STACKED

books

Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe

|

Sara’s always been a dancer, and it’s been her dream to pursue it more seriously. When she scores a scholarship to a prestigious dance academy in New Jersey, despite the hesitation she has about leaving behind her family and friends in Vermont, she knows this is the thing she needs to do to get ahead.

She packs her bags and is off to what she hopes will be her ticket to success, but Sara soon realizes that the change isn’t as easy as she’d wanted it to be. There’s not only the challenge of dancing hours upon hours each and every day — something that takes an immense physical toll on her — but there’s also the challenge of attending an academy where the curriculum is more difficult and more demanding than her school back in Vermont. More than that, though, she’s finding the social aspects of her new life to be difficult. And the boys at the Jersey Ballet? Well, they might be the biggest challenge for her. At least, one by the name of Remington is.

Even though Remington has a relationship with Jane, Sara can’t keep her eyes off him, and when they’re partnered for a performance, she finds that he really is magnetic. And single. It takes little time before the two of them are a couple but it takes even less time before Sara starts to question what her role in their romance is. Does he really love her or is he using her simply as his muse?

Audition is Stasia Ward Kehoe’s debut novel, and it’s written in verse. I think she nails the form so well in this book, as it’s not only well done, but it’s entirely suited to the story. Often, verse novels don’t delve deep enough into character or story and instead rely on the space between the words in the formatting to do a lot of the telling-that-can’t-be-said. In this case, though, there is plenty of character and story development, and it’s the verse which actually helps sustain and carry these things. We get a good voice in the novel, too, which is another tough aspect to nail in a verse novel.

Incidentally, this is the second book in the last year I’ve read dealing with ballet and the rough world of competitive and professional dancing (the first being Sophie Flack’s Bunheads). In both books, the main character develops a relationship with a boy that ultimately changes their thinking and the course of their future. But what I liked so much about reading these two books is the synergy between them. They aren’t the same story at all. Where Flack’s book focuses on what happens when a dancer questions what she’s lost by devoting everything to ballet, Kehoe’s book delves into what happens when a dancer finds herself through dancing, even if it’s not necessarily the way she wants to find herself.

Sara’s a quiet girl. She considers herself lucky, even though her friends and family (and the reader) know that to earn a scholarship to a dance academy takes a lot more than luck — she’s hard working, driven, and talented, but she’s less willing to give herself those sorts of labels. Sara’s humble. It’s not until she begins her relationship with Remington, though, that she discovers these very things about herself. Her relationship with Rem is steamy and almost exclusively so. Though they develop an emotional connection at the start of their romance, it becomes much more about their physical involvement than anything else. In the context of the story, though, this makes complete sense: these are two people who are in tune with their bodies on a level most people never are. The fact that their bodies become the centerpieces of their relationship is natural.

What didn’t quite work for me, though, was that despite this making sense, the story could have gained a little more from strengthening this physical relationship. What sets Sara off and makes her question Rem’s motives for being with her is that he borrows the way she moves her body to help choreograph other dancers. Yes, it’s sexual, but it’s actually a lot more about the sensuality than the sexuality; it’s in the way she stretches and moves, period, when they’re together that become fascinating to Rem. She becomes, as she says, his muse. The thing is, as readers, we don’t get to see enough of this happen between them, nor do we get a great sense of how she puts the pieces together. There’s a bit of a disconnect for readers, as Sara doesn’t let us inside her mind enough when she realizes that the way she stretches catlike with Remington is the same sequence of movements he then chooses to implement while training other dances. We’re told this. But we could have been shown just a little more.

In that sense, I didn’t feel like I got enough of Remington. I needed to know him a little more as a character and understand why he would do this. Where we’re immediately connecting with Sara in the story, Remington is more removed. We’re told about him through Sara, but we’re not told enough. He’s a figure a little too far away from our understanding, and thus, it doesn’t feel like a big deal when he’s using Sara as a muse. I wanted him to be a little more evil upfront to buy this. I completely understand Sara and her feelings, but I could have used just a bit more here.

Audition is well-paced and because of the verse, it reads quickly, despite being near 450 pages long. I could have done with a little bit of a shorter read, which could have aided in defining Remington more; conversely, I could have probably read another 50 pages if he were developed a little bit more. The ending of the book wasn’t a surprise for me, perhaps because I had read Bunheads, and I have to say that I was impressed that this book, as well as Flack’s, managed to keep the stereotyping of body image issues in the dance world to a minimum. That’s not to say it’s not in the book because it certainly is, but it’s not an issue with which Sara struggles, and I applaud Kehoe for that. It makes the story more authentic.

Hand this book off to fans of verse novels, as well as those who love a good story about the arts. Those who like stories about non-traditional high schoolers will appreciate the fact it’s set in a ballet academy, and those who read and devoured Flack’s Bunheads will definitely want to pick this one up.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

|

Marissa Meyer’s debut novel Cinder has been hyped a lot, but I went into it pretty blind, and I’m glad I did. I didn’t have any thoughts other than “Wow, this jacket copy makes it sound awesome, I hope it is!” Folks, I wasn’t disappointed. This is one buzzed novel that totally delivers.
So here’s the deal: Linh Cinder is a young mechanic who lives in New Beijing sometime in the distant future. She was in a mysterious accident as a young child, and the only way to save her life was to make her a cyborg. This means that she has some mechanical, non-human parts. Cyborgs in Cinder’s world are second-class citizens, and she’s bound to her stepmother by law. True to the Cinderella story from which this book takes its inspiration, Cinder’s stepmother is a hellacious beast. Within the first couple of chapters, she does something truly horrendous to Cinder, which sets in motion the action of the novel.
I can’t go much beyond that, but you know the story of Cinderella, so you know the book involves a prince (here his name is Kai), two stepsisters (here only one is bad), and a shoe. The fairy tale inspiration here isn’t quite as loose as it is in Anna Sheehan’s A Long Long Sleep (another fantastic SF), but it’s not just a re-telling either. If you know Cinderella, you know where the relationship between Kai and Cinder is going to go, but you won’t know much beyond that.
My favorite part of Cinder is the world-building. There’s an awful plague in Cinder’s world that’s highly contagious and incurable. The emperor and his son, Kai, are desperately working to find a cure. Meanwhile, they’re also delicately negotiating with the queen of the Lunars (yes, people who live on the moon) in order to prevent a war. If you think Cinder’s stepmother is a hellacious beast, wait until you meet Queen Levana. There are a bunch of other elements going on here, but the end result is New Beijing and its denizens feel fully realized. They also don’t feel derivative of anything else I’ve read, despite the novel’s inspiration.
The writing is smooth and miles beyond what most debut authors can accomplish. It’s not as beautifully immersive as Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone nor as distinctive as Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking, but it never once brought me out of the story with an awkward turn of phrase. I’d pick up the book, and the next time I looked away from it, 100 pages were gone. I give major credit for that to Meyer’s decision to write in third person past tense.
I also loved the characters. Cinder and Kai, our two leads, are fairly complex. Cinder’s android companion, although not made of any human parts, is written so well that she seems human. Cinder’s younger sister (the nice stepsister) is both spoiled and sweet, making her realistic and easy to like. Even the hellacious beast of a stepmother feels like a three-dimensional character in Meyer’s hands. And Queen Levana is so deliciously evil (so far, at least) that she is always a treat to read about.
Although there was one major plot point that I found completely predictable, most of the story felt unique and fresh. I think it’s indicative of a publishing trend towards more straightforward science fiction that isn’t classified as dystopian. The plague may bring to mind a dystopia, and it wouldn’t surprise me if many people classified Cinder that way (the term is so over-used!), but the novel is not truly a dystopia. It’s just plain old science fiction, and that’s what makes it so awesome.
Like a lot of YA science fiction being published now, Cinder is a great choice for readers who like their science fiction without complex science. That doesn’t mean it’s a great choice for readers who don’t naturally like science fiction, just that you don’t really have to remember much of your high school physics class to get it. There’s also not a whole lot of new jargon to learn, which may make it more friendly to people who tend to stay away from SF.
This is the first book in a quartet, but it passes my rule of “All books must include a beginning, middle, and end,” so it gets a pass. In fact, it gets more than that – I eagerly await the next installment.

Don’t Breathe a Word by Holly Cupala

|

Joy Delamere has asthma, but that’s not what causes her to feel like she’s suffocating. It’s Asher, her boyfriend. At least, that’s how he sees himself and that’s how Joy’s family sees him. To her, though, he’s about as far from a boyfriend as she can imagine. He has her in a choke hold — quite literally. Joy’s older brother, who used to help keep her in check, left for college and now her family depends upon Asher to keep an eye on Joy. And he takes the responsibility very seriously.

Not only is Joy’s boyfriend abusive and controlling, her parents are about as absent as they come. Her friends keep slipping further away, too, the more time she and Asher spend together.

Joy wants out.

She cuts off her hair, hops an early morning bus from her suburban town, and lands in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. She’s packed her inhalers, a few granola bars, some cash, and a lot of hope for figuring it all out. She’s turned to the street to get out of her life, and she hopes that the boy she ran into a few weeks back — a street kid playing outside one of the shops she visited with Asher — might be the person she needs in her life.

Don’t Breathe a Word is Holly Cupala’s sophomore novel, and like her debut Tell Me A Secret, it surprised me with the how well the complicated issues at stake were handled. From the beginning, we’re dropped into that moment where Joy decides she wants nothing more than to give up her suburban home life and move to the streets. From the details we’re given, it all seems ridiculous she’d want to do that — she’s got married parents, there’s money and food, and she has this boyfriend who takes care of her. As readers, we’re not privy to the decision making at this point. We’re given Joy at her lowest and from there, she spills the events leading to that decision.

In setting up the story this way, my emotions and feelings toward Joy were toyed with in the best possible way. I thought the fact she was running away from her problems was a cheap solution and I thought she was being incredibly selfish in her actions. But as the story unraveled, and as Joy began detailing the abusive and powerful hold Asher had over her and the lack of allies she had in the situation, my sympathy for her increased. I felt for her. Nothing in her life seemed redeemable, and as I got to know her parents (both too busy with work and with their own lives to pay attention to their daughter, thus their insistence Asher watch Joy so closely), it was clear they weren’t on her side, either. Joy was suffocating under the weight of Asher and the pressures put upon her to be right in her parents’ eyes.

I’m not an expert on street culture, but I do know a bit from reading and research and, quite frankly, from working in libraries (anyone who has worked in a public library, no matter how small or rural or quaint, becomes familiar with transient and homeless populations through the course of their education or their own experiences). What Cupala offers readers is realistic and challenging to read because of how honest it deals with the truth of street life for kids. It’s gritty and raw. But it’s also an entire culture in and of itself: there are families and alliances, and when Joy spends her first few hours on the street, she realizes how essential aligning herself with people who would help protect and guide her was. She’s motivated to find that boy who talked to her, and when she does, it’s not an instant love connection — it’s tenuous at best. He wants to help her, but he is understandably wary that her intentions might not be the same as his or those he spends his time with. He ended up on the streets for a reason, too. He’s got pain and a story he’s keeping hidden until he truly trusts her, and that trust takes a while to build.

In the street, people don’t tend to use their real names. They adopt new ones, and the boy Joy seeks out calls himself Creed. When he asks her name, she adopts a new name, too: Triste. By doing this, she not only protects herself from being found by anyone who might be looking for her, but she cements in her mind and in the mind of Creed and his “family” that she’s serious about living on the streets. This isn’t simply a case of running away. She’s desperate.

There’s much more to talk about in the novel, particularly when Triste’s time on the street is through. I don’t want to ruin it, but I’ll say that while I saw some things coming, I didn’t see it all play out the way it did. Although the ending felt a little convenient, particularly when it came to how Creed and Triste’s romance plays out, I was okay with it. They both deserved the endings they got because of how much they went through alone and together on the streets.

This is an emotionally-charged story, and it’s going to appeal to readers who love the way authors like Ellen Hopkins shed light into stories of teens who are in situations that are outside of the norm. Cupala’s writing is much different, as her prose and pacing is slower — deliberately so — than Hopkins, but it’s a book that challenges readers. What worked well for me was that I never felt entirely sure throughout the book how I wanted it to end or how I wanted Joy to confront the real problems at hand. I love a character I can’t make predictions for and a character who challenges me to consider my own preconceived notions of how life works or should work. Joy does that here. Don’t go into this book prepared for a quick paced story; investing the time to really fall into this world that’s so foreign is worth it. Cupala’s done her work on the book, and there’s something to be said this needs to be read not only for Joy’s story, but also for the sheer research and crafting of that research into the writing. Not everything in the book worked for me — I found many of the secondary characters distracting rather than interesting, and some of the situations felt a little too convenient or required a bit more of a stretch of my beliefs than I’d like — but because so much did work, I’m okay overlooking the problematic areas. It won’t work everyone, but it will speak to so many readers who themselves have felt like there is no other way out, and the restraint Cupala uses in not laying down judgment of street culture is admirable.

Don’t Breathe a Word is a quiet kind of powerful novel. It digs at the heart of feeling alone and feeling desperate without sacrificing story nor taking an easy way out. So while we’re thrown into the book at Joy’s rock bottom moment, we know there is a whole lot of “going through” for her to do, both forward and backward.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Don’t Breathe a Word is available now. Bonus: it’s a paperback original release.

Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook

|

Isobel’s life has just been turned upside down. Her parents are divorced, and her mom has just married a new man named Richard (aka Dick) whom she met on the Internet. Dick has a creepy gothic mansion on a tiny island, and Isobel’s mom is forcing them all to move there right before her senior year of high school. A cute new stepbrother, Nathaniel, is also part of the mix, but he’s made it clear that he and Isobel will not be friends. (Romance develops. Naturally.)
The moment Isobel steps into her new home, things start heading south for her. After being told she could have any room she likes in the huge place, she has the misfortune to choose Nathaniel’s dead sister’s room. Dick’s previous wife and their daughter both died in a boating accident under mysterious circumstances. Naturally, this being a ghost story, Isobel is haunted by this dead sister.
Of course, it may not be a haunting at all. Isobel’s father is schizophrenic and Isobel’s behavior becomes so erratic that her mother and Dick fear she may be mentally ill as well. (They handle it so poorly it’s borderline malicious.) Soon, Isobel starts to believe it may be true too.
I was pleasantly surprised by Unraveling Isobel. It’s not so much a ghost story as it is a thriller, and that’s part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. My interest in ghost stories has waned since I was a teen, but this one has a solid mystery that anchors it so it’s not just about the ghost (or the illness). I also thought Isobel’s potential schizophrenia was handled nicely by Cook. She doesn’t sensationalize it for the sake of the story, although the potential for it is blatantly there.
The biggest reason why I found the book so enjoyable, though, is Isobel’s voice. She’s understandably upset at being uprooted the summer before her senior year and moving to a completely new place with a man (Dick) she doesn’t like. But she’s not just bitter, she’s snarky-bitter. She’s got some great one-liners and a way of looking at her situation that made me chuckle. Her voice is somewhat similar to Clare’s in Clarity, although this book is much darker.
The subplot featuring the nasty queen bee of Isobel’s new high school fell a little flat for me. I expected it to tie in some way with the main mystery, but it never did. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a subplot that doesn’t relate to the main plot thread, but high school bitchiness doesn’t really do much for me, so it was certainly the part I enjoyed least.
Unraveling Isobel isn’t spectacular, but it’s definitely a worthwhile read if you’re into this type of story. The writing is tight, the voice is engaging, the plot moves quickly, and it’s a great way to spend a lazy evening. I’d be happy to read more like it.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Unraveling Isobel is available now.

AudioSynced: December Edition

|

Welcome to another edition of AudioSynced, a monthly roundup of audiobook reviews, news, and fun from around the blogosphere. It’s hosted by us and by Abby (the) Librarian. If you posted something about audiobooks in the month of December, drop a note in the comments with a link to your post.

Reviews
I’ve collected a ton this month, including a lot I just pulled up through my own RSS search. If I missed you, let me know!

  • Beth’s A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust has a pair of reviews this month, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Catalyst and Lauren Oliver’s Liesl and Po. If you haven’t been by Beth’s blog, I suggest not going over there while hungry! Her header makes me crave ice cream every time.
  • Sarah at Green Bean Teen Queen reviewed the John Newman’s middle grade book Mimi and Nikki Grimes’s Planet Middle School.
  • I really like this review of Amy Kathleen Ryan’s Glow by Yan at Books by Their Cover. It’s her first audiobook and I thought her review captured so well what does and doesn’t work in an audio production of a book (from a first time listener at that).
  • Liz, over at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, reviewed Holly Cupala’s Tell Me a Secret. I’ve got a copy of this sitting on my shelf, and despite having read the book, I’m eager to listen to it since it’s narrated by my favorite reader, Jenna Lamia.
  • Melissa over at One Librarian’s Book Reviews did a retro review feature on Christopher Paolini’s Eragon.
  • Jenn at Jenn’s Bookshelves reviewed Toby Ball’s The Vaults.
  • Michelle at Never Gonna Grow Up reviewed Marie Lu’s Legend at the tail end of November, but I thought it would be worth sharing anyway.
  • Nerfreader’s got a review up of Jo Walton’s cozy mystery called Farthing.

Other Audiobook News

  • I have a love-hate relationship with best of lists, but I read them anyway. Here’s Library Journal’s picks for Best Audiobooks of 2011.
  • If you weren’t familiar with Large Hearted Boy’s annual roundup of “best of” lists from around the web, then you’re going to love this little link. It’s not separated out by audiobooks, but you can find them with a little browsing.

And that’s a wrap on this month’s AudioSynced! We’ll be back next month at Abby (the) Librarian.