When you go into a Blythe Woolston novel, you know to expect your mind to be worked out. You know it’s going to be a novel that will require a lot of you mentally and you know it’s going to be a novel you want to talk about.

Black Helicopters is no exception. In fact, Black Helicopters took me three reads before I felt like I had a good grasp on what I wanted to say about the story. But that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the compulsion I had to reread it that many times is testament to how much there is packed into this little book. As a heads up, note that the bulk of this review is spoiler-filled. This is because Woolston’s novel is not very long and not entirely heavy on plot. It’s the sort of book that lends itself to analysis. 

15-year-old Valkyrie — Val — has had a hell of a life. If it can even be called that. Her mom was killed by the black helicopters when she was young, and her father went to great lengths to protect her and her brother from Those People thereafter. But Bo, her brother, had way more privileges than she did. He could actually go out. It was her job to stay hidden, to know the plan, to understand just how bad Those People were. That way, when they came back, she would be able to save everyone. She would do so by destroying them. 

Then the house she and her family live in burns down and their father is now dead. It’s up to Bo and Val to establish some sort of life now. Except, they’ve been so indoctrinated with contempt for all they’ve lost thanks to Those People, they see nothing but the need to destroy. And even in seeking safe places, they’re finding more dangerous places. They’re finding out about the true life dad lived. That true life means that, well, there’s no hope here. 

Val is herself a weapon. 

Bleak might be a nice word to describe Woolston’s third book. What’s at heart in the story is a girl who has been brainwashed to believe she needs to be paranoid about the world around her, particularly in regards to government. As such, she is herself a tool of destruction, led to believe that her duty in life is to bring it down, since it was what brought so much devastation to her own life. But it’s not just that she’s been brainwashed to believe her duty is to destroy the system, she is literally the tool by which the destruction must happen. She is the Queen.

Woolston marries Val’s story with a brilliant and mind-bending metaphor about chess. But even though she’s Queen and she has the power to keep the King in check, ultimately, she is reminded again and again that she can and will never rise above where she is now. There is a painful scene in the story where Val’s body becomes the payment for her debts. But it’s not so much what those men do to her to remind her of her place, it’s what happens with the gun immediately after the first time someone collects the rent. The violence and anger and emptiness of it all is penetrating. Is a reinforcement of all she’s experienced in her life.

Val’s a weapon because the only way she can get out is through death. And where this story takes a turn is that, when the plans for destruction are sidetracked because of another person’s decision to seek momentary jollies, Val’s left alone to her own devices. She’s seeking the help of a high school boy who knows she’s the girl to be watching out for. And when he’s kind enough to help her and do so knowing she could at any second destroy him and his little brother, Val has her turnaround. She knows the death she needs — the out she needs from this existence — can only be her own. No one else has to pay for what she’s already suffered.

This is a little book, but it is dense. It’s literary, and what is not said is more powerful than what’s actually said. It’s masterfully crafted and requires rereading to pick up on how the timelines interact, how Val’s character comes to be as it is, and to appreciate the ending as it is. There are no punches pulled in this book: it’s dark. It’s not dystopia nor futuristic — this is a slice of life by the likes we rarely, if ever, read or see. This is contemporary. What I appreciate about Woolston’s writing and what shines through in Black Helicopters is that readers discover a whole different world operating within their own. This dark, paranoid world isn’t one of the future or one of other times. It is a slice of today’s world to which we’re so often not privy daily nor within books. 

There are a lot of interesting threads here about gender, about power and privilege, about choices. I’m fascinated, too, by the depiction of rural life, of what I believe to have been drug and human trafficking issues that were at the heart of her father’s life/what caused the death of her mother and the desire for revenge on both sides, sex/body politics/ownership, violence, government paranoia, and more. I’m not sure how so much is packed into 160 pages but damn. There are also alternating time lines in this book, making the experience even more pulsating, as the pieces of the past click into place with the present. 

It’s hard to say this early it’s a potential award book, but I see the Printz committee looking at this one closely. Black Helicopters will appeal to readers who want a deeply literary novel with layers which can be unpacked endlessly. Each read of this book brought something new to the surface for me, and there are so many other threads that can be teased out that I may not even be conscious of from my own reading. While I haven’t read Elizabeth Scott’s Grace, I’ve got a feeling there might be some interesting parallels between Scott’s book and Woolston’s which could make them worthwhile read alikes. Pass this book off to readers who want a challenge and who want to work for a really satisfying pay off in their reading. 

Review copy received from the publisher. Black Helicopters will be available from Candlewick on March 26.

Carey and Janessa live in the woods — Nessa’s been there her entire young life but Carey’s had a taste of the outside world, way back in the day. Their mother brought them there to protect them, but mom is never around. She’s always out, looking for a way to feed the girls, for a way to keep them safe. 

If You Find Me begins when that all changes. Carey and Nessa are taken from their home in the woods by authorities, who introduce them to their biological father and inform them they’re going to be released into his custody. 

Mom was not coming back for them. 

Murdoch’s book follows Carey and Nessa’s reintroduction to the world — how do they adjust to living in a house again? With a family? With a new sister? Why did their mother take them away from civilization and into the woods? And maybe the most important question: what happened to those girls in the woods to make them who they are today? Because there’s something even darker going on. Because these girls are survivors in more than just one way. 

Surviving isn’t always pretty. 

The concept and storytelling were compelling; this was a plot unlike any other I’d read before. I was hooked and blew through the book in no time. However, I think that was where I found a number of problems with If You Find Me: it was too polished, too tidy, too easily resolved. I got through the book way too easily, as did the characters. Sure, they had their challenges, but they didn’t give me pause as a reader. 

I just accepted and went along and I’m not entirely sure I should have.  

Spoilers for the next few paragraphs, so skip down if you don’t want them. This book needed more depth and less back story info dumping, particularly in the final section where we get the entire history of Carey and Nessa. I starting finding the technique of weaving the back story into the narrative via Carey’s flashbacks distracting and unbelievable in the second section of the book, especially when we get a flashback where Carey’s been used by her mother to make a little cash by way of her body. Although I’d gotten the sense there was something off about Carey and something damaging to her, this came up a little too late for me to believe and pushed the story over the top. Even the final revelation — that a man had come to the trailer and raped Carey and attempted to rape Nessa before Carey shot and killed him — worked better for me than that. 

I also had a tough time buying Carey’s voice. Even though I could see something in her position being mature, the language didn’t work. There were multiple times a turn of phrase or an observation felt off. A girl raised in the woods, with no education beyond what she could ascertain in the world right around her, wouldn’t have the extensive vocabulary she did, not would she have the ease of social connection she did (and while it wasn’t always easy for Carey, it was almost as if she was undamaged from her life in many ways that should have been intensely damaging). Not to mention that Carey is 14. She’s not 17 or 18. She’s very young. Likewise, the writing itself came off as trying too hard at times, working in one too many forest-related metaphors in situations where it was unnecessary. It dragged down the pace in places where pacing didn’t need to be slowed. The author’s hand came through a bit too much for me — repeatedly reminding the reader, for example, how beautiful the girls were, how intelligent they were. It read as almost too protective of the characters. 

Subplots in the book were wrapped up too cleanly for me or were in and of themselves too convenient and contrived. I didn’t buy the tension between Carey and her new sister Delaney. I understood and sympathized with both of their situations; I could see why Delaney would feel like getting two new siblings after 15 years of being an only child would suck. However, the turnaround in their relationship was not satisfying or believable. I had trouble buying into the relationship between Ryan and Carey, too: how he figured out who she was so quickly and easily didn’t work for me. They were so young when Carey was kidnapped by her mother, so him recognizing the last name was a stretch. I wish there’d been more story about adjusting to life with not just a biological father the girls had been taken from, but also, I’d have liked more about adjusting to life with a stepmother. These points came off too easy. I will say, Melissa was one of my favorite adults in YA in a long time. She was patient, caring, and offered real bits of wisdom and hope for the girls that were such a stark contrast to everything they’d been used to. 

While I don’t believe all characters need to act in a certain way nor that they need to bear some sort of neurosis because of their past, I do think that there are times when more character development and less glossing over of important aspects are necessary. It’s possible the unique story here, in conjunction with the literary writing, allowed for some of the more questionable choices in the book to get through. There is something very ugly in this book — a number of very ugly things, in fact — but I never felt that ugliness, that quest and desire for survive and the fight necessary therein, ever quite came together. 

I also don’t need to mention that the romance was completely unnecessary. 

Despite the flaws, I enjoyed reading this book, and it reminded me a lot of Carol Lynch Williams’s Glimpse. I think this could have benefited from more, even: there were a lot of fascinating threads and a lot of subplots to explore, but they weren’t. I also felt that the ending of the book, where we finally learned the whole of what made Carey (and Nessa) who they were, left enough for real further exploration, too.  If You Find Me is imperfect, but it’s enjoyable enough because of the fresh plot. 

If You Find Me will be available March 26 from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher.