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Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

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Becky Randle has always considered herself pretty plain. Not an uggabug, mind you, but nothing special either. She lives in a trailer with her mother, an obese woman whom everyone else seems to write off, but who Becky knows is the kindest, most wonderful person in the world. 
But then her mom dies, and Becky is left rudderless. She’s just graduated high school, she has a part-time job at a corner store that she hates, she’s not going to college, and her mom was the only bright spot in her life – aside from her best friend, Rocher (named after the candy). Shortly before her mother died, she cryptically told Becky to embrace the magic when it’s offered to her – and sure enough, it is. She’s contacted by Tom Kelly, the world’s foremost fashion designer, who promises to make her three dresses which will magically transform her into the most beautiful woman in the world.
Sure enough, the first dress she puts on – a hot red number – does just that. When she’s alone, Becky looks in the mirror and sees her average self. But when anyone else is with her, she looks like Rebecca, the knock-out, the stunner. Tom Kelly and his dresses take Becky on a wild ride – the cover of Vogue, a starring role in an action movie opposite the hottest actor, and even a meeting with the prince of England. Then Tom Kelly reveals the catch (you knew there would be a catch, didn’t you?). Becky is not so sure of her transformation, not so sure of Tom Kelly, and very afraid of what being permanently Rebecca would do to her life.
The standout of this novel is Becky’s voice. She’s sarcastic, funny, self-deprecating, and vulgar (though not nearly as vulgar as Rocher). Her story is told in first person, so you really get a good feel for who she is through her own eyes. It’s obvious her self-esteem isn’t very high. It’s also obvious she’s in over her head with this whole situation. Her friend Rocher is a breath of fresh air. I fully expected Rocher to be written as initially supportive but eventually envious, complete with a falling-out and ultimate reconciliation at the end of the book. That’s not at all what happens. Rocher is beside Becky’s side the entire time, and Becky never abandons Rocher for any of her new, more famous, acquaintances. Plus, Rocher is freaking hilarious.
The weakest part of the book is Becky’s romance with the prince, which is fun but not very well-developed. It seems he and Becky go from meeting each other to being an acknowledged couple with no steps in between. It seems rushed, like perhaps Rudnick just wanted to skip ahead to the good stuff. For all that the prince is a good-looking, funny, kind-hearted, famous, and very wealthy man, I never felt the swoon that I felt I should have.
I haven’t been as involved in the new adult discussion as Kelly has, but I think Gorgeous fits the bill pretty well. It features a protagonist who is 19 for the majority of the story. She’s no longer in high school. She’s concerned with marriage (in a mostly non-romantic way), with finding a job that will allow her to make a living, with how the world perceives her as an adult and what her legacy would be. For people who don’t go to college after graduation, these are very realistic concerns. (As an aside, I think it’s nice to see a teenager who makes the valid decision to not go to college.) There’s also quite a bit of strong language, which doesn’t make a book NOT young adult, but it does contribute to a more mature tone.
So is it a good read? Definitely. Is it Printz-worthy? Probably not. The pacing isn’t perfect. More than that, though, the message is just kind of murky. When you write a book about a self-professed “plain” woman who is magically transformed into the most beautiful person in the world, how do you resolve that neatly? How do you make the story true to its world, which values physical beauty, but also prevent it from being total wish fulfillment or a complete downer? I’m not sure Rudnick got it totally right, but then again, I’m not sure it’s possible to get it totally right. And of course, there’s no reason there needs to be a message at all. He gets points for grappling with it in the first place.

When We Talk About “Girl Problems”

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My problems might be superficial on a global scale, but they’re real to me. 
— Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
One of my favorite quotes in YA fiction is the one above. It’s one I’ve thought long and hard about, and part of the reason is that it captures one of the reasons I love realistic YA fiction so much. On the global scale, problems about boyfriends or about parents or even about the “tougher” stuff — drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and so forth — are fairly superficial. Few of the stories presented in realistic YA make a huge impact globally. They’re in the here and now, but that doesn’t at all discredit their importance and immediacy to the characters who are telling the story.

Amanda Nelson wrote a really great post over at Book Riot recently about her conflicted feelings for Elizabeth Gilbert (most well-known for her Eat, Pray, Love) that struck a chord with some of what I’ve been thinking about lately in regards to YA fiction and more specifically, the problems that girls encounter in YA fiction. It’s a short post, but the heart of it for me was this:

I have CONFLICTED FEELINGS about Elizabeth Gilbert. I read Eat, Pray, Love, and while I thought her actual putting-words-in-sentences-in-nice-and-interesting-ways WRITING was really good, the subject matter was so annoying that I ended up turning my nose up at the book. A wealthy American white lady complaining about…what, exactly? The spirituality-lite? Leaving her husband because she doesn’t want to be married, then spending the rest of the book talking about men? Ergh.
Except I could deal with it, apparently, because I didn’t fling the book away in disgust or even irritation. I finished it, thought about it, talked about it with other readers. Realized that judging the seriousness of someone else’s problems and the sincerity of their spiritual expression was probably a personality flaw of mine. Changed a little–all because of a book I kinda sorta didn’t even like.

What the wealthy white American lady complains about is the heart of the book and the heart of the criticism people have for this particular book. Gilbert’s memoir is about how she was working through the spiritual and personal aspects of a changing relationship that had, at one time, meant a lot to her but now had left her feeling something different. Amanda nails her own biases here in a way that many readers don’t or don’t think about when they approach a book like Gilbert’s — she judged the seriousness of the problems in the book, rather than reading and considering the book on its own merits.

This is where I see a huge link to what many readers do when it comes to YA fiction, particularly realistic fiction about teen girls. Their problems become disposable, collapsable, and easily judged by the reader. Their problems aren’t considered as global or with any heft. They’re seen as silly and it’s almost an insult to even be compared to a teen girl. Because whatever they’re feeling or experiencing isn’t legitimate or worthy of consideration or attention.
This video is a shining example of what I’m getting at. The standout moment for me is what she has to say here:

People don’t wanna be compared to the teenage girl; the teenage girl is hated, teenage girls hate themselves. If you listen to a certain kind of music, or if you express your emotions in a certain kind of way, if you self harm, you write diaries, all those kind of activities are sort of laughed at and ridiculed because they’re associated with being a teenage girl. Even just things like being cripplingly self conscious or overly concerned with our appearance, that’s considered like a teenage girl thing and therefore its ridiculous, it’s stupid, it’s not relevant or legitimate, and you know, what we needed at that age was legitimisation and respect and support but all we got was dismissal and “oh you’re such a teenage girl.

This is precisely what we do when we’re reading about teenage girls as much as when we’re actually interacting with teenage girls. We call their problems — the real, honest, painful, tough things they’re experiencing — “typical girl problems.”

What does that even mean? What’s a typical girl problem? What’s a typical girl? What’s a typical problem? What puts the line between a “typical girl problem” and a book that’s published featuring a male main character going through “typical boy problems?” What’s a “typical boy problem?” And why is it that “typical boy problems” are considered Literary as opposed to throw away, fluff, or otherwise light reading that “just some book about typical girl problems” can be?

I’m not sure I have answers to any of these questions. And I know for a fact that I’ve used lines like “typical girl problems” in my own reviews to describe what’s going on in a character’s life. But the longer I think about it and consider it, the less that line makes sense and the more it sort of frustrates me as someone who not only loves books about “typical girl problems,” but as someone who loves working with teen girls. I think about this in light of what it might mean to be an unlikable/complicated female protagonist in YA and what it means when a girl learns about her own ability to make choices for enjoying her body and sexuality.

Are we scared that by legitimizing the issues girls face that they might learn to like themselves or that they might find themselves valuable and worthwhile despite not having global problems to work through? 

Rather than offer up answers — I can’t — I thought instead it’d be worth looking through some of the common criticisms leveled at books featuring female main characters and why those perceptions are problematic. As Hubbard notes in that quote from Wanderlove — a book about a girl who needs to travel in order to sort out what’s going on in her own personal life and her own relationships — while the problems may be trivial, they’re very real to the character experiencing them. That doesn’t make them less challenging or less important. 

In many ways, it’s that very thing which keeps girls coming back to YA. They’re seeing themselves in the fiction and they’re empathizing and relating to the problems in these stories. These are their stories and their challenges, and for once, they’re finding a place in the world that not only understands them, but accepts them and loves them through it. 

These books remind teen girls they are perfectly capable, lovable, and valuable as they are right now.  

Keep Calm, Keep Silent 

There are so many books about teen girls and silence. About what happens when something terrible happens to a girl and she isn’t invited to speak up about it or when she tries to, she’s brushed off as being just some girl who doesn’t really know what’s going on.

I’ve been thinking about this since I finished Julie Berry’s All the Truth That’s In Me (September). There’s nothing spoiler in saying the book is about what happens when a girl comes back from being kidnapped. She’s lived in a cult/Puritanical-like world, and that world values a girl’s virginity above all else. When the nameless main character is kidnapped but returns home from where she was taken two years later with her tongue removed — a literal statement — no one wants to listen to her. When she wants to go back to school to be educated, she’s met with sexual advances on the part of her teacher. 
The assumption is that when she was kidnapped, she was made unpure. And as an unpure woman, she had no value to society anymore. She’s not entitled to an education. No one wants to hear her speak up and no one will help her meet her own desire to do so. 
Even though the book is set in a historical time frame, what made it standout was that it was so much a reflection of our own world as it is right now. We silence teen girls and belittle whatever their experiences and opinions and insights might be about what’s going on around us. The main character in this book had the answer to a major crime in town, but no one wanted to listen to her. No one wanted to find out why her tongue was cut out because by virtue of her being a teen girl, the town had already metaphorically removed her ability to speak. 

The girl knew what was going on. And part of her motivation for coming back home was to help people understand what happened to her friend. To make sense of a senseless crime. But no one would listen to her. It wasn’t simply that she had no tongue, making her voice impaired — remember, she wanted to go back to school to learn how to communicate — it’s that no one valued her voice enough to want to help her get to that point. Part of it was her perceived impurity, but a bigger part of it was that she was a teen girl. 

Silence has played a role in the lives of girls in YA for a long time. That was the whole premise behind Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. It played a huge role in Colleen Clayton’s novel about sexual assault, What Happens Next. It certainly played a role in Courtney Summers’s Cracked Up to Be. In all four of these cases in particular, that silence revolved around sexual assault or sexual impurity or at least perceived sexual assault or impurity on some level. 

Which is interesting because for whatever reason, sexual assault and rape and the notion of sexual purity are “girl problems.” 

It’s interesting too, how many parents in these stories don’t exist. Whether that’s by design — they aren’t there — or by perception. Whatever the case is, the truth of it is the adults in so many of these stories aren’t there. 

Girl voices aren’t valued. Girl voices are written off as unimportant, and even when it’s clear there is a girl in trouble — a girl who maybe even knows the key to something bigger — she’s seen as a devalued member of her world. She’s troubled and has problems and needs help but no one actually reaches out to her and sees her through it. Or worse, they do but they’re doing so not because they care about her, but rather, because she’s causing a scene or a fuss and needs to be silenced again. 

In many ways, it’s because of the culture of being undervalued, for being seen as not having something worth sharing, that these girls internalize. They don’t choose silence. It’s not a choice at all. 

The Love Triangle


I’m not the biggest fan of love triangles in YA fiction, but they serve a purpose and do reach a number of readers. But responses to love triangles in YA are fascinating and I think speak to what I’m working at here, too. 

Love triangles are about not just the romance — though that plays a valid and important part. They’re about choice. They’re about making choices among people who a girl wants to get to know better and they’re about making choices regarding time and energy. They’re about following one’s heart and one’s mind in pursuing relationships. 

Responses to love triangles? They’re lame or overdone or tired or stupid plot devices. They’re boring because who cares about romance? 

The girl in the story cares about the romance or else she wouldn’t be struggling with which boy or girl she wants to pursue. Just as fairly, the girls and boys reading the story care about the romance. They relate, even if it’s in their own personal fantasies, of having to make a choice between two people who want to be involved with them. 

Do you see that?

A love triangle is, in many ways, where the girl at the center of the story is able to not only make a choice, but she’s making a choice among two pursuers who are interested in HER. Who want to get to know HER. Who care about who SHE is as she is. 

These sorts of responses don’t get leveled at books where there a male at the center of the story, though, quite in the way they are when it is a girl choosing between two romantic partners. Andrew Smith’s Winger features Ryan Dean West, who has a choice between two girls. But the responses to his pursuits aren’t met with nearly the same vitriol a novel which features similar set ups but with a girl choosing between two boys (and here is my bias, since I haven’t read enough YA where a girl is choosing a non-heterosexual partner). It’s not that Ryan Dean is seen as a hot shot who can get all of the ladies — he’s not! — but rather, his pursuit of romance and physical intimacy and enjoyment isn’t met with the cries of boredom or triteness or the phrase “who cares about the romance?” And while the girls in his book get to make a choice too, about whether or not he’s the guy for them, because the book’s in his voice and through his perspective, we don’t get to know what it is that’s driving them or why it matters to them. 

Boys in YA novels are allowed more choice when it comes to pursuing romance. And in many ways, there’s a special novelty granted to stories where the boy pursues romance in the way that when a girl at the center of a YA novel pursues it, she’s judged for doing so and in many ways, the strength and value of her character are determined based on this decision. 

Dismissing the love triangle trope in YA and complaining about how it’s lame and boring undercuts the value of choice, of independence, of romance, of making tough decisions about relationships to pursue and relationships to drop that teen girls do experience. Though the girls in the real world don’t always have two boys seeking their love, they do deal with tough choices similar to these choices. They have to make choices between activities to engage in. Between friendships to hold onto and those to break. Between making choices about the futures that send them down one road or another. The love triangle in YA is both the literal choice among two romantic paths and the metaphorical choice. That sometimes you simply have to make tough decisions between two appealing but different things.

Further reading on the love triangle and why it is valuable can be found on Angie’s blog in relation to Katniss in The Hunger Games titles “Why Team Peeta is a Feminist Statement” and on S. E. Sinkhorn’s post “Love Triangles: Why? – A List.”  

The Every Girl


There was a really interesting comment last year over at the Someday My Printz Will Come blog about the Sarah Dessen formula. And it’s a comment that’s appeared in more than one review of a Dessen book. While I definitely agree there is something formulaic in Dessen’s writing — all of her stories feature an average girl dealing with challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship — the writing is always top notch. But more importantly . . . 


All of her stories feature an average girl dealing with the challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship. 

The Dessen girl is the every girl. She is, if you will, often much like Elizabeth Gilbert. She is worried about her own life and the tough things she’s going through at the time. Yes, this often revolves around a boy. Sometimes it revolves around a good friend. Sometimes it revolves around a family that’s not necessarily 100% whole and intact. 

The Moon and More debuted at #3 on the New York Times best sellers list. Dessen isn’t a stranger to this list, and her books are among the first associated with realistic fiction. She’s been around for a long time, and her books are always highly anticipated when they come out every couple of years. Readers love Dessen because they know what to expect of her stories: a girl working through her life’s challenges, with the hope and promise of a satisfying, honest, and real ending. There’s also hope for a little romance and an adventure or two — however small — along the way.

Dessen writes books that readers relate to because they’re their stories. And in many ways, Dessen’s books are criticized for that very thing: for being formulaic and for being predictable. But the truth is, that’s the bulk of a teen girl’s life — it’s formulaic and predictable. That is not a slight on teen girls but rather, a window into the truth of what their every day experiences are. They find themselves drawn to stories like Dessen’s or Susane Colasanti’s or Deb Caletti’s or Jessi Kirby’s or other similar writers because they understand these girls because they are these girls. 
They’re finding authors who completely understand them, but more than that, who want to tell their stories. These authors respect and cherish teen girls and do so by illuminating their worlds in ways that readers (and I don’t leave out boys here!) completely understand because they are living these stories every single day. Contemporary YA authors do this in their work, but there’s something even more intimate and personal about the authors who are so focused on these stories about girls working through their every day challenges. 
The characters in these books? They’re living the problems their readers are. And these books respect that. These are not grand, end-of-the-world problems. They’re real world problems. Today’s teen girls are told over and over their problems don’t matter. They’re trivial. They’re not global.  
But these same teens are buying these books and caring about these stories because they’re finding here that their problems DO matter somewhere.

What’s Scary For Teen Girls To Know?


In 2006, John Green’s Looking for Alaska won the Printz Award. It’s a book which features an oral sex scene. The book is considered literary despite that.

I talked at length about female sexuality in YA already and the positive, empowering portrayals of it in recent titles. But in many ways, I think that when we think about positive female sexuality in YA, it’s not given the same sort of merit or time or praise. Much of it has to do with the greater book, of course, which leads back to the idea that stories about girls, with girls at the center, aren’t received with the same seriousness and merit as literary as those with boys at the center. Yes, Looking for Alaska was primarily about Alaska. But it was about Alaska through the eyes of Miles. 

Coming back to this particular topic in YA is important because I spent a long time reading and considering the comments about my own post over at Dear Author. I wonder if it’s true that a sex scene as mild and implied — not explicit but implied — as the one noted in Doller’s book really and truly wouldn’t fly in some of the public and school libraries as suggested. 
Do these libraries not have Looking for Alaska on shelf? 

I think we come back to the same thing — when a girl is at the helm, the perceptions of what a book is or isn’t about comes through. A girl exploring and being positive about her sexuality is considered too much for some libraries, but a book about a boy doing the same thing is par for the course. It’s, in fact, literary, where the book about the girl is considered more disposable. And sure, there are books where girls who are sexually active or experience positive sexuality which merit the label literary. But I think there is a much quicker knee-jerk reaction to what a book is or is not when it is a girl having these experiences. When it’s a boy, it’s just a boy being a boy.

Are girls’ stories frivolous? Are they worth less than a story about a boy?
Is it scary to think about a girl who is in control of her life, her story, or her experiences, physically, mentally, and emotionally? Why do we bristle at a girl experiences? Why do we devalue it? Why is there a belief that sexual moments in YA books that are through a female main character are there as means of titillation? 
Of course, we know that Green’s book has been challenged. But I think there’s a difference between a book being challenged because it’s made it to the shelves and a book that never gets a chance because it’s not seen as worth the expense. 

So . . . what?


I don’t have any answers, but I have a lot more questions. 

We see girl problems in stories, and we call them out as much.

We dismiss girls’ feelings and experiences as “typical girl problems” and I think we often do it in a way that makes these palatable. But they’re palatable not to girls through this sort of language, but instead, they’re dismissed as a means of making the story palatable to boys. 

Think about the books — realistic, in particular — featuring amazing male lead characters. Whether the book is written by a male or female, those boys are noted for having memorable and strong voices, often because they are boys. This is something someone pointed out to me in my own reviews and discussion of memorable voice. I’ve fallen into calling a voice memorable on the basis that the voice is a male’s. Even when I am conscious of my own thoughts on characters, on gender, and on avoiding conflating either or both of them, I find myself coding them together. This isn’t something I tend to do when talking about a girl main character’s voice.

Is it because I, too, have silenced her voice in my own reading?

Or is it because I’m trying to making statement about the palatability and the importance of problems in these stories, even though it’s far from intention on my part to do so? 

Many times I think we go much easier on our male main characters than our female ones. We don’t have an easily-created “unlikable male characters” book list. We forgive tragic back story much easier (note that male characters don’t often have a back story where they were a victim of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse — big, heavy, hard-to-take female back stories that are so often dismissed as “tragic” or “easy” or “lazy” back story). I’ve found myself thinking a lot lately about those books about boy main characters — those I’ve loved, especially — and wonder what the reactions would be toward the behaviors and stories would be if it were instead a female main character. Would they be memorable? Or would they be disposable? Or would they face harder challenges? Or would it be easier? 

There is a lot here, and there is a lot more I can’t say because I don’t have the words to sort through my thoughts on this topic. But I keep going back to the Hubbard quote, and I keep coming back to what Nelson notes in her post about Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Despite many of the books being about “girl problems,” there’s no such thing as “girl problems.” These are people problems. And if we keep devaluing people problems by calling them “girl problems” or “typical girl problems,” we inherently devalue the girl. We keep her silenced. We keep her from making choices and pursuing her destiny on her own terms. We make her an every girl. And we keep her scared that she’s always going to be just a teenage girl.

September Girls by Bennett Madison

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Sometimes when there is a book that everyone is talking about negatively — and giving good reasons why they’re responding negatively to it — I find myself wanting to do nothing more than actually read that book for myself. Even if it’s not something I’d normally read.

Enter September Girls by Bennett Madison.

Sam, his brother Jeff, and their father are spending the summer away from their home in the Northeast and at the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It’s been a rough year for the family. Sam’s mom recently decided to abandon them in order to find herself in Woman Land. According to Sam, she’d gotten some ideas from Facebook and Farmville and something called the SCUM Manifesto and needed to get away for a while. Sam’s dad is kind of there and not there at the same time. Part of it is the fact he’s just been abandoned by his long-time wife with two boys, of course. Part of why he wants to get away is to give him bonding time with his kids and to give Sam specifically the opportunity to have that one last summer of freedom. And Jeff, who is the older brother, is bent on making sure Sam has the kind of summer he will never forget. The Outer Banks is filled with amazing, gorgeous, luscious, and available girls. Jeff sees this as Sam’s opportunity to lose his virginity and do so without the messy strings that can happen with relationships.

Plus, that’s Jeff’s plan anyway.

The girls in this summer place are indeed magical. They all look similar to one another, and they’re all gorgeous. Everywhere Sam goes, there’s another beautiful lady, and everywhere he goes, he’s approached by these beautiful ladies. They’re practically throwing themselves at him. But Sam’s not drawn to them for their looks. In fact, he pushes himself not to be drawn to them at all, until he meets Dee Dee. Dee Dee is rough. She’s not pleasant. She talks in one hand about how well she knows the Bible and professes this knowledge through sharing with Sam the names of all of the “hos” in it. He can’t stop caring about her though, even when other girls are clamoring for a slice of his attention.

But what is it about these girls? Why are they so attracted to Sam? Why are they so attractive? And how come they never leave this place?

That’s where this story goes from what many have called a misogynistic tale to one that’s actually quite brilliant. Because these aren’t average girls. These are sirens, and it’s their duty to throw themselves at virgin males in hopes of being released from the spell that forces them to live and dwell and vie for attention in this place. Interspersed within Sam’s story are the songs of the sirens — there’s a little back story into why it is they’re stuck here, into who created them, into their legends. There’s nothing particularly answered about their origin, but that’s sort of the point. They don’t know. All they know are the stories they hear about how they can break free. They call themselves sisters, as well as the Girls. The belief is that it’s through sex with a male virgin, and that’s why so many want Sam. They know.

When Dee Dee suggests that Sam help her Sister break free, telling him it is okay to lose his virginity to another girl in the event it might set her free from the place that is killing her, Sam considers it. But he doesn’t do it. He wrestles with this in part because he wants to help Dee Dee’s sister since Dee Dee wants that, but he wrestles with it, too, since it’s not who he is at his core.

September Girls is about a boy becoming a man.

It is about breaking through this pressures thrust upon teen boys to “become a man.”

It is about learning where your values lie and what your own judgments are in seeing other people and in helping them.

Sam is dealt incredibly mixed messages about women. He’s seen his mother struggle with what it means to be a wife and a mother and feel like her place in the world is something greater than either of those. He’s told by his dad he needs to have a fun summer, and he’s told by his brother that he needs to get laid this summer in order to prove his manhood. Plus, the ladies here are easy. And available. And good looking. And isn’t that all that matters? Dee Dee, too, feeds Sam messages about women and their roles because of what she is and what it is she believes she herself is tied to. She’s a siren. She’s beautiful and ephemeral and she doesn’t get to have the experiences that other women do — not those in magazine advertisements or on television (the Girls choose their names based on what they experience when in the world believing that Commercial Feminized Things are of value) — nor those which the women in the Bible have — that’s why she sees them all as “hos.” Sam’s best friend at home feeds him messages too, as his summer is also about conquest. It’s about reminding Sam that his duty as a man is to become a Man by collecting sexual experiences under his belt and doing so without over thinking it. When Dee Dee tells Sam she should sleep with her sister in order to set her free, that’s the moment Sam realizes his well of feelings for Dee Dee. For their emotional relationship.

And it’s in that moment when he himself is set free.

It’s when he becomes a man.

There’s also a really nice tie in about mirrors and reflections that knot together the real-world elements of Sam’s narrative with those siren songs and legends. Freedom is in facing yourself as you are when you see it and not worrying about the things cast upon you as your destiny.

Madison writes a pretty powerful novel here, and he does so in a way that’s quite jarring. Sam’s not your most likable character, and much of his time is kind of . . . boring. He tells us how much TV he watches. How many walks on the beach he takes. He’s downright crass and his brother is ten times worse. There is no doubt that the language used in this book is hard to read and process and that the messages about women and what their role is in the world is hard to digest. But that is the entire point. This is a book about Sam cutting through those horrible messages society feeds people and figuring out what it is that matters to him. Because the messages that are offensive aren’t just geared toward females. They’re offensive toward men, too. To “be a man,” Sam’s told it’s his duty to sleep with a woman. That even if things look like they’re permanent, women will just leave men if they’re not proving their worth enough (see Sam’s mom).

The mirror is held up to the readers in this book to examine themselves in light of these precise messages, too.

These characters are flawed and those flaws are in your face. And isn’t it telling that readers see those flaws in others and sometimes misses them in themselves?

September Girls definitely has guy appeal, and it’s for those readers who like magical realism and fairy tale. I saw it pitched as a mermaid tale for boys, and that’s a pretty good assessment. There’s definitely female appeal here, too. But while I think what Madison says in this book is really smart and savvy and does precisely the opposite of what many readers are claiming it does (this book spins misogyny on its head by using those messages to make the point), this book wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped. I found it boring at times. The writing is simply okay, and I thought that Sam’s cataloging of his days — while effective to the message — was uninteresting. It felt like this could have used a little more time to become stronger and more compelling, and it’s not necessarily a book I will eagerly pass off to readers. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that it’s a bit flat and has a narrow readership who will put in the time and energy to come out with the big take aways. I think some of that is evidenced in reviews around the web — and that’s not a slight on any reader taking the story as they need to, but instead, I think, a sign that the book didn’t necessarily achieve all it set out to through the writing.

“Summer” here is symbolic of adolescence. It’s that time between being fresh and in bloom in spring and finding a comfortable, settled pattern that comes with fall. It’s about exploration and excitement. It’s about testing the waters. About pushing yourself and your boundaries. And I think Madison gives that to Sam with a nice dose of reality coming through the messages about what it means to be a person. Not just a man. Not just a woman. But a person who wants to establish meaningful relationships.

Review copy received from Lenore. September Girls is available now. 

Writing Duos, Or When Authors Team Up

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Is it me or have there been more YA books recently that are co-authored? I’m not talking about short story collections, but rather, novels that are written by two authors. This isn’t necessarily a new thing, but it’s an interesting trend. I like reading these books because I like thinking about how two heads can come together for a single story, and I like thinking about whether or not I can tease out the individual voices of the authors or whether they’re so seamless it’s impossible to do so. 

Below are examples of YA writing teams and their books. I’ve included older titles, as well as books that are going to be out in the next few months. All descriptions come from WorldCat or Goodreads. Of course, if you can think of others, please chime in — I’d love to build a nice list of coauthored novels and I know I’m going to miss some. My only request is that they be books that are traditionally published and available as print books (so not digital-only titles). I’m open to all genres! 

Eve & Adam by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant: While recuperating after a car accident in Spiker Biotech’s lush San Francisco facilities, sixteen-year-old Evening Spiker meets Solo Plissken, a very attractive, if off-putting boy her age who spent his life at Spiker Biotech. Like Evening, he’s never questioned anything … until now. Solo drops hints to Evening that something isn’t right, and Evening’s mother may be behind it. Evening puts this out of her mind and begins her summer internship project: to simulate the creation of the perfect boy. With the help of Solo, Evening uncovers secrets so big they could change the world completely.

Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian (first in series): Three teenaged girls living on Jar Island band together to enact revenge on the people that have hurt them. 

Just Like Fate by Cat Patrick and Suzanne Young (August 2013): Caroline is at a crossroads. Her grandmother is sick, maybe dying. Like the rest of her family, Caroline’s been at Gram’s bedside since her stroke. With the pressure building, all Caroline wants to do is escape–both her family and the reality of Gram’s failing health. So when Caroline’s best friend offers to take her to a party one fateful Friday night, she must choose: stay by Gram’s side, or go to the party and live her life. The consequence of this one decision will split Caroline’s fate into two separate paths–and she’s about to live them both. Friendships are tested and family drama hits an all-new high as Caroline attempts to rebuild old relationships, and even make a few new ones. If she stays, her longtime crush, Joel, might finally notice her, but if she goes, Chris, the charming college boy, might prove to be everything she’s ever wanted. Though there are two distinct ways for her fate to unfold, there is only one happy ending

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan:  Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohen and David Levithan: High school student Nick O’Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart.

Will Grayson, will grayson by John Green and David Levithan: When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other’s best friend, who produces a musical revealing his relationship with them both.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl (first in series): In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.

Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan: To break his curse of invisibility, a boy is helped by a girl, who is the only one who can see him. 

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler: It’s 1996, and less than half of all American high school students have ever used the Internet. Emma just got her first computer and Josh is her best friend. They power up and log on–and discover themselves on Facebook, fifteen years in the future. Everybody wonders what their Destiny will be. Josh and Emma are about to find out. 

Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando (December 2013): While living very different lives on opposite coasts, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth and eighteen-year-old Lauren become acquainted by email the summer before they begin rooming together as freshmen at UC-Berkeley.

Second Impact by David Klass and Perri Klass (August 2013): When Jerry Downing, star quarterback in a small football town, gets a second chance after his drunk driving had serious consequences, Carla Jensen, ace reporter for the school newspaper, invites him to join her in writing a blog, mainly about sports.

Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan (with a companion titled Messy): When her mother dies, sixteen-year-old Molly moves from Indiana to California, to live with her newly discovered father, a Hollywood megastar, and his pampered teenaged daughter. 

Colin Fischer by Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz: A boy with autism teams up with the high school bully to get to the bottom of a cafeteria crime. 

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (December 2013): Two star-crossed lovers must fight for survival when they crash land on a seemingly uninhabited planet. 

House of Night series by PC Cast and Kristin Cast: The House of Night series is set in a world very much like our own, except in 16-year-old Zoey Redbird’s world, vampires have always existed. In this first book in the series, Zoey enters the House of Night, a school where, after having undergone the Change, she will train to become an adult vampire–that is, if she makes it through the Change. Not all of those who are chosen do. It’s tough to begin a new life, away from her parents and friends, and on top of that, Zoey finds she is no average fledgling. She has been Marked as special by the vampire Goddess, Nyx. But she is not the only fledgling at the House of Night with special powers. When she discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school’s most elite club, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look deep within herself for the courage to embrace her destiny–with a little help from her new vampire friends.

A Really Awesome Mess by Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin (July 2013): An angry girl and a depressed boy, both sixteen, are sent to a therapeutic boarding school.

Notes From the Blender by Trish Cook and Brendan Halpin: Two teenagers–a heavy-metal-music-loving boy who is still mourning the death of his mother years earlier, and a beautiful, popular girl whose parents divorced because her father is gay–try to negotiate the complications of family and peer relationships as they get to know each other after learning that their father and mother are marrying each other.

 

Love, Inc by Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout (who have written a number of books together): When three fifteen-year-old Austin, Texas, girls who met in group therapy discover that they are all dating the same boy, they first get revenge and then start a wildly successful relationship consulting business.

Another Faust (and Another Pan) by Daniel and Dina Nayeri: On a single night, five children suddenly vanish from their homes in Paris, Glasgow, Rome, and London. Years later, five enigmatic teenagers make an impressive entrance at an exclusive New York holiday party with their strange but beautiful governess, Madam Vileroy. Rumor and intrigue follow the Faust children to the elite Manhattan Marlowe School, where their very presence brings unexplainable misfortune. 

Can you think of any others to add to the list? 

Complicated Father Relationships: A YA Reading List

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Surely, someone in the book blogging world — maybe even multiple people — will share book lists featuring awesome dads this weekend. There have been a lot of really good dads, especially in contemporary YA lately. 

But, father’s day conjures up less-than-awesome feelings for those of us who didn’t grow up with cool dads or even present dads. Some of us like to read books where the relationship between the teen and his or her dad is complicated, troubled, or absent all together.

The following are recent releases — published in the last couple of years — which feature those fathers who aren’t winning dad of the year. And it’s not that they’re all villains (though some are). Some are just missing. Some are not good at developing relationships with their teens. Sometimes they become better in the end and sometimes they don’t. 

Because my reading tends toward contemporary, most of these books fall into the contemporary genre. I’d love to know about other “bad dads” in YA over the last two years, so feel free to dive in the comments. I take “bad dad” loosely, too. Feel free to include those dads who do come around to make strong relationships and feel free to include the worst offenders.

All descriptions are from WorldCat, with reviews linked where applicable.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen: During her last summer at home before leaving for college, Emaline begins a whirlwind romance with Theo, an assistant documentary filmmaker who is in town to make a movie.

Dessen’s book makes an important, IMPORTANT distinction between the idea of “dad” and the idea of “father.” For Emaline, she’s grown up knowing her dad. He’s the guy who adopted her and married her mother. He’s the one who has always been a part of her life. Her “father,” on the other hand, is the one who is only biological to her. And while he’s in and out of her life, he is in and out of her life. He contacts her when it’s best for him. 

The biggest thing of this father-daughter relationship is Emaline’s realization that her father is never going to change. He’s always going to be an idiot when it comes to her. But what is important is in a single line Emaline shares, and that’s that she hopes her father gives the love he never gave to her to his son, Benji. Because even if Emaline doesn’t get the love from her father she should, it’s almost more heartbreaking for her to think that her father can’t at least give it to Benji. This is one of the few YA books I’ve ever related to the father-daughter relationship in, and it is going to stick with me for a long time because of just how painfully true it is.

Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston: In a day-after-tomorrow Montana, fifteen-year-old Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother leave their underground den to fight a government that will kill them like coyotes.

Dear old dad is the entire reason Val is a bomb. He’s got her believing in government conspiracy and he’s hiding his true “job” from her — he’s a trafficker (of humans, maybe of drugs, maybe both). He also raised Val by teaching her to live in an underground den and always be fearful because the world is out to get you. 

A Midsummer’s Nightmare by Kody Keplinger: Suffering a hangover from a graduation party, eighteen-year-old Whitley is blindsided by the news that her father has moved into a house with his fiancée, her thirteen-year-old daughter Bailey, and her son Nathan, in whose bed Whitley had awakened that morning.

What father doesn’t tell his own daughter he’s moving out of his killer loft and into a new home? Or that he’s gotten married? Or that he’s married the mother of someone she goes to school with and — surprise — there’s a new step brother now? 

I will give that Whitley’s dad makes a nice turn around in the end, but that sort of blindsiding isn’t going to win him a lot of favorite spots. 

Happy Families by Tanita S. Davis: In alternating chapters, sixteen-year-old twins Ysabel and Justin share their conflicted feelings as they struggle to come to terms with their father’s decision to dress as a woman.

I’m including the Davis book not because Ysabel and Justin’s father is bad. He’s not. He’s just a very conflicted character and his choices make a significant impact on his kids. Dad is trans and coming to terms with accepting himself while at the same time, his kids have to come to terms with the realization that their father isn’t the person they thought he was, either, and that extends far beyond his sexuality. He’s a complicated dad character because he no longer really wants the role of “dad.” 

Scowler by Daniel Kraus: In the midst of a 1981 meteor shower in Iowa, a homicidal maniac escapes from prison and returns to the farm where his nineteen-year-old son, Ry, must summon three childhood toys, including one called Scowler, to protect himself, his eleven-year-old sister, Sarah, and their mother.

Marvin is the worst father I have ever read in YA. He is out for nothing less than blood and destruction. I mean, there’s a reason he was locked up in jail. The things he does when he escapes are nothing short of gut twisting. 

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers: Barricaded in Cortege High with five other teens while zombies try to get in, Sloane Price observes her fellow captives become more unpredictable and violent as time passes although they each have much more reason to live than she has.

So Marvin in Kraus’s book is terrible, just terrible, but Sloane’s abusive dad is up there on the list of awful dads you don’t want to have as your own, too. It’s toast. He loses his mind over TOAST. There’s a reason Sloane wants her life to end, and it ties back to dear old dad. 

First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci: A startling novel about the true meaning of being an alien in an equally alien world.

The WorldCat description for Castellucci’s book is pretty bad, since it doesn’t tell you this is really a book about a kid learning to come to grips with the father who ditched him in order to start a new, fresh life with a new family. And that poor kid has to make the hardest decision of his life: walking away from attempting to build a relationship with his father at all because he knows deep down it’s never going to happen. 

Through to You by Emily Hainsworth: When a teen boy loses the love of his life in a car accident, he’ll do anything to get her back–even travel to another universe.

One of the hardest things in Cam’s life — aside from working through the grief of losing his girlfriend Viv in the accident — is figuring out what his relationship is with his father. There’s a scene in the book where he’s on the phone with his father and that tension and sheer anger is completely and utterly palpable and crushing. 

This is Not a Drill by Beck McDowell: Two teens try to save a class of first-graders from a gun-wielding soldier suffering from PTSD. When high school seniors Emery and Jake are taken hostage in the classroom where they tutor, they must work together to calm both the terrified children and the psychotic gunman threatening them–a task made even more difficult by their recent break-up. Brian Stutts, a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, uses deadly force when he’s denied access to his son because of a custody battle. The children’s fate is in the hands of the two teens, each recovering from great loss, who now must reestablish trust in a relationship damaged by betrayal. Told through Emery and Jake’s alternating viewpoints, this gripping novel features characters teens will identify with and explores the often-hidden damages of war. 

To be fair, Brian Strutts is suffering major mental illness here with PTSD, but seeing that he took his son’s classroom hostage doesn’t make him one of the best dads out there. I wanted to include this book in my list because it showcases how adults can sometimes be less-than-awesome parents because of their own challenges. In the case of Strutts, he’s not out for ill intent, even though he does absolutely terrible things. He’s in desperate need of help he’s not getting.

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn (out next week): A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying.

The dad in this book is the real monster. He’s an abusive and terrifying creature who leaves the worst possible impact on his kids. 

What other YA fathers would you include on this list? Genre doesn’t matter — just keep them to within the last couple of years. Others I’ve considered are the fathers in Bronxwood by Coe Booth and Amplified by Tara Kelly. There’s also the dad in Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers and the father in Swati Avasthi’s Split.