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books

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

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Angie disappeared three years ago at age 13 from her Girl Scout camp, but she’s returned to her house with no memory of where she’s been nor that three years have passed. She has to, though, in order to not only put the person who kidnapped her behind bars, as well as to bring peace and comfort to the detective on the case, her parents, her former friends, and most importantly, herself.

It will be anything but easy.

A word of warning from here on out: this review is spoiler heavy. I can’t review Liz Coley’s Pretty Girl-13 without giving away what does and doesn’t work. This is a psychological thriller, so much of the plot depends upon the plot twists and therefore, the spoiler-laden elements.

The book opens with a flashback to Angie, age 13, when she was kidnapped from the woods. It’s from the third-person perspective but the way in which it’s told, it’s clear there is more than one voice telling the story. That’s because Angie suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The trauma from her captivity forced her mind to compartmentalize the abuse, meaning that now, three years later, she’s unable to piece together a full picture of what happened to her. She can hardly recall what’s happening to her in the present because at any given time, one of the identities may be coming through stronger than another.

Angie’s taken to therapy immediately and receives the diagnosis. While it terrifies her, she comes to realize that if she can channel the other voices through — much as they scare her — she can figure out what happened. There are a number of different voices brought up through Angie’s therapy sessions and outside of therapy, including the Slut (she submitted to the captor sexually to keep him happy and quiet), the Girl Scout (she was the one chained to the small room and who would cook and do the captor’s work for him outside the bedroom), Angel (the male voice who was full of anger and bitterness for being captured and treated as a prisoner against will), and others. There is one voice that breaks through at the very end of the book, which is that of the baby Angie bore for her captor. The same baby which happens to be the child Angie babysits for now in the real world. The coincidence there is, indeed, ridiculous.

As a reader, I knew what was going on by page three of the story. I think I’ve talked about how a lot of psychological thrillers are easy for me to guess the driving force behind the story, but this was one of the most obvious examples in a long time. There’s more than one voice directing Angie when she’s captured. Could it be anything other than compartmentalization? Maybe it’s because I’m an adult and have read a ton of books like this or because I’ve watched so many of these stories play out in the real world. Maybe it’s because my background is in psychology with an emphasis in adolescent development. I can spot the disorder quite easily. I could have accepted it, actually, had the story been stronger and more compelling. Unfortunately, in this case, it’s not.

Following the diagnosis and therapy sessions (including a very experimental one), Angie is still working through adjusting to normal life again. As such, she has to choose where to go to school. She was supposed to be in 8th grade when she disappeared, and when she came back, she’d be in 11th. But because she doesn’t want to reconnect and feel weird around her old friends, she chooses to start in 9th grade. She still connects with her old friends, though, and she learns they’re not the same as they used to be. Did you read that? She went back to the same school she was known at for being the girl who went missing, and no one is any wiser! She doesn’t change her name or anything. There’s a little explanation for why she doesn’t go somewhere new (price of a private school is too high and her parents won’t be moving) and it’s possible to buy into. What is impossible to buy into, though, is how there is absolutely no media attention. No one is trying to sell this story. No one is outing this girl. Why didn’t her parents move? There’s a small moment when Angie finds a scrapbook with news clippings, but beyond that, there is maybe one phone call for a press interview. When Angie returns, it’s absurd to think there’s no news crew, no people trying to make a buck, and no interest in telling the gripping story of a girl who went missing and suddenly appeared back.

Then there’s a boy. Angie is, of course, falling in love with a boy at school. And it’s through him she finds the security and comfort to tell the truth in the last part of the book. This is done through a tremendously underwhelming infodump, wherein we learn that Angie not only suffers from DID, but she also suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. That was the final straw for me as a reader in terms of believability. I hadn’t even gotten to the surprise baby plot line. I haven’t delved into the fact that Angie’s mom is also pregnant, so there’s a whole series of issues complicating Angie’s return there. I also haven’t mentioned the subplot with Angie’s uncle — he’d been making sexual advances on her for years prior to her being captured and taken, and it’s when her DID is in deep treatment Angie can finally speak up about it. While there’s something to be said about the uncle’s role in her initial descent into compartmentalization, it was more of the One Thing Too Many trend that further made the story ridiculous. It’s hard to develop a sense of character when they are little more than tools of syndroms and tools of their situations. What Angie experiences is horrific, and yet, as a reader I never once felt that because what was going on ranged from ridiculous to far-too-coincidental.

Pretty Girl-13 doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It takes elements of a number of well-written novels on these issues and doesn’t marry them successfully. The story of a girl taken and abused by a captor but who eventually makes her way out to tell the story? It was done well in Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl. The issue of DID was done in Brian James’s Life is But a Dream to the extent that the main character’s mental illness makes the reader question the entire story itself and all she experiences. Stockholm Syndrome is done expertly in Lucy Christopher’s Stolen. And Nova Ren Suma manages to tell a tale of mental illness (not DID but a similar illness) in 17 & Gone and even more successfully uses the metaphor of fire to actually enhance the story and character, rather than simply using it as an exit from the story, as Coley does here. As far as familial sexual abuse, there’s Mindi Scott’s Living Dead Girl. In short: any of these titles tackle the subjects of Pretty Girl-13 in much more depth, honesty, and immediacy than Coley’s title does.

One aspect of the book that did work quite well and I applaud Coley for was how Angie ultimately comes to work through her DID and make herself one complete Angie. This means that she accepts being Angie involves being part “slut,” being part “girl scout,” being part “Angel,” and being part mother. She’s a female who has the agency to express herself sexually if she wants, and she has the agency to be angry and violent if need be. The therapeutic technique used in the book doesn’t require that Angie forget those other voices inside her. Instead, it forces Angie to embrace these voices as part of who she is. They’re pieces of a whole. Her wholeness means she is a little bit of all those things.

Will this book find a readership? Absolutely. It’s a sexy subject. It’s unfortunate that rather than offering readers a full character and a full arc, we’re given a list of challenges and info dumps meant to suffice for strong development. This is a debut, and it feels like one because it’s sloppy, a little overindulgent, and misses the mark on crucial elements of story development. I felt cheated because I’d figured out the story from the start, but I felt further cheated the more I read. In concept, Pretty Girl-13 sounds appealing. It lacks in execution and for that, it’s a disappointing and unsatisfying read.

Pretty Girl-13 is available now from Harper Collins. Review copy received from the publisher. 

March Debut YA Novels

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Trying to keep up with the debut YA novels being published each month? I’ve been keeping track, starting with January and February, linking reviews written by Kimberly and myself as they’ve published. 

Here are this month’s debut novels, followed by the descriptions via WorldCat and relevant reviews, if they’ve been published already. If I’m missing any titles that were traditionally published, feel free to leave a comment. I take debut to mean it’s the author’s first book, so if the author has published for a different audience in the past, they aren’t counted as debut. 

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch: There are some things you can’t leave behind… A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys. Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down. Kelly’s review.

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley: Sixteen-year-old Angie finds herself in her neighborhood with no recollection of her abduction or the three years that have passed since, until alternate personalities start telling her their stories through letters and recordings. Kelly’s review.

The Murmurmings by Carly Anne West: After her older sister dies from an apparent suicide and her body is found hanging upside down by one toe from a tree, sixteen-year-old Sophie starts to hear the same voices that drove her sister to a psychotic break. Kelly’s review.  

Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza: Sixteen-year-old Mila discovers she is not who–or what–she thought she was, which causes her to run from both the CIA and a rogue intelligence group.

The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett: Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for “magickind,” sixteen-year-old Destiny Everhart feeds on the dreams of others, working with a handsome human student to find a killer.

The Culling by Steven Dos Santos: In a futuristic world ruled by a totalitarian government called the Establishment, Lucian “Lucky” Spark and four other teenagers are recruited for the Trials. They must compete not only for survival but to save the lives of their Incentives, family members whose lives depend on how well they play the game. 

Poison by Bridget Zinn: When sixteen-year-old Kyra, a potions master, tries to save her kingdom by murdering the princess, who is also her best friend, the poisoned dart misses its mark and Kyra becomes a fugitive, pursued by the King’s army and her ex-boyfriend Hal.

Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson: After the death of her father in 1855, seventeen-year-old Sophia goes to live with her wealthy and mysterious godfather at his gothic mansion, Wyndriven Abbey, in Mississippi, where many secrets lie hidden.

The Art of Wishing by Lindsay Ribar: When eighteen-year-old Margo learns she lost the lead in her high school musical to a sophomore because of a modern-day genie, she falls in love with Oliver, the genie, while deciding what her own wishes should be and trying to rescue him from an old foe.

Being Henry David by Cal Armistead: Seventeen-year-old ‘Hank,’ who can’t remember his identity, finds himself in Penn Station with a copy of Thoreau’s Walden as his only possession and must figure out where he’s from and why he ran away

Bruised by Sarah Skilton: When she freezes during a hold-up at the local diner, sixteen-year-old Imogen, a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, has to rebuild her life, including her relationship with her family and with the boy who was with her during the shoot-out.

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos: A sixteen-year-old boy wrestling with depression and anxiety tries to cope by writing poems, reciting Walt Whitman, hugging trees, and figuring out why his sister has been kicked out of the house.

OCD, The Dude, and Me by Lauren Roedy Vaughn: Danielle Levine stands out even at her alternative high school–in appearance and attitude–but when her scathing and sometimes raunchy English essays land her in a social skills class, she meets Daniel, another social misfit who may break her resolve to keep everyone at arm’s length.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from librarian Sophie Brookover

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This week’s post comes from librarian extraordinaire, Sophie Brookover. This lady knows her YA! 


Sophie Brookover coordinates continuing education programs and manages social media for LibraryLinkNJ, The New Jersey Library Cooperative (do you have a great idea for a webinar or workshop for library staff? Please: let her know!) Now that she’s not working in a library, she’s a reader’s advisor-at-large, offering a listening ear and quality reading suggestions to anyone who asks. You can find Sophie on Twitter as @sophiebiblio and co-hosting the #readadv chat (8 PM on the 1st & 3rd Thursday of each month) with the lovely Kelly Jensen/@catagator and Liz Burns/@LizB.

Back in ye olden times (aka the halcyon days of the late 1990s & early 2000s), I subscribed to a bunch of music magazines — SPIN, Rolling Stone, Magnet and the late, lamented CMJ New Music Monthly. CMJ was my favorite for two reasons:


  1. It always came packaged with a new music sampler and
  2. RIYL.

RIYL stood for “Recommended If You Like” and it appeared at the end of every album review, providing a little extra shorthand-y context for the reader, leading music store staff to albums they could suggest to loyal customers and leading listeners to new music they might otherwise miss. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but RIYL was listener’s advisory.

Fast-forward to, well, now: I only pick up Rolling Stone when I’m in an airport, Magnet is published quarterly, SPIN lives exclusively online, and my beloved CMJ is long since dead. OR IS IT?

The spirit of CMJ lives on in everyone who participates in reader’s advisory. Sure, RIYL was primarily about sweet tunes, not life-changing books, but the kernel of the idea lives, and remains powerful. Recommended if YOU Like. Not what I like. Sure, these are books I like, but I’m recommending them through the lens of what I imagine you will enjoy, in three general categories: Awesomely Creepy, Adventure!, and What It Feels Like For a Girl. I hope you find something that works for you!

Awesomely Creepy

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding

ZOMG you know how there’s something in the back of your closet? Or under your bed? Like, you can’t see it, but you know it’s there and it is the scariest, absolute worst thing ever and it is definitely out for your blood? That’s a pretty awesome feeling when you’re reading about it and not having to experience firsthand, isn’t it? Bonus points for having used “Cray” in a book title before Kanye & Jay-Z popularized it.

RIYL: Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, the August Van Zorn sections of Wonder Boys, Cthulthu

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma



Oh, man. I will confess, this is a personal favorite. Two sisters, bound by devotion and love and something more sinister, in a tiny Hudson Valley town, and not incidentally, some of the best damn literary creepiness I have ever read. I mean, just look at how Suma establishes Ruby’s power over everyone here: “The night shut up for a beat. The fire stopped its crackling. The kids beside it stopped talking. The wind stopped spitting up gravel and howling at the trees. You heard ground crunch under your shoes if you couldn’t keep you fet from moving, but other than that you heard nothing. Then, breaking up the absolute stillness, you heard a breath in and a breath out. You heard her.” (p.89) I might not be completely coherent or rational about the awful majesty of this book, though I will acknowledge that it reveals its mysteries at its own pace and basically tells you to take a flying leap if you don’t like that. BUT. If you like stories that are as beautifully sad as they are gooseflesh-inducing, ones that reward re-reads and will stay with you for months & months after you read them, Imaginary Girls could be just the ticket.

RIYL: The Twilight Zone, Shirley Jackson, Twin Peaks


The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
The world is divided into two types of people: those who see this cover and recoil as if from a snake (“wait, are those knives over that bassinet? Moving on!”) and those who see it and say, “Sold!” The town of Gentry is blessed with economic prosperity and cursed with a child’s death every seven years. Residents are as supersitious as they are wilfully ignorant of the cause of the child deaths. Changelings, blood sacrifice, some scary-ass fairies and sibling love are all in the delicious mix in this urban fantasy.

RIYL: The Unexpurgated Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Adventure!


The Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix

I read the first three novels in this series with my ears, as Teri Lesesne would say. They are tremendous, not least because they are performed by the outrageously talented Dr. Frank N. Furter, himself, Tim Curry. It’s a classic hero’s journey (Sabriel learns that she’s got to save her father and possibly the world by keeping the spirits of the dead bound where they belong, rather than walking among us) with romance and humor nicely woven into the tapestry. For my money, Nix has few peers as a world-builder and his plotting is top-notch. These are big books, but they’re page-turners, too. As a twofer, I’d include a very upper-middle grade recommendation for Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series, which I’m going to have to reread in its entirety because I didn’t read the last two and it’s been so long that I need to go back to the beginning.

RIYL: The Lord of the Rings, early Tamora Pierce


The Returning by Christine Hinwood
What is peace? Is it merely the absence of war? Or is it a goal every person must work towards? How does a community heal after a war? To whom does war do more damage — the winners or the losers? What does it mean to be A People? Do wartime & its aftermath create time and space (both emotional and physical) for people to make their own destinies, find their own loves and fates? The Returning asks all of these questions, and answers most of them, in 17 interlocking chapter-stories about two communities and their peoples’ experiences before, during and after a long war. This is a book in search of a specific kind of reader, one who enjoys seeing how things unfold in their own time. It reminded me very much of the filmmaker Robert Altman. You know how in his movies, there are all these characters and it takes you a while to see how they & their respective plot lines intersect and fit together? And how utterly satisfying it is when you finally do see it? That’s what it’s like reading this book.. Full disclosure: this was one of the Printz Honor titles the year I was on the committee, so, you know. I feel strongly about it.

RIYL: Alternate history, Robert Altman.

What It Feels Like For A Girl

Not That Kind of Girl and Same Difference both by Siobhan Vivian
Oooh, do you see what I did there? Recommending two books by the same author. I’m wild! I’m on fire! You can’t stop me! It is so important to have books like these, which prompt readers to think about the kind of people they want to be. Both Natalie and Kate think they know, find their self-perceptions challenged, and rise to those challenges — messily, imperfectly, realistically. Vivian gets better with every book. The only reason The List isn’t on here is that I haven’t read it all yet (it’s on my nightstand, where it’s sat for months, a casualty of my post-Printz reading mojo loss).

RIYL: Sassy Magazine, Marisa de los Santos, Nora Ephron, Jennifer Weiner
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Sometimes, a little creative civil disobedience is just what the doctor ordered. Frankie, a sophomore at a ritzy boarding school, discovers that her popular senior boyfriend is a member of a secret society. A boys-only secret society. And she proceeds to take it over, with an elan and panache the boys themselves had been unable to muster. A lively skewering of gender assumptions, filled with humor, witty wordplay and challenging questions.

RIYL: Straight Man and other campus farces, P.G. Wodehouse, wordplay in general.



Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Do you like sad books that are also filled with guts and hope? Do you like to meet a character whose life is so outwardly fine but inwardly desolate that you just want to lift her out of the pages, make her a nice cup of tea and give her a big hug? (After you let her go through your wardrobe and choose a sweater or two to take home, I mean.) Do you want to stick with her, through her struggles to figure out how to be in this world where she is utterly alone? Do you want to see her through the crummy times (doling out handjobs on the school bus, realizing the guy who’s gotten her pregnant is not The One, not by a long shot) and the blessed, eventual good times? Sure you do. Read this debut novel and try — just try — not to fall in love with Anna. A Morris Award contender, for sure, and a life-changing read.

RIYL: Ellen Hopkins, My So-Called Life.

Links of Note: March 23, 2013

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via postsecret

It’s time for the biweekly roundup of all things great and interesting on the internet! But first, if you missed earlier announcements, it’s true that we finally joined the ranks of Facebook — if you want to, go ahead and like us there. We’re going to try to share not only our posts over there but also things we read that we think are interesting and worth sharing (that don’t necessarily make it to the roundups here).

Now that that blatant self promotion is done, let’s dive in:

  • Starting with this piece because this is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately, if you haven’t noticed via previous link roundups: does it matter what books your library has? My short response to this is: yes, this, yes. 
  •  “Browsing is fundamentally an act of independence, of chasing your own idiosyncratic whims rather than clicking on Facebook links or the books recommended by some  greedy algorithm.” This is The New Yorker on the art of browsing. 
  • A couple of interesting pieces popped up about Twitter and the way that Twitter does or does not promote or sell books. First, there’s this perspective. Then there is this one. From a blogger and librarian perspective, when it comes to Twitter I can say that if I’m being told about a book from someone I don’t know (especially if it’s the author), I ignore it. If it’s repeatedly told to me, I actively avoid it. The only thing that really influences my purchasing and my interest in a book via Twitter is if it comes from a reputable source — and I am okay with authors who promote their own work and who share reviews they’ve gotten because I choose to follow authors who interest me in ways other than their own books. Because here’s the thing: sometimes I don’t read the books of the authors I follow, as it either doesn’t interest me or simply just…time. But it doesn’t mean I don’t find what they share about their work — and other things! — interesting enough alone.  
  • This is one of the best pieces I’ve read in a while — it’s lengthy but completely fascinating (I love good long form essays and long form journalism more broadly). What’s the story behind someone who is a ghost writer? Especially a ghost writer for a series like Sweet Valley High? 
  • I read the piece above at the same time I read this series from Fiona Paul on what it’s like to be a work-for-hire writer. Paul is the author of Venom and one of the authors who works for Paper Lantern Lit (that’s Lauren Oliver’s company). Part one here and part two here. 
  • A couple of older YA novels — dare I say classics of realistic fiction — have some news related to them. First, Rob Thomas’s Rats Saw God is getting a new look. I feel like this has been discussed quite thoroughly already (I feel like I was talking about this a year ago). The other news is that Robert Cormier’s novels, including The Chocolate War, are finally available as ebooks.
  • If you haven’t been reading Nova Ren Suma’s “Haunted at 17” series, go to it. It’s fantastic, and I think anyone who works with teenagers would not only love it in terms of reminding themselves about what is going on in the minds of 17 year olds, but I think this series would be so, so neat to share with your teens — so many of the writers they know and read had the same struggles they’re going through now. 
  • I’m rounding out this round up with a piece that I have read over and over and thought about and really like. In light of the Steubenville case, in light of all of the other stories of rape culture, in light of the stories about women’s rights, period, that have been a part of our world is this: I am not your wife, sister, or daughter. I am a person. I think it’s important to think about the way women are framed — rather than being a possession of someone else, they are themselves their own being. They can have roles as wife, as sister, as daughter, but they are now owned in those contexts. 

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

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So, you all know that I loved Grave Mercy. A lot. It was so fun and exciting and well-written and romantic and basically everything I wanted in a book at that moment. Its sequel, Dark Triumph, is no different. If anything, I enjoyed it more.

Where Grave Mercy focused on Ismae, Dark Triumph focuses on Sybella, another assassin nun who’s been sent on an assignment to the home of D’Albret, the sinister noble who conspired to kill Anne, the Duchess of Brittany, after she refused his offer of marriage. At the end of Grave Mercy, it’s Sybella’s warning that saves Anne’s life. But her mission at D’Albret’s home is not over.

Being sent to infiltrate D’Albret’s home as a spy is horrifying enough (D’Albret is a special kind of evil), but for Sybella, it’s torture. You see, soon into the story we learn that she is, in fact, D’Albret’s daughter, and she’s been privy to his violent proclivities since childhood. He’s had at least half a dozen wives, and they all met untimely ends when they ceased to please him. If D’Albret were to find out that she was fathered by Mortain, then she would no longer be off-limits to him.

Sybella has been biding her time, watching D’Albret constantly, hoping to see the marque on him that would give her permission to kill him. Before she is able to see anything, she’s given her official assignment: rescue an ally of the duchess who’s been imprisoned in D’Albret’s dungeon. That her mission is a rescue one, not a killing one, doesn’t sit well with Sybella, who truly enjoys killing (this is something I love about her character). But the man she rescues interests her, and he throws her off-kilter by liking her even more when he learns what she is.

Ever since I was introduced to Sybella in the convent in Grave Mercy, I wanted to know her story. She was presented as quite unhinged initially, but able to heal slowly thanks to the friendships she eventually developed with Ismae and Annith. Having D’Albret as a father explains much of her psyche, and LaFevers writes her so well that I really felt Sybella’s horror at being forced to live once more with the man who killed her mother and made her life a living hell.

A little of the mythology behind Mortain and his marques was revealed in Grave Mercy, and it’s built upon here – and if you’ve read Grave Mercy, you won’t be surprised to learn that the convent doesn’t have it exactly right. A lot of the story involves Sybella grappling with what it means to be sired by Mortain, what it means to be a killer and not only be good at it, but enjoy it. I mentioned in my review of Grave Mercy that I loved that LaFevers made Ismae do the “bad thing” – killing people on order with little thought to the reason behind it. Here, she takes it a step further – Sybella not only does the “bad thing,” she relishes it.

While I loved Ismae as a character, I’m much more intrigued by Sybella. Her sanity is a bit fragile, and she’s sad and angry and overwhelmingly depressed, betrayed over and over by the people who should have loved her. She’s had it rough, but she’s still fighting to find a way to be happy. She’s fascinating and I loved reading about her.

The other things that distinguished Grave Mercy are here, too: political intrigue, action, murder, romance, secrets, bad people who turn out to be good, good people who turn out to be bad. It advances the overall storyline involving Duchess Anne and also creates some intriguing possibilities for the future of the convent and its assassin nuns. It’s just completely well-done, a worthy sequel (or “companion book,” if you like), and will more than satisfy fans of the first. I can’t wait for the third.

Review copy received from the publisher (via Kelly). Dark Triumph will be available April 2.