Bean, whose real name is Pearl, doesn’t have a father. At the start of the book, we meet her and best friend Henry (also without a father) as they indulge in their favorite daytime tv soaps. We learn pretty quickly, too, that Bean lives with her mother, who she doesn’t like, and she lives with her grandfather Gus. Although she’s not entirely upfront about her feelings toward her grandfather, we know she likes him because she resents her mother for being so mean spirited toward him. Clearly something happened in the past between her mother and grandfather that caused such split feelings, but we aren’t privy to it. At least, not before her grandfather dies.

After Gus’s death, secrets begun unraveling, as we learn why it is that Bean’s mother is spending so much time with her friend Claire, acting more like teenagers than parents. Bean always thought this behavior came because her mother had her when she was only a teenager, but as her mother and Claire become more and more irresponsible adults, Bean starts to challenge her mother. And then, everything comes together for Bean, as she discovers her mother’s feelings toward Gus may have been justified and her own birth may have been out of spite toward him.

Pearl is a family drama through and through. Although it’s a shorter book, I found the pacing to be slower, and I found both Bean and Henry to be less-than-exciting characters. The reason for this, I think, is that this book felt much less like a book about Bean and her uncovering of the family secrets and much more a book about Bean’s mother’s problems. Bean’s mother is — here’s your spoiler warning — a lesbian, and her entire hatred toward Gus comes from his walking in on her and Claire making out many years in the past. Gus had been kind to Bean because she was the result of her mother’s poor choices and attempts to change who she was in order to make Gus happy.

Where there was much opportunity to make this a story about Bean, I didn’t think it was quite fulfilled. I found myself really aching for her and aching for Henry, as both of these characters were fatherless and that played into a lot of the baggage they carried individually and together. Both of them came from eerily similar backgrounds with their fathers, actually; both had been abandoned and left to be raised by their mothers. In neither case, though, were the characters angry or frustrated with their lot in this. Rather, Bean spilled her feelings of hurt and rage toward her mother through and through, and as a reader, I couldn’t quite buy that she would never once feel that sort of anger toward the father who left her. Sure, it was easy for anger to manifest toward the person she sees everyday and the person who made her feel like she was unwanted, but that same feeling of abandonment was one she should have voiced toward her father a little more. Bean really served more as a way for her mother to tell her story. Bean lacked for me voice and agency, and the story was rife with opportunity for her to develop both.

There were a series of coincidences that happened about 3/4 of the way through the book that had me fearful this book would go down an unnecessarily melodramatic road, but fortunately, Knowles didn’t take the story that way. Instead, she let Henry and Bean both have their family struggles. I haven’t talked much about Henry because, as much as he’s a huge part of Bean’s life, and as much as we get to know about his fatherless situation and his mother’s hermit-like existence (cured when Bean’s mom and Claire invite her out for a girls’ day at the mall in the wake of Gus’s death), we really don’t get to know him well. He loves daytime soaps and he likes spending time with Bean, but otherwise, he’s flat. I would have loved more from him — I think this was the kind of story that could have been told from his perspective or had his voice thrown in periodically, as he could have helped anchor this story back to Bean, rather than her mother.

Despite all of the things that didn’t work for me in the story, there was one element that really did work for me, and that was the use of Bean’s mom’s journal in the story. Because Bean is the vessel for the story, we get everything through her perspective. When her mother gives Bean her journal though, we’re given her mother’s voice first hand. She has the chance to speak for herself, and it’s here — albeit too late — that we see Bean finally putting the pieces together and developing a voice for herself.

Even though this book wasn’t my favorite, I definitely see the readership it appeals to. Those who have liked Knowles’s other works will certainly want to check this one out, as will those who like more adult-flavored books. Those teens who read and enjoy family dramas or more contemporary classics, will find a lot to appreciate in this story.

I purchased my own copy of this book. Pearl is available now.

One of the fun things about the Cybils is how wide-ranging the reading is, even within a field that sounds relatively narrow. YA Fiction covers not just traditional contemporary novels, but also mysteries and historical fiction. Because of that, I’ve had the chance to read a ton of debut novels, covering ground in each of these genres. Here’s a quick look at three debuts I’ve read recently.

Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday isn’t Halliday’s real debut novel, but it is her debut into the young adult field. Hartley’s day at school starts pretty crappy: she learns that her boyfriend Josh might be cheating on her. What else could explain the condom wrapper she found, seeing she and he aren’t sleeping together? Hartley’s determined to get to the bottom of this and find out whether the rumors of her boyfriend being with the Courtney Cline, one of the members of the school’s color guard.

But when she gets to Josh’s house later in the day to snoop out the story, she finds Courtney dead in his closet. What started as a bad day has turned out to be a heck of a lot worse than Hartley thought, and now she’s investigating murder.

Halliday’s mystery is fresh and funny. Hartley has a snarky voice, and the story has a bit of a noir vibe, reminiscent a bit of Heathers. It’s not going to please hard core mystery fans because the mystery itself is overall silly and the ending is more than a bit tell-y, but the ride to get to that point is really enjoyable. It’s a lighter read and one that will likely appeal to fans of the Gallagher Girls series and, as I’m told, fans of Veronica Mars. Halliday’s writing is enjoyable, and she kept me hooked from the first page. I liked Hartley a lot because she’s stubborn and hard-headed and she’s determined to get to the bottom of the murder (err, murders, as it turns out).

While it was a cheating boyfriend that set the story into motion, what worked for me was that the book was not ultimately about that at all. In fact, there was little romance or male-female romantic tension, aside from a few brief moments Hartley has with a boy named Chase, who actually ends up playing a role in a different manner. Hartley’s an independently strong female in the story, and she doesn’t spend days bemoaning the fact some girl took advantage of Josh, which is a trope I see far too often. Instead, she lets her feelings turn to actions. Yes, it’s a little over the top, but that’s what you get with this style and genre, and it’s meant to be a fun ride. I’m eager to read the second book next year.

Amy Fellner Dominy’s OyMG follows Ellie Taylor as she struggles to come to terms with discrimination heads on — religious discrimination, that is. She’s been accepted to the Christian Society Speech and Performance Arts summer camp, and it’s an opportunity for her to potentially earn scholarship money to better her education. She’s passionate about speech and eager to dive into the camp, but when she runs face to face with a director who openly and actively talks about her dislike for Jews, well, Ellie’s torn. She’s Jewish.

I think a lot of readers will relate to Ellie here, especially because it takes on a topic of discrimination I think a lot of teens tackle regularly. That’s not making light of religious discrimination, but the way it’s handled here is subtle and personal, and it’s done well. Ellie herself is a believable teen, and she’s one who many teens will relate to easily.

However, I had a hard time buying the concept of the book as a whole. Ellie’s family — her grandfather, in particular — are strongly Jewish, and we’re shown this immediately. When she drops the bomb that she wants to attend this speech camp at a Christian center, there’s little challenge to that decision. Her family questions it but never actually investigates it, and I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t put in their due diligence before sending her off. Had they done that, I suspect the entire story wouldn’t have taken off because they’d be aware of the problems that’d arise. Are these my adult sensibilities talking? Maybe. But I wanted this aspect to be handled a little better to make the chain of events stronger and more believable. The book will, no doubt, appeal to readers who not only have wondered who they are and where they fit in but also actually made strides toward figuring it out rather than getting caught up in the questions. It’s a quick and clean read, perfectly fine for older tween readers and the entire range of teen readers.

One of the more literary books, Brian Farrey’s With or Without You explores the lives of two gay boys who just graduated from high school. Evan, who tells the story, is open about his sexuality, and while his parents are aware he’s gay, he hasn’t been forthright in admitting to having a boyfriend, Erik, who he keeps a secret. Davis, Evan’s best friend, isn’t as open about his sexuality, partially because he and Evan have experiences violence because of who they are, and partially because he needs to figure out what he’s going to do now that his father’s kicking him out of his house (he is 18, after all). While Evan and Davis made a pact to one another to move to Chicago after their final summer of freedom, Erik throws a bit of a wrench into the plans when he tells Evan he’s taken an opportunity in California and slips him a plane ticket to join. Now Evan has to decide whether he wants to spend his life with his best friend and confidant or his boyfriend.

Farrey’s novel delves into the LGBTQ world, and it’s one I haven’t seen portrayed quite this way in ya fiction. It’s less a story of coming out and more a story of figuring out who you are AFTER you’ve come out and have made peace with the fact you have. Davis is not as comfortable as Evan is with his sexuality, and it ultimately causes a lot of chaos through the novel. Much of it isn’t pleasant or healthy, as it deals with a community within the LGBTQ world that believes AIDS is a badge of honor. I was disappointed with the wrap up in this story line because I didn’t believe Evan’s actions. There’s another secondary storyline wrapped up in Evan’s art work I felt wasn’t as strong as it could have been, as I found myself pulled out of the story when I read the descriptions of the meaning behind the art on his window pane.

When I finished With or Without You, I wasn’t quite sure if this is the sort of book teen readers would appreciate as much as maybe college age, 20-somethings would. I actually thought it’d be the kind of book those who fell in love with Blake Nelson’s Girl would appreciate because it had that sort of vibe and air to it — a compliment, not a critique. The longer I sat on this book though, thinking about the title and about the issues raised within it, the more I realize this book wasn’t set in today’s world. It was set in the 90s, like Nelson’s. It’s subtle, but it makes sense, even thinking about the reference in the title alone. For me, that complicated the novel and the target audience, as I don’t think the issues raised here will have quite the immediacy to today’s teens as it would to those who were teens a decade (or longer) ago. Not that there won’t be teens who read it, but it’ll be a smaller audience.