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Empty by K. M. Walton

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I’m prefacing my review of Empty with a reminder about how weight issues in YA tend to be dealt with in a way that’s problematic. The fat body, in particular, is an easy target. It’s there. It can be seen. Unfortunately, this take on the fat girl story falls exceedingly flat. I warn that I’m going to spoil significant plot points in this review because I need to.

At 286 pounds and size 24, Dell is fat. And frankly, that’s all she is. She’s not a person. She’s meaningless except for being the fat girl, and everyone knows it. Her mom regularly berates her for her clothes no longer fitting, despite grandma just buying her all kinds of new things. Dell’s forced to quit the softball team because she can’t move her fat body fast enough to be an asset to the team. Dell can’t get a job at the local daycare when she needs to help her mom make money because, well, the daycare owner thought that with the space being “a little tight,” Dell might not be comfortable.

Blocked because she’s fat.

Dell’s parents just divorced. Her father was caught cheating on her mother, and the marriage falls apart. No longer are Dell, her little sister Meggie, and her parents under one roof. Now dad has moved out with the girlfriend (to whom he’ll be marrying later on in the story), and Dell’s mom has to move her and Meggie into a smaller apartment in a crummy part of town. To comfort herself from the divorce and from the terrible living situation — they’re paycheck to paycheck now — Dell takes to eating in the same way her mother takes to consuming prescription drugs. Convenient she works at the pharmacy as one of her jobs to keep the habit going.

As Dell continues to eat, she continues to get fatter and fatter. As readers, we’re reminded how fat she is constantly. We aren’t given feelings. We’re given fat. Dell’s only got one friend, Cara, and she’s convinced Cara doesn’t like her much. Since we don’t know the truth, since we’re blocked out by Dell’s constant fat talk, we can’t know whether or not Cara really does like her. Cara teases her, but Cara does seem to care on some level. More than that, though, Dell finds herself the butt of the joke at school. People tease her for being fat. And it’s not just teasing. Dell is asked to assume a sumo squat and moo like a cow for the amusement of her classmates.

She does it whenever they ask.

It gets worse when Cara drags Dell to a party, though. Dell’s escorted to an upstairs bedroom by Brandon, a boy who she thinks is cute. He wants to show her a video on YouTube. It’s a video of a sumo wrestler (of course). Isn’t that what all boys do at parties? They drag the fat girl upstairs to show her videos of sumo wrestlers alone? Of course not. From there, Brandon begins to take off Dell’s clothes and grabs at her body. Dell, shocked and horrified about what’s happening to her, can’t speak up though. She’s too fat. She is literally choked out by her fat. She cannot say no. Well, maybe she said no. She’s not sure because her fat body is stopping her from thinking about whether or not she did. This is a traumatic scene in the book — Dell is raped. But the problem is that despite being raped, this plot line falls out of the story.

Not everything is awful in Dell’s world, despite the way it sounds. She’s got a marvelous singing voice, and Cara encourages her to sign up for the talent show (again, where it’s unclear whether or not Cara likes Dell or not — she really wants Dell to show off her amazing voice). Enough persuasion gets Dell to sign up. But she’s not encouraged about it. She’ll have to find something to wear, and it’s impossible for a fat girl to find good looking clothes. Especially if it means shopping with skinny Cara.

Then the day comes where she’s going to perform. She’s just hurt her foot, and she’s limping. The pain is out of control for her, from the foot and mostly from being fat. So before the show, Dell takes some vicodin her mother had. She begins feeling loopy, and despite that, she still performs. It’s not the greatest performance, but it’s done and it’s good enough. The school claps and cheers her on.

Until someone from the crowd tells her to do the sumo cow thing. And she does, right there on stage. Embarrassed, Dell leaves soon after, making her way home (but not before peeing her pants and explaining how this was, for once, a time it was good to be fat because of the absorption factor of big-size pants). It’s at this moment when Dell decides that between her father’s remarriage, her mother losing her job and her battle with addiction, and mostly her being fat, she can no longer stand living.

She’s going to kill herself.

Not going to. She does. Dell dies in the book, after driving back to school and overdosing inside. She left a suicide note so everyone knew.

Empty is never once about Dell. It’s never once about the pain of parental divorce nor about the trauma of being a rape survivor. It’s never about bullying. It’s about Dell’s fat body. That fat body is why she is who she is. It’s why she’s bullied. It’s why she is teased at home. It’s why she’s raped. Because she is fat. That’s it. Fat.

Never is this an excuse for what happens to her, but it is and becomes a continued excuse when Dell’s body is literally the sacrifice for the story.

I’m not unrealistic in thinking that bullying happens and no adult knows about it. But, the bullying in this story came only at the expense of Dell’s fat body. In other words, it is all she is teased about and for and there’s nothing else to it. She also gives into it, further encouraging the bullies to act upon her fatness. Her fat is the tool for the message in this book, which is that bullying can lead to terrible consequences. As a reader, as someone who is fat, and as someone who has spent some time in high school (now and then), I find it impossible to believe one girl who is a size 24 — which isn’t all that huge — is the target of such ridicule for simply being fat. Where her own mother berates her for her size and for her poor eating choices, she does nothing to solve the problem. Mom works all the time, but mom also does the shopping. Mom knows what is in the house (Dell doesn’t sneak stuff here — it’s all in the fridge).

Then there’s the additional issue of the coach cutting Dell from the softball team without offering to help her work out further or get in shape. It was never clear whether her weight had been an issue in prior seasons. It was over and done in three pages at the start of the story. From what it seemed like, the weight came on quickly. Dell hadn’t always been fat. So, if that’s the case, why did no one actually suggest a plan here? Why did no one ask questions? Advocates existed in Dell’s life. I needed more back story to know why these advocates were failures or to explain that really, Dell didn’t have a soul to help her.

Not to mention the fact that Dell is raped and ridiculed for it because she is fat. There’s a fine line between feeling like there are lazy writing choices and victim blaming. I don’t think Dell is anything but a victim in the book, but what happens when her body is the subject of the story entirely, it’s challenging to then feel the horror for Dell in this situation. Because there is no Dell. There is Dell’s body, and what happens to it is awful and shameful. But being choked out by her own fat flesh means we readers don’t understand the consequences and pain she endures internally for this. Because what’s inside Dell doesn’t exist.

She’s just fat. Or as Brandon and his girlfriend (who perpetuates the rumor Dell raped Brandon) call her, “the fat bitch.”

Fatness is sensationalized repeatedly. The acts of eating are, too. The way ice cream drips down Dell’s chin is in strong detail. We hear about the cheese puffs and how much she eats because they make her feel good inside. But when it comes to hearing what it is Dell likes outside food — her sister, Meggie — all we ever hear is how much Dell likes her. How she “breathes her in,” a line that was repeated every time Meggie and Dell were together. In other words, this wasn’t about Dell. It was about her body. The choice in details, in descriptions, further bang the point that fatness is the issue. It’s the driving force in the story.

It’s the only story.

Walton’s sophomore effort is an incredible disappointment following what I thought was a good portrayal of bullying in Cracked. The message in this book is that bullying is bad. But that message only comes at the expense of Dell’s fat body. Where there were opportunities to develop a full character, one with depth and pain, they were squandered in favor of reminding us of the 286 pound, size 24 fat girl. There’s not depth of character. There’s not depth to the plot. There’s a message and that’s all. Even the writing lacks substance.

And anyone who is fat can tell you, too, 286 pounds doesn’t make you a cartoon character. Despite the fact you shouldn’t compare yourself to a book character, you do. In this instance, the portrayal of the fat character came off as silly, rather than honest. Living in a fat body is just that — living in a fat body. It’s living, despite the body. It’s not the body living, despite you.

If you’re looking for a book that thoughtfully explores bullying as it relates to a fat person? Then check out Erin Jade Lange’s Butter. There is a fully realized character, as well as tension building (rather than simply an out at the end of the book). If you’re looking for a book about the effects of divorce on a character? Then go with Kody Keplinger’s great A Midsummer’s Nightmare. I’d still recommend Walton’s first book, Cracked, since it does offer two strong characters and the theme of bullying, but I have a hard time saying the sophomore novel is worthwhile. There are much better books tackling these issues and they do so without trivializing and sensationalizing fatness to deliver the message.

Empty is available now from Simon and Schuster. Review copy received from the publisher. 

Audio Review: The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall

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Seventeen year old Hope Long’s older brother, Jeremy, has been accused of murdering their town’s beloved high school baseball coach, Coach Johnson. Hope knows he is innocent, but all the circumstantial evidence points to him and no one else. What’s really damning Jeremy, though, is that he hasn’t spoken a word in over a decade, and so cannot speak in his defense. Aside from his selective mutism, Jeremy is different in other ways, too: he collects empty jars, sometimes empyting their contents out onto the floor if they’re full and he feels he needs them; he carries his baseball bat wherever he goes; one time while waiting in line at a soup kitchen he gave away all his food to other people in the room and then proceeded to give away everything else he had on him, right down to his socks and shoes, too; and so on.

Readers may guess that Jeremy is autistic, but it’s never explicitly stated in the book. Jeremy’s lawyer is going for a not guilty by reason of insanity defense, but Hope thinks Jeremy is neither guilty nor insane, and she’s determined to prove it.

As a mystery, The Silence of Murder functions pretty well. There’s one obvious red herring, and Mackall keeps the tension high until the reveal at the end. One aspect I appreciated is that Jeremy never stopped being a legitimate suspect, too. Hope’s belief in him is mostly steadfast, but she has her moments of doubt, and as a reader/listener, I had those moments, too.
Hope isn’t the brightest girl, which can be frustrating sometimes. She’s not a terrific sleuth, meaning I often figured out aspects of the mystery before she did (but fortunately not the culprit). She’s also clueless about her best guy friend’s feelings for her, and even more clueless when she sits on the witness stand being cross-examined by the prosecutor. (This scene in particular was very, very painful to listen to). While I won’t say that all protagonists need to have above average (or even average) intelligence, it seemed like this was not actually Mackall’s intent and was perhaps done for plot development rather than character development. Other characters seem to regard Hope as being reasonably intelligent, which I just couldn’t buy.
Strangely for me, I found the family drama more compelling than the actual whodunnit. The relationship between Hope and Jeremy was interesting and frequently moving, and while Hope isn’t a whiz at reading other people, she knows Jeremy to his core. Through her eyes, we come to care for Jeremy and understand the need for Hope to speak for him when he won’t speak for himself. And when she fumbles, it’s brutal to experience. Aside from this central relationship, there are plenty of family secrets that are only tangentially related to the mystery but provide a lot of interest.

This is a bit slower-moving than I generally like my mysteries, but slower stories tend to work better on audio for me. My attention is usually divided at least partly between the story and another task (cleaning, cooking, or in this case, wrapping gifts), so if a story is too action-packed, I could miss something important. I realize this explanation doesn’t sound like a rousing endorsement of the audio, but I can appreciate a leisurely-paced story that is narrated well, and not every book should be an edge of your seat page-turner in any case.

Kelly’s commented on the change from hardcover to paperback for this book before. While I’m neutral on both covers, I think they did a really cool thing with the discs for the audio, placing the central cut-out right where Jeremy’s mouth would be.

The Silence of Murder is a decent story that succeeds more as a family drama than a mystery. It’s a good pick for readers interested in autistic or developmentally disabled characters (who are making more of a showing lately, but are still underrepresented). Readers looking for a fast-paced mystery with a twist every ten pages may be disappointed, but the narration is good and the story is rewarding for patient listeners.
Finished audiobook received from publisher.

A pair of debut reviews: Fingerprints of You and Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things

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I’ve had a few books with outstanding reviews to post, and since two of them happen to be debut novels, I thought I’d go ahead and post these shorter reviews all together. “Shorter” is a very subjective description, as you should know by now if you’ve been reading STACKED. 

Lemon’s life has never been stable. Stella, her mother, uproots them often as she herself cycles through men. But one decision to sleep with the tattoo artist lands Lemon with a pregnancy she’s not sure she’s ready for. Mostly because she’s not sure who she is or what it is she wants. 

Except she knows she wants an adventure for her own to figure it out.

She and friend Emmy purchase bus tickets from their town in West Virginia to go to San Francisco. Lemon knows her dad’s there and even though she tells Emmy it’s part of the adventure they’ll take together during Christmas break, Lemon’s true intention is to find her dad. And when she tells her mom of her plans, rather than say no, her mom tells her where her dad last worked.

Lemon finds her dad and much, much more when she gets to San Francisco. Even when Emmy cuts her trip short because of a family emergency, Lemon sticks it out. She wants to know more about who she is, who her father is, who Stella is, and what life is like when you’ve lost the thing you didn’t know you wanted so badly.

Madonia’s book is a slow starter, and Lemon is a tough character to connect with. But the story and writing are compelling. Lemon’s got it rough, but she doesn’t moan about it. That’s probably what makes her hard to relate to — anyone else in this situation with an unstable life with mom and an absent father and an accidental pregnancy would wallow in pity. But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes control of her future by seeking out the pieces of her past.

Kristen-Page Madonia’s Fingerprints of You is about family and about how family doesn’t always take the nuclear shape we want it to. That family isn’t always the same to everyone within it. Stella, despite her shortcomings, is an excellent mother; but it’s not until Lemon gets to meet her father, who is also a fantastic, caring human being with a wife who, too, cares deeply about Lemon that she realizes how lucky she is. Even if it took 17 years to get, this is the family she needs. 

Where it would be easy to be frustrated by the miscarriage and the convenience of Emmy having to leave San Francisco, I thought they worked for the story. They allowed Lemon to experience real, hard loss with the baby and that allowed her to cherish what she had while she could. Emmy’s needing to return home forced Lemon to learn to lead for herself and forced Lemon to examine the value of friendship. It is ultimately Emmy who leads Lemon to the right choice — for the immediate future, at least.

Along with featuring a non-traditional family, this story features an interracial couple and does so without it ever becoming a point of the story. It’s a true urban relationship between Cassie and Ryan. Though it sounds like this is a story of being broken, it’s not at all an angst-laden, sad story. It’s quite easy to really want the best for Lemon and Stella because they do the best with what they have while they can. Sometimes the best stories don’t feature those in the bleakest of circumstances; rather, those stories you appreciate earn it because of the fight and determination the characters have for themselves. 

The romance between Aiden and Lemon is sweet, and I didn’t think it overshadowed the story. It was what it was to both of them, and it felt very much like a true teen relationship. I read Fingerprints of You a couple of months ago — about the same time I read Carrie Arcos’s Out of Reach, which I wasn’t crazy about — and while they don’t tread the same territory, Madonia’s contemporary is much more literary, fully-developed, and engaging that Arcos’s in a way that made me sort of wish this book had seen more attention. 

Fingerprints of You is available now. I purchased a copy of this book. 

Claire and her father just moves to Amherst, where Emily Dickinson lived. She’s become obsessed with Dickinson, to the point she’s breaking into the home (which operates as a museum) and she’s seeking comfort in there. It’s not really obsession with Dickinson so much as it’s a way to work through the grief in her life. In the last year, her mother died (she killed herself — and it wasn’t her first attempt, but it was the first time Claire couldn’t save her) and her best friend Richy went missing. Claire was a prime suspect in his disappearance since she was the last one to see him, but the case hasn’t been closed and no body has ever been found.

Through Kathryn Burak’s Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things, we see snatches of what happened in the last year and we watch as Claire works through the grief via the writing she turns into her teacher (and her student teacher Tate, to whom she takes a real shine, despite giving him a bit of a hard tongue). One night, Claire steals a dress from Emily’s home, since she’d been wearing it. It shrouded her in comfort. Tate catches her, and now he’s in on not only the fact she stole this historical artifact, but also that she’s dealing with something so large and heavy on her own.

I found this book dragged, pace-wise. Claire is hard to read, and it’s because this grief consumes her. But the thing is, Claire has something else going on psychologically and it’s never quite clear what. Her illogical thought patterns and erratic behavior make her difficult to follow and I found her hard to care about because, well, I never knew up from down with her. And worse, I didn’t care. Periodically, something in her would stir, and Claire would have a sudden memory that cut through the grief to help her through it — I think this is fairly realistic, especially as everyone grieves differently. More than that though and more problematic is that when she has these break throughs at one point, suddenly everything that happened to Richy that night comes clear to her. If you don’t wan to be spoiled, skip down a paragraph. Claire has a sudden break through with the name of who he was meeting and it was a mix up in her understanding of the word “Dentist” from “Dennis.” This made no sense to me as a reader. But when she figures that out, she suddenly finds this Dennis and remembers his voice and voila, mystery of Richy’s disappearance is solved.  It seemed like there were a lot of conveniences in the plot, and the mystery never quite wove into the grief well at all. A lot of loose ends, with a not-all-there character made the connections a little sloppy.

I’d categorize this as literary only in the sense that it weaves in a lot of American Lit history within it, especially with Emily Dickinson. Though it could have been pushed a lot more and made a lot more interesting with that literary story line, I think. The writing in this is okay, though I found a lot of the transitions between Claire’s writing and Claire’s thinking jarring. It’s part of who she is, but from the reader’s perspective, it could have been smoother and still had the same effect. I particularly found the first few chapters of this book difficult to get through, to the point I almost gave up more than once. The hook wasn’t strong enough and Claire’s inconsistency weren’t holding me. 

Likewise — and this is also spoiler — the entire subplot with Tate and her and their maybe-maybe not romance was boring. I think because I never cared about Claire. She was so wishy washy, so all over the place. Something in her emotions and the emotions in the book never quite rang true nor felt poignant to me. Maybe it’s fair in just saying I did not like her. It’s not that she’s an unlikeable character, though. It was just personal.  

I certainly think there’s a readership for Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things, but I also think other books do grief much better. Readers who like literary allusions and who are fans of Dickinson will dig this. Maybe if I were more of a Dickinson fan, I’d have picked up on more — it’s possible I missed a lot because it’s been quite a while. I’m more of a Whitman myself (as if that weren’t clear from blogging alone). 


Also, this is worth mentioning because it annoyed me a lot: four times in this book someone’s appearance or expression was negatively compared to a librarian’s. That got old real quick and it’s a description that says nothing. Why four times? Also, really? A “librarian sneer?” I don’t even know what that means. Teens aren’t that fixated on librarian appearances to continually refer to it when describing someone. I’m reviewing from the ARC, so this could have changed in the meantime, but it bothered me nonetheless. 


Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things is available now. Review copy received from the publisher.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

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It’s no secret I adored Cinder. Pure science fiction that uses my favorite fairy tale as a springboard for something fresh and different? Yes please! I could only hope that the sequel would be just as good.
And it (nearly) is. Whew.
Like Cinder, Scarlet uses a well-known fairy tale (this time, Little Red Riding Hood) as inspiration for a new story. It’s fun to pick out details from the original story, but for the most part, Meyer’s story is her own (this is a good thing). 
Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing, and Scarlet believes she’s been kidnapped. She runs into a streetfighter named Wolf (of course she does), and discovers he knows quite a bit about what happened to her grandmother. They team up and decide to search for Scarlet’s grandmother together. Naturally, Wolf isn’t being quite truthful (he just happened to run into Scarlet?), and the two get into all sorts of fun scrapes while developing massive crushes on each other.
While much of the story focuses on Scarlet, Meyer doesn’t leave Cinder, who has managed to escape from prison with the help of a very amusing new character, behind. The chapters alternate (roughly) between the two characters until they eventually meet up near the end of the book. 
Unsurprisingly, Scarlet’s story has quite a bit to do with Cinder’s, but the focus on Scarlet in this sequel keeps interest high. It adds another dimension to the story; it makes the story bigger and raises the stakes. Some mysteries are cleared up and others are introduced. We learn more about Queen Levana’s plan for Kai as well as Cinder’s childhood and how Scarlet and her grandmother are involved. I loved learning more about the world Meyer has created. The whole thing was just a joy to read.
While Scarlet is a resourceful young woman, just as Cinder is, the two characters are distinct, which I can’t stress strongly enough. Judging from other split-perspective books I’ve read, it’s hard to tell a story from two different points of view and keep the voices distinct, but Meyer does it well. Wolf is a good addition, too. Initially, he seems like he might be a typical “bad boy,” he’s got a well-developed backstory and is a great contrast to Kai, who is such a “good guy” it can be a bit wearisome.
For fans of Cinder, Scarlet won’t disappoint. It’s terrifically fun, accessible, well-written science fiction. I’m very much looking forward to the third and fourth books – I’m interested to see if Meyer is able to juggle three or four protagonists as handily as she did two. 
Review copy received from the publisher via Kelly (best co-blogger ever). Scarlet will be published February 5.

Passion Blue by Victoria Strauss

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It’s the fifteenth century, and seventeen year old Guilia is the illegitimate daughter of a count and his mistress, a seamstress in his household. She’s reviled by the count’s wife, so when the count dies, his widow decides to finally send Guilia away – to a convent to become a nun.
This is the last thing Guilia wants, since she regards the convent as a prison, but there’s nothing she can do to stop from going. She has no money of her own and no other family to take her in. Before she goes, she pays a visit to an astrologer/sorcerer and hires him to make her an amulet, trapping a “spirit” inside of it that is supposed to eventually grant her her heart’s desire. In Guilia’s mind, a husband will free her of the convent, give her a home of her own, and allow her to live a life of her own choosing.
At the convent, the nuns discover that Guilia has a talent for art, and she’s taken in to learn how to paint by a master painter, Maestra Humilita. The Maestra runs an entire painting workshop of just women in the convent, something that would be impossible outside its walls. The workshop is so well-regarded that private citizens as well as churches have commissioned paintings from them.
But Guilia still has marriage and escape from the convent on her mind, and she believes the spirit has granted her heart’s desire when she meets Ormanno, a young man who has been hired to repair a fresco in the convent. As she grows closer to Ormanno, she also grows closer to Humilita, and she learns that no matter what decision she makes, it will entail great sacrifice. (Indeed, women’s roles in this time period were so incredibly limited that anything less than great sacrifice for someone who wanted any measure of independence would have rung false.)
If you were to judge Passion Blue by its author blurbs, you’d think it was historical fantasy, but you’d be mostly wrong. Granted, there’s talk of a sorcerer and astrology and spirits, but it’s all within the context of Guilia’s belief set rather than what actually happens. For those sharp readers, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it incident near the end of the novel that one could argue is proof of some sort of magic, but really, this novel isn’t going to appeal to those in search of their latest fantasy fix. It’s solidly for historical fiction fans.
Which is a good thing. The historical details are rich and very satisfying. I loved reading about the Renaissance techniques of creating color, of the labor that goes into preparing all of the equipment before the painter could even begin painting. I especially enjoyed reading about how intricate the color recipes were, and that they were so valuable they were written in code and kept in secret books that no one but the creator could read.
I also enjoyed reading about a way a woman in Renaissance Italy could make a life for herself that didn’t involve marriage and babies. The society of the convent is particularly interesting – the women all came to be nuns for a variety of reasons, and many of those reasons had nothing to do with religion. In some ways, the convent was a way for a group of women to function mostly independently, despite the many strict rules they had to follow.
Guilia is, perhaps, not the most perceptive of protagonists. She’s quite naive and is incapable of reading others accurately, which drives much of the conflict of the novel. She learns, though, and eventually comes to realize what readers had picked up on long before she had: her heart’s desire is not what she thought at all. It takes a huge mistake for her to come to this realization, but in the end, we’re left with a young woman who has carved out her own niche in the world.
The writing is lovely. Guilia herself seems quite young (in terms of maturity), but the writing is not juvenile. Strauss keeps the story moving at a nice clip and does a fine job interweaving Guilia’s relentless search for her heart’s desire with the historical backdrop. In less capable hands, the story may have seemed a bit slow or quiet, but I was never bored.
This is a great pick for historical fiction fans, particularly those interested in the Renaissance, women’s roles, or art. It’s also a nice change from historical fiction that re-imagines a well-known historical figure’s life. Those stories are certainly fun to read, but it can take a bit of the mystery out of the tale, since the end is a foregone conclusion.
Review copy received from the publisher/author. Passion Blue is available now.