. It reminded me a lot of Nina de Gramont’s Gossip of the Starlings, particularly in style, and of Jo Knowles’s Lessons from a Dead Girl. Hand The Girls of No Return to readers who like a challenge.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Girls of No Return is available now.