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Personal Effects by EM Kokie

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It’s been over six months since Matt’s brother TJ died in Iraq. Now more than ever, Matt wants to make sense of what happened to his brother, but he hasn’t had the opportunity. With the return of his personal effects in the form of a few footlockers, he’s got the chance. The only thing standing between him and rifling through his brother’s things, though, his is father. Dad wants to do away with the things completely and move forward from TJ’s death. He doesn’t want Matt meddling with TJ’s things either. He wants Matt to pull himself together, get his grades up, and follow the path he’s meant to follow.

When Matt gets the chance to escape his father’s watchful eye, he goes through those footlockers and discovers that his brother was a lot more complicated than he ever knew. After finding a pile of letters from someone named Celia who lives half a country away, along with pictures of her and her daughter (with whom TJ has posed more than once), Matt’s convinced he needs to go find this girl. He’s going to get to the bottom of the millions of questions now popping up in his mind: did TJ have a girlfriend no one knew about? Did TJ have a child? Do those people know TJ isn’t alive any longer? Thanks to his friend Shauna, Matt gets the chance to have those questions answered — and have many more raised in the mean time.

Personal Effects tackles the topic of grief head on, and it does so while developing a believable male protagonist in Matt. Matt is aching; even though he and TJ were never close, Matt is incredibly proud of his brother. He wears that pride loudly, too. When one of his classmates openly defends his anti-war stance and wears a shirt bearing the names of those who had died in combat, Matt becomes very angry. To the point he swings his fist and earns himself punishment. Aside from being sensitive about what other people say, he’s also letting his grief impact his education. He’s getting terrible grades. The thing is, he doesn’t care. He has bigger worries, and where he ends up in the future isn’t one of them.

For the most part, I found Matt a good character. My problem with him, though, unraveled later on in the story. It’s impossible at this point not to spoil a big plot point, so if you don’t want it ruined for you, skip on down to the next paragraph. When Matt heads to Madison from his home in Pittsburgh, he’s expecting to meet Celia and expecting to learn that his brother may have had a child he told no one about. Except that’s not at all what Matt learns. Instead, he discovers that the “C” signing off in all of the letters he read was from Celia’s brother Curtis. Matt had been gay, and because he was in the military, he kept it completely secret. He didn’t feel safe telling anyone, due to don’t ask, don’t tell. More than that though, he didn’t feel safe revealing that to his family, either, especially given his father’s abusive streak. Where this pertains to Matt, though, is this: Matt is angry about this, maybe even a little bit repulsed his brother was homosexual. I don’t have a problem with him having his feelings — and frankly, I found them rendered believably — but I did have a problem with this being the problem Matt finds. He’d developed an entire fantasy involving his brother being married and having a child. Matt never has a problem with this. In fact, he seems almost excited by the idea. But the second Matt learns his bother was gay, that’s when he flips a switch. It was hard for me to believe he’d be excited by one thing and so disappointed in another, especially as it seems knowing his brother had an entire family in secret would somehow be more angering than him being gay. Each person decides their own views on these issues, of course, and Matt can believe what he wants. The thing is, I need to understand Matt’s thinking to believe it, and I never felt I got the opportunity to know him well enough for this to happen. He’d felt very protective of his brother, and in these moments, he felt cold and angry with him instead. The switch flip didn’t work for me, and I had a hard time through the rest of the novel buying Matt’s reactions to different events.

Through the story, Matt attempts to take his friendship with Shauna to more of a romantic relationship. While I believed his feelings, I found them to be a little bit boring. Shauna wasn’t interested in him, and it was obvious. He spent a long time offering us physical reactions to being in the same room with her and for the most part, I found this didn’t advance either character and it dragged the pacing. Shauna, for me, was a well-developed character and she was the kind of person Matt needed in his life. She was an advocate for him, even when his mind sometimes went elsewhere. She was, if you will, the exact opposite of what Matt’s father was: where dad wanted to continue holding Matt back and continue hurting him, Shauna offered him the tools to move forward, even if it meant getting herself in trouble.

My biggest holdup with the story — and this is a personal issue, not something most readers will struggle with — was that TJ was an automatic hero. Because he’s dead, we don’t ever get the chance to evaluate him for who he is. We’re instead in Matt’s shoes and we’re forced to judge him through Matt’s eyes. And Matt, despite some of his feelings and reactions while in Madison, sees his brother as a hero. I don’t ever doubt that TJ was brave and deserved the sort of respect he was given, but I have a hard time with books where a dead character is the central device in moving a plot forward and he’s got some sort of status that keeps him from being a full or flawed character. More than that, though, the fact his death came through war, which is such a heavy topic and one which readers bring their own experiences to the story with, furthered this. The responsibility of judging TJ comes on the reader, since it’s not there in the story. It’s tricky then to look at a character who doesn’t get the chance to tell his story or offer himself completely, knowing his life ended during the Iraq war, and make a judgment about him. It makes the reader feel either good or bad about themselves in that assessment. That said, the secret TJ harbored didn’t make him flawed. It made him more respectable in my mind. But I felt a little led into believing only that about him. I couldn’t get beyond what he had against him.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed Personal Effects — Matt’s story kept me engaged, and the writing itself worked with the story, rather than against it. While I felt myself emotionally distanced, I definitely see other readers finding this the kind of book they connect with on that level. This book has great guy appeal, but it certainly will work for female readers, too. I’ve talked before about Dana Reinhardt’s The Things a Brother Knows before, and I think for readers who may not be ready for that story, Kokie’s book will be a great starting point. That’s not to say it’s weaker, but it’s a bit of an easier read and a little easier to digest. The pacing is faster, too. As more teens deal with the reality of having a brother or sister in combat, these sorts of books take on greater importance and I am glad that they’re less about sending a message about war itself and more about the after effects and emotional, human issues around war. Aside from working well for teen readers, Kokie’s novel will have great adult appeal. This is a strong and believable portrayal of grief and loss without ever focusing on those as key elements of the story. Matt never sets out to tell us how he grieves. He just does it.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Personal Effects will be available September 11.

Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama

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Monstrous Beauty is a story set in two time periods. In the late 19th century, naturalist Ezra falls in love with mermaid Syrenka. Their romance sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. In the present day, 16 year old Hester decides to investigate the curse that has plagued her family for generations – each woman gives birth to a daughter and dies immediately afterward. The book alternates between the two time periods, and it’s slowly revealed how the past story informs the present one.

The paragraph above greatly simplifies what is actually a very complicated novel. Hester’s family’s curse has its roots in Syrenka’s story, which involves her desire to live as a human with Ezra, the prejudice of the local people in the small Massachusetts town, and the other mermaids, who won’t let Syrenka have her happiness without paying a price. (There are also ghosts, but that didn’t negatively impact my enjoyment of the novel.)

The writing in Monstrous Beauty is mature and lovely, making it the book’s standout feature. It’s clear that Fama took great care in deciding which words to use and when. She’s written a moody, immersive story that creates terrific atmosphere without sacrificing plot to do so. When you combine that level of writing with the complex and layered plot, you’ve got a book that is leagues beyond others of its kind in terms of craft.

The mythology here is something to be celebrated. It’s complicated and usually not very pretty. Some of Fama’s mermaids may be beautiful, but they’re also deadly, with immense physical power (plus sharp teeth and fins that kill). The magic they hold is powerful but also frightening and gruesome, with repercussions that echo for decades. It makes for a pretty dark story (and I mean that in a good way).

Syrenka is an especially intriguing character. She is simultaneously gentle and brutal, not adhering completely to either the mermaids’ sense of morality or that of the humans. Her story is so beautifully tragic that it sometimes overshadows Hester’s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does make Hester’s story the less interesting of the two. Additionally, since the reader gets the past story before Hester figures it out in the present, Hester occasionally seems a bit slow. This is really my only quibble – sometimes Hester’s ignorance went on a bit long and I just wanted her to figure out what I already knew. But otherwise, this is a completely engaging and unique novel.

This book won’t be for everyone. Readers who enjoy fluffy paranormal romances will be disappointed. Monstrous Beauty is not full of happily ever afters, and it’s got some pretty dark stuff in it. But for readers who crave something a little different in their fantasies, who yearn for beautiful writing and a plot that makes them think, Monstrous Beauty is just what they need.

(It is impossible for me to review Monstrous Beauty without mentioning its original cover, which is just a travesty. Suffice to say, Fama’s mermaids would never submit to being photographed for Sports Illustrated. The current cover much more accurately represents the book’s contents.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Monstrous Beauty will be published September 4.

A pile of contemporary reviews

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I’ve hit a weird reading slump this summer. It’s been really hard to get into anything, and it’s been slow going when I have started something (even if I’ve liked it). I’d say I average between 10 and 15 books a month, but I think in the last two months combined I’ve maybe read 10 books. Since I’m not reading at my usual pace, I’ve also not been reviewing at my usual pace, meaning the things I finished back in early July are still sitting in a pile to be reviewed. Rather than try to write lengthy reviews for each of those titles, I thought I’d tackle a bunch of them at once. All of these are contemporary stories.

Joelle Anthony’s sophomore novel, The Right & The Real tackles one of my favorite topics head on: cults. When Jamie’s father marries Mira, he signs himself over to the church of The Right & The Real. But when Jamie is faced with the decision to sign herself over, she can’t do it — she’s not ready to make the commitment to the church and their beliefs. Even though joining the church was originally her idea, her father’s commitment has her worried and for good reason. Now that she has chosen not to commit, he’s kicked Jamie out of her house.

Jamie is entirely on her own to figure out her life now without her dad and without the church to back her up. Not to mention her long-time boyfriend Josh, who got her into the church in the first place, has also ditched her. As much as Jamie believes that she can go this on her own and make it work, she also misses her father terribly and worries that the church is ruining all they had as a family.

The Right & The Real was a great premise, though I didn’t necessarily find the execution as strong as I wanted it to be. The challenge for me was that the story begins immediately, with little exploration into the cult itself or what makes it such a bad place to be (aside from being a cult, that is). Because I couldn’t know what the threat was from within, I couldn’t place what the threat was externally, either. It was challenging for me to develop an emotional connection with Jamie or for me to understand her fear and terror. So while I was on her side and worried about her well-being — particularly because she was in a desperate place figuring out basic means of survival — it was hard for me to grasp what it was that worried her about her father, about Josh, and about the ramifications of being cast out from the group.

More frustrating, though, was Jamie’s insistence upon entering relationships and being saved by someone other than herself. Jamie is a strong female character — she has to be in order to make such a life-altering choice as to not join the cult — but she is fixated on the broken relationship she has with Josh. But it’s not just that; she quickly develops a relationship with another boy, Trent, who ultimately is the hero in the story. And when they share a moment near the end, it felt to me like it was his ownership of her and of the situation that brought resolution to the story and Jamie herself is secondary.

Anthony’s writing in the story is good, as is the pacing and there is no doubt that despite the flaws that kept this from being a knock out for me, there will be a great readership for The Right & The Real. Fans of Holly Cupala, particularly Don’t Breathe a Word will enjoy this, as will those readers who enjoy other cult-centric stories, such as Carol Lynch Williams’s The Chosen One and Michele Green’s Keep Sweet. What was maybe most interesting to me about Anthony’s book is that unlike other books that explore the cult culture, The Right & The Real is a story from the outside, rather than from the inside. Even though it made for challenges I talked about earlier, it stands out from the crowd because of this. Anthony’s book is available now.

One of my all-time favorite novels is Jenna Blum’s The Stormchasers (reviewed here) and when I saw the description for Lara Zielin’s The Waiting Sky, I noticed immediate similarities and was sold.

Jane’s mother is an alcoholic, and after a particularly horrific incident involving her mother, a car, and Jane’s best friend, Jane knows she needs to get out and away, at least for a short time, to reassess what it is she needs in her life. Yes, she’s 17 and even though it sounds somewhat absurd for her to have that sort of maturity about her own life, it makes sense. Jane’s brother left years ago, moving from their home in Minnesota down to the southern plains to become a tornado chaser. She’s going to spend the summer with him, learning the skills of the trade. It’s her opportunity to feel like she has some sort of control over her life. I probably don’t need to explain the metaphor there, but it is there, and it’s not some sort of hypothetical. Jane really becomes a storm chaser, but this is a story that’s light on the storm chasing and a lot stronger on the rebuilding a world that’s collapsed beneath the weight of a storm.

After a particularly strong tornado in Nebraska, Jane and the crew stick around to help clean up the damage. Of course, there’s also a budding relationship between Jane and a guy from a rivaling chasing team, Max. What I appreciated was that their interactions were short, were meaningful, but ultimately, both of them knew there wasn’t a whole lot more that could emerge between them. Here’s where I can employ another reference to the metaphor of the storm and how it can cause for high emotions in short bursts and leave people with what they need in the end.

As much as I liked Jane in the story — and let me say that she’s likeable but she is a deeply flawed character who makes a lot of questionable choices that really hammer that home — I found myself more invested in Victor’s story. He’s one of the fellow storm chasers, but he is terrified of storms. The only reason he keeps doing it is for his brother’s sake. Zielin weaves in a nice thread here, in that Victor’s dedication to living in fear/worry about storm chasing to make his brother happy is similar to how Jane herself gave up her freedoms and ability to live for herself in dealing with her alcoholic mother. But I do question how the heck Victor can hate the movie Twister. It’s a classic.

The Waiting Sky will appeal to readers who love contemporary stories, particularly those delving into families, friendships, and the meaning of each and both. There’s a lot to appreciate in this and it felt very different and fresh in approach, though I found some of the writing and references to be a little stilted and dated. For the plot and for Jane as a character, I was willing to overlook those issues. The ending is a little convenient, but it did not kill the rest of what made the book work. Anyone who enjoyed Twister or enjoys the idea of storm chasing will want to track this one down. The Waiting Sky is available now. Readers who dig this one and are looking for something similar and/or something more literary will be eager to then look into Blum’s The Stormchasers.

Hannah Harrington’s sophomore novel, Speechless, has one of the coolest covers, I think. It’s so stark that it ends up being very bold and I think it’ll stand out because of that. Apologies for how vague this review is going to be, but I don’t want to spoil the big reveal.

Chelsea Knot was part of the popular crowd, and she enjoys her time at the top. But when she stumbles upon a situation at a party and tells her friends, the person at the center of the situation becomes a victim not just of Chelsea opening her mouth, but of an attack initiated via her loose lips. The moment Chelsea realizes her gossiping is the reason for the violence, she takes a vow of silence. Except it’s not just a vow of silence she ends up taking — Chelsea becomes outcast from her popular friends and finds herself completely alone and without anyone to confide in. If she had anything to confide, that is (she does — she just won’t).

Speechless follows as Chelsea learns who she can and cannot trust, and as could be expected, it’s not who she thought it was. Everything she thought she knew about the cool and the not-cool kids ends up being untrue and Chelsea finds herself befriending new people who are truly there for her. In the end, she has the chance to face the person whose entire life changed because of her decision to talk at the party and it’s then she comes to realize how important those issues of trust and friendship are.

It sounds like a sweet story, but it’s not. It’s rough and gritty, and Chelsea is subjected to torment and bullying. Relentlessly, even. The problem for me, though, was that this was never once Chelsea’s story. It was Noah’s — he’s the guy at the center of the secret she divulges. His story is so lost in the book because the focus and attention is on Chelsea, and maybe it’s because I’m an adult reading this, I felt like she didn’t deserve the attention of the story because she’d already gotten too much attention anyway. In fact, Chelsea’s vow of silence and behavior following the horrible thing she did felt like a huge cry for more attention and pity, where I felt like Noah, the real victim here, deserved it way more than she did. That’s not to say she ever deserved the bullying she got — she didn’t — but I was much more invested in Noah’s well-being than Chelsea’s. For me, she got in the way of the story, despite being the catalyst for it.

Harrington knows how to write teens, though, and there’s no doubt in my mind this book will appeal to them. While reading Speechless, I was reminded of Courtney Summers’s Some Girls Are in terms of the bullying/abuse inflicted upon characters, of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, in terms of the hows and whys of Chelsea’s silence, and maybe I was reminded most of Molly Backes’s The Princesses of Iowa in terms of how the issues of sexuality and popularity and rumor-spreading all interweave. Readers who appreciated those stories will want to check this one out, though I think it pales in comparison to any and all of those. Speechless will be available August 28.

Review copies of all titles provided by the publishers.

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

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Aria has been exiled from Reverie, one of the environmentally-sealed pods that protect the people in her society from the outside world. Cast into the “Death Shop,” as they call the outside world, she expects to die quickly, her body unused to the disease and climate. Fortunately, she runs into Perry, an Outsider – a savage to Aria, initially – who has his own reasons for helping Aria to survive. The two form an alliance, agreeing to help each other to achieve their own goals.    
With Under the Never Sky, Rossi has given her readers a stellar example of a commercial dystopia. It’s got a great hook, a fast-paced plot, two protagonists you can’t help but root for, and interesting world-building. Rossi has got some great stuff going on here – super-charged senses, crazy aether storms that resemble lightning storms but are way cooler (and more terrifying), a complex society on the outside and an alluring but also ominous society on the inside.
The story is told in Aria and Perry’s alternating third person,
past-tense perspectives. Rossi is quite good at getting the reader into
both of these characters’ heads without having to resort to a shift in
typeface or some other cheat. Unlike many dual perspective narratives,
it was easy to tell whose “story” was being told, even when both
characters were occupying the same pages. The chapter headings – “Aria”
or “Perry” – were almost unnecessary.
I liked that the world wasn’t explained in a giant infodump, although Aria and Perry do fill each other in on certain things at points. I like being able to figure out as I go what the author has done here that is new – it assumes some intelligence on the part of the reader and is all the more exciting because the author isn’t holding my hand while I read.
I can’t talk about this book without talking about the romance. Under the Never Sky isn’t primarily a romance, but the romantic subplot is strong and it is good. Rossi knows how to write a good love story. Aria and Perry start out pretty antagonistic toward each other, but even the densest reader will know their feelings will eventually blossom into love. And when they do, it is believable and pretty intense. Nothing is described in a whole lot of detail, but there’s enough there that teenage me would have dog-eared the heck out of those pages. 
There were some things I wasn’t wild about. Rossi is overly fond of the “fragment as emphasis” tactic. A couple times in a novel works; a couple times in a chapter is overkill. It brought me out of the story sometimes and seemed sloppy. I still think the title is hokey, and both the US and UK versions of the cover are kind of terrible, the UK version particularly so (although neither of those things are necessarily the author’s doing). Overall, though, this is a really solid book that stands out from others in its subgenre. I’m excited for the sequel (the somewhat painfully titled Through the Ever Night).

Display This: On This Island

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I love settings in books. A book that has an okay plot and okay characters can be made stronger for me as a reader with a memorable setting. I’ve done book lists with settings by country, but I noticed an interesting trend this year, and that’s island settings. These are both real islands and fictional, and for me, that kind of setting is interesting as it installs both realistic and artificial barriers to character and plot development.

In developing this YA book list, I’ve left off classics, including Anne of Green Gables, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Lord of the Flies, and others in that tradition (and arguably, these might not technically be considered YA titles anyway). I’ve tried to limit to YA titles, too, as I’m aware of a few strong middle grade candidates (like Gordon Korman’s entire “Island” series, though you’ll see I did include one or two middle grade titles with good YA appeal). My interest is in more recent offerings, and I am interested in island settings in any genre. I know I’m going to miss a few, so feel free to drop in any other suggestions in the comments. The bulk of these books are available now, but I’ve noted the instances where they are not published just yet.

All descriptions come from WorldCat.

Abarat by Clive Barker: Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown, Minnesota, one day finds herself on the edge of a foreign world that is populated by strange creatures, and her life is forever changed.

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko: A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards’ families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray: When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island’s other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.

Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan (September): On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings–and to catch their wives. The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.

A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper: On her sixteenth birthday in 1936, Sophia begins a diary of life in her island country off the coast of Spain, where she is among the last descendants of an impoverished royal family trying to hold their nation together on the eve of the second World War.

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

Lost Girls by Ann Kelly: In 1974, fourteen-year-old Bonnie, eight other Amelia Earhart Cadets aged nine to seventeen, and their irresponsible young leader are stranded on a forbidden island off the coast of Thailand on the brink of a deadly storm and must fight to survive.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs: After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering disturbing facts about the children who were kept there.

The Forsaken by Lisa M Stasse: After the formation of the United Northern Alliance–a merger of Canada, the United States, and Mexico into one nation–sixteen-year-old Alenna is sent to an desolate prison island for teenagers believed to be predisposed to violence.

Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Childs: When her mother suddenly decides to marry a near-stranger, Phoebe, whose passion is running, soon finds herself living on a remote Greek island, completing her senior year at an ancient high school where the students and teachers are all descended from gods or goddesses.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater: Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.

The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman: Born in the eighth year of Enclosure, ten-year-old Honor lives in a highly regulated colony with her defiant parents, but when they have an illegal second child and are taken away, it is up to Honor and her friend Helix, another “Unpredictable,” to uncover a terrible secret about their Island and the Corporation that runs everything.
 

Island’s End by Padma Venkatraman: A young girl trains to be the new spiritual leader of her remote Andaman Island tribe, while facing increasing threats from the modern world.

The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier: The adventures of two teenaged cousins who live in a place called The Floating Islands, one of whom is studying to become a mage and the other one of the legendary island flyers.

Ten by Gretchen McNeil (September): Ten teens head to a house party at a remote island mansion off the Washington coast . . . only for them to picked off by a killer one by one.

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe: Sixteen-year-old old Kaelyn challenges her fears, finds a second chance at love, and fights to keep her family and friends safe as a deadly new virus devastates her island community.

Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook: When seventeen-year-old Isobel’s mother marries a man she just met and they move to his gothic mansion on an island, strange occurrences cause Isobel to fear that she is losing her sanity as her artist father did.

Blackwood by Gwenda Bond (September): On Roanoke Island, the legend of the 114 people who mysteriously vanished from the Lost Colony hundreds of years ago is just an outdoor drama for the tourists, a story people tell. But when the island faces the sudden disappearance of 114 people now, an unlikely pair of 17-year-olds may be the only hope of bringing them back.

Of course, there are these two, too, which would make nice read alikes to each other beyond simply their island setting: 

The Turning by Francine Prose (October): A teen boy becomes the babysitter for two very peculiar children on a haunted island in this modern retelling of The Turn of the Screw.

Tighter by Adele Griffin: Based on Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” tells the story of Jamie Atkinson’s summer spent as a nanny in a small Rhode Island beach town, where she begins to fear that the estate may be haunted, especially after she learns of two deaths that occurred there the previous summer.