STACKED

books

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (+ giveaway)

|

This is Not a Test Courtney SummersSloane Price picked today to end her life. She had it all planned out. Today was the day.

But then dad went and messed it up. Like he always did.

It wasn’t just dad throwing a wrench in the works, though. It was what was happening outside. What was causing destruction and havoc.

The zombies.

Sloane’s still alive a week later, as are five of her classmates, and together, they’ve built themselves protection in their school from the chaos outside. The thing is, Sloane still wants nothing more than to die.

This is not a test.

Courtney Summers delivers a unique take on zombies in her genre-bending This is Not a Test, and it’s one of those books I’m pretty sure will be sticking in my mind long enough this year to make it to my favorites list.

Sloane’s home life sucks — her father is extremely abusive. For much of her life, Sloane had her sister Lily to turn to, to love her, to support her, and to suffer with. They made a plan to escape their house together when Sloane turned 18. Except, Lily breaks the promise, leaving Sloane to fend for herself. The abuse is so much that Sloane has no reason to have hope anymore. In the initial scenes of the book, it’s evident how brutal her life has been, and she immediately garners sympathy. Even though what she wants to do isn’t necessarily sympathetic, it’s understandable. And when the zombies arrive, Sloane is elated; it’s her chance to die, and not at her own hands, either.

Once the initial zombie story unfolds, we’re tossed into Cortege High School, where Sloane and five fellow students have barricaded themselves inside. There’s Cary, Harrison, Rhys, and brother and sister duo Trace and Grace. It’s frantic and desperate at this point, at least to those five; Sloane, on the other hand, is annoyed. Her plans were ruined, and now that these five have dragged her to safety, she’s even more frustrated. The thing is, she can’t seem to find a way away from these people who want to live, and even when she has the chance to end her own suffering, she doesn’t.

And the zombies keep banging against the barricades. . .

Sloane is one of the most interesting and enjoyable characters I’ve read in a while, but she’s very challenging. She is obedient in every sense of the word. Because of everything with her father, there’s a sense of reluctance in her. She allows herself to be dragged to safety (where it would be easy for her to not), and she doesn’t actively seek out her options for dying when she has the chance at Cortege. Rather, she continues to follow what she believes is the right thing to do. To stay alive. Sloane is entirely removed from her body because of the abuse. Anything she could feel for herself has been taken away, physically and emotionally. That’s part of why she’s unable to actually go through with ending her life. Amid all of this, Sloane is likable; there’s just enough hope inside her and just enough desire to move forward to make readers pull for her and believe she can survive.

This is Not a Test is a character-driven novel, not a plot-driven novel. Despite the zombie apocalypse occurring, what matters in the story is not the undead coming alive but the living coming alive. Secondary characters in this book are fully developed, and they each serve distinct purposes for Sloane. Trace and Grace at first make her almost envious, as she’s watching how a brother and sister function together and love each other despite their differences and despite spats. Cary becomes a tap for Sloane, one that allows her to learn more about her sister Lily (and therefore herself). Harrison, the quietest character who has the least page time, serves almost as a mirror of Sloane herself — he’s used as a tool among the characters in a similar manner Sloane was used as a tool by her father. And finally Rhys, who comes off as sort of a dangerous guy, becomes a hugely important person in helping Sloane discover who she is. I found each of the characters interesting and realistic, and their desire to survive and protect one another worked well.

What Summers excels in is her use of subtlety to develop the characters, particularly Sloane. There are single lines or short scenes so raw they sting, and they speak volumes to who Sloane really is (who she is, not who she’s told she is or who she has come to believe she is — a big difference). One that stood out to me, that pushed home the fact Sloane really has no physical ownership of herself, comes when she’s observing Grace. She talks about how she’s never really had a body worth anything and that she wishes she could be like Grace and own what she had. Be confident in it. It’s telling not only for the obvious, but also for the less obvious, which is that tiny spark of hope still dwelling within Sloane, even when she’s told herself there is none. The pacing in the book is deliberately slow, begging the reader to pay attention to these things. The story doesn’t drag, though. Summers delivers on strong writing that doesn’t try too hard and works to advance these characters.

Moreover, this is a story about observation. Sloane is keen-eyed; she has to be because of her history. She’s watching everyone around her because she has no other choice, but she watches carefully how they interact with one another because she doesn’t quite have a true frame of reference for how people relate to one another in a healthy way. She romanticizes the sibling relationship between Trace and Grace, and she watches in both shock and admiration a private moment between Grace and Cary. And it’s that moment which sets her to the realization she deserves to have good things for herself. Rhys, too, is a character who thrives on observation, but his comes in the form of watching Sloane. That observation ends up propelling him to teach her about how she can come to own her own body, her own emotions, and her own future.

This is Not a Test is an extremely physical book. Each blow can be felt, as can each of the more tender moments. Not only is it physical in the body sense as it relates to Sloane, but it’s physical in its use of place — Sloane describes everything quite meticulously. We know where things are lined up, we know who is bringing in breakfast, and we know just how much blood has been spilled. The book doesn’t shy away from brutality nor does it shy away from being gruesome; despite being heavily vested in reality, it’s still a novel about the zombie apocalypse. The metaphor of the physical reality of Sloane and the other teens vs. the non-physicality of the zombies feels obvious, but it’s woven in smartly enough to pack a punch. I felt beat up and bruised reading this; fortunately, I had the same moments of hope and promise Sloane did throughout.

Perhaps the thing I appreciated most about this book was that Summers doesn’t throw in a romance to throw in a romance. In fact, there’s no romance in this book at all. While Rhys and Sloane share a couple of very intimate moments, they’re not at all sexy. They’re tender. They’re the result of Rhys’s observations of Sloane’s needs, and rather than allowing herself to be overshadowed or saved by a boy, Sloane’s instead coming into herself because of his selflessness. Because she’s allowed herself to finally feel and finally own herself. The softness with which some of this comes across had me near tears because of how much I had invested in Sloane herself. How much I wanted her to love herself.

This is Not a Test ended perfectly for me. There’s a definite conclusion to come away with, and the way it’s done is savvy. Sloane has to make a series of very difficult choices that force her to confront everything she’s been so eager to shy away from. She’ll revisit everything with Lily and her father and come to realize her body and her choices and her life are hers. So while this is a story of survival, it’s also a story about what we fight for, and why we fight for things at all.

I’ve talked at length about how much worked in this novel, but there were a few problems. The biggest one for me was it took a while to become invested in the secondary characters — I wanted to know them a little more from the onset, and I felt that Harrison sort of fell out of the story. It makes sense on some level because Sloane herself is determined not to get attached from the onset, but it didn’t make it forgivable for me. Harrison became a toy in a game of power for a while in the book, and to have him sort of disappear didn’t quite work for me. While he wasn’t important, I wanted a more solid break. My other big challenge was that I had difficulty gauging passage of time; while we’re given time frames, they weren’t always the easiest to discern. Again, this is due to the story being told from Sloane’s perspective and we know it’s skewed, but given how much she observes her world, it felt like something she’d have kept better tabs on (especially in light of how many days past her planned death day had then passed).

For me, this is Summers’s strongest novel to date. This is Not a Test takes the edgy and raw aspects of her contemporary stories and mashes it with the elements of a terrifying zombie apocalypse. I think there’s no doubt there’s a readership for this book, but I do think it might be a tad tricky to nail it. Fans of contemporary fiction will find Sloane’s story compelling but they may shy away a bit at the zombie element, whereas hardcore zombie fiction fans may find the story treads a little too closely to realistic fiction. They may also complain there are simply not enough zombies in the story. That said, I do think readers on either side of the divide will find something enjoyable here and those who love stories that transcend traditional genres will want to give this one a try. I could see this one working very well for fans of Cecil Castellucci’s First Day on Earth, as these books have a lot of interesting similarities in terms of theme and execution.

I’ve got a copy of This is Not a Test to give away for one lucky reader. Fill out the form below, and I’ll draw a winner June 30.

Review copy received from the publisher. This is Not a Test will be published June 19. In full disclosure, Courtney and I are friends. 

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

|

Sunday Woodcutter is the youngest of seven daughters, all named for days of the week. She is supposed to be “blithe and bonny and good and gay,” but what she really wants is to be interesting. She enjoys writing, but her stories have a nasty habit of coming true in the worst ways, so she writes only about things that have already happened. She’s busily scribbling in her journal in the forest when she encounters a frog. The frog, naturally, can speak. Sunday knows she lives in a magical world, so at the conclusion of their first conversation, she gives him a kiss as a courtesy to try and break the spell. Nothing happens.
Despite this initial disappointment, the two continue to meet each other and a friendship grows. It should come as no surprise to you that the frog does eventually turn back into a man – and it happens rather early on in the story. The rest of the book is concerned with the man-turned-frog-turned-man-again wooing Sunday on his own terms while trying to prevent her from finding out just what happened between him and Sunday’s (now dead) older brother, which could doom their relationship. There’s also a bit of political maneuvering with the king and a couple of fairy godmothers plus some interesting back story about Sunday’s very odd, very magical family.
Enchanted is a strange little book. While it’s predominantly inspired by The Frog Prince, it’s got elements of almost all major Western European fairy tales, including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and more. It became a fun sort of game to spot as many as I could. Kontis juggles it all well: it could have seemed like a hodgepodge without any real cohesion, but she neatly avoids that pitfall. Mostly it just seems clever.
I liked that Kontis used The Frog Prince as her springboard but did not limit herself to a mere re-telling. By that I mean she created a new mythology with new magic, injecting some originality into these very old stories. Unfortunately, this is also the story’s weakness. The fairy tale aspects were so easy to understand, but the new elements were often confusing. I suspect that I needed a bit more explanation of the magic as well as Sunday’s family history for it all to really crystallize in my mind.
Still, Kontis’ novel is an overall winner. It’s got some lovely writing, a fun mix of new and old, and an interesting protagonist in Sunday (and her sisters are equally interesting – I particularly liked the one that eloped with a pirate, even though I think she actually gets no physical page time). Hand this to readers who like their retold fairy tales to remain plainly in the fairy tale realm – no modernization required. I suspect it would go over well with fans of Ella Enchanted, but as always, it nowhere approaches that book’s greatness (in fairness to Enchanted, nothing ever does).
Review copy provided by the publisher. Enchanted is available now.

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans: Cover & (P)review

|

Over the last couple of years of blogging, I’ve had the chance to meet so many great people, and one of them is Lenore Appelhans. We had the chance to spend quite a bit of time together at last year’s BEA, where we talked about books we loved, about authors we’re huge fans of, and about her book. Since then, we’ve talked more often than not, and earlier this year, she approached me about beta reading Level 2. It meant a lot to be asked to offer feedback and suggestions and I was so excited to do it for her.

I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking it was for her to ask that, but I’ll tell you this much: I was just as nervous to read and give honest feedback on her story. It’s a different world than when you’re reading a finished book and review it. You have to remove your own preferences or preconceptions of genre and instead evaluate the story as it stands. You also have to completely separate story from writer, too, in a way that’s much more challenging than when you review a book.

I was scared, too, because Level 2 wasn’t my kind of book.

As I was reading and offering feedback, though, I found myself invested in this story. These characters were so well-developed and the world was well-built. It’s never quite clear who is good and who is bad, and what the characters tell you about themselves doesn’t necessarily end up being the case. There’s palpable and fierce romantic tension here, too.

But before I offer you up my review — which is less a review and more a recommendation because I cannot possibly review this book without bias — Lenore asked me if I’d be willing to share the full finished jacket of her book. You’ve already seen the behind-the-scenes work of what went into the creation of the jacket, but what I’ve got here is the full deal.

When I first saw this cover, I fell in love. Aside from fitting the story so well, it avoids many of the things I don’t care for in YA covers. First, it’s bright: this is a book that’s going to stand out on bookshelves because it’s white and pinkish orange, a combination that pops. The use of the circles all over exist in the story. The cover model, who looks a little bit like Bjork, is how I imagined Felicia to appear. She’s facing readers in the image, and it’s clear she is pained. It’s clear she’s aching. But rather than looking passive, the girl on the cover here doesn’t look like she’s ready to just take it. The tension in her body language says she’s going to fight.

If there were a few words I could use to describe Felicia, Level 2‘s main character, they would be pained, aching, and….a fighter.

The cover is so clean and crisp, and that’s precisely how I imagined the world of Level 2. But there’s something amiss in a world that’s so sterile. And I think this captures that well. I’m also a huge fan of how the title and author name is sideways, and that style is mimicked on the chapter headings, too.

Anyone who follows me on Goodreads has probably seen my comments on this title already, but now that the cover’s out there, I’m going to share them again here. Before I do, I want to put the disclaimer out there that I read this in manuscript form — well before this made it to galley form — and some elements of the story have been changed since my read.

Felicia’s life in Level 2 is comfortable. She’s got everything she needs, and she’s able to be so content because she can slip into her machine and relive her memories. Except she is unable to be happy because she can’t put her finger on what happened to her. The problem is she keeps reliving a memory that breaks her heart: she keeps living through the time she lost her chance with Neil, the boy she’d fallen for. When she’s about to reach the truth, it slips away from her cruelly.

So when Julian shows up in Level 2 and promises he can reunite Felicia with Neil, she jumps at the chance to know the truth about her life, her death, and to reunite with Neil.

Appelhans’s debut is a dystopia with a dash of the supernatural, written in compelling, action-packed prose. What seems like a fairly straightforward story of escaping from what looks like a utopian world — Level 2 — turns out to be something much more sinister. Felicia is caught between two worlds, and the success or failure of either and both depend upon her. The story is told both in the present and in the past, through Felicia’s memories, which gives the reader not only a sense of who she is now, but a real feel for the whole girl who has lost so much in her life.

What made this book work for me was that it’s never clear cut who is good and who is bad. It’s easy to see Felicia as the good girl, but there are many times I wondered if she wasn’t. If she was just as bad as people like Julian…or if Julian himself was even bad. He did offer Felicia a chance to meet Neil again, even if it meant giving away a part of herself. When it looks like he wants to do nothing more than use her as a tool, he flips the switch and gives readers (and Felicia) reason to wonder if he really DOES want the best for her. That he’s not being selfish and greedy. Appelhans does a great job of never hand-holding the reader.

I’m not a romantic, but the moments between Felicia and Neil made my heart swell quite a bit, especially since it was so uncertain. But I can so see readers thinking they’re very wrong for each other. That Julian is the person to whom Felicia should give her heart. There’s also the question of whether Felicia deserves to be with anyone, given her less-than-perfect history.

Level 2 is a complete story, though there are enough threads left open to warrant another installment. 

As a thanks for giving feedback, Lenore sent me a copy of the soundtrack she made while writing the story (and German chocolate!).  If I could pick one song that really captures the essence of Level 2, it would be this: 

Interested yet? Make sure you head over to Lenore’s blog for a chance to win an ARC of Level 2 and add this book to your Goodreads shelves here. Level 2 is slated for a January 15, 2013 release.

Ashfall by Mike Mullin

|

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a lot of books lately. I don’t know why I set the bar low for these particular books – maybe it’s because I had come off a rash of mediocrity and just expected more of the same – but I am always glad to be proven wrong in this respect.
In Mike Mullin’s debut Ashfall, the supervolcano at Yellowstone has erupted. Teenage Alex is home alone when it occurs. His parents and sister have gone to visit family 100 miles away – not such a long way if you have a car and plenty of gasoline, but quite a ways when you’re on foot and have to deal with hostile people prone to violence, ash coming down in sheets, and the onset of an early, and perhaps neverending, winter. Still, Alex is determined to find them, hoping they survived where so many others didn’t. It’s not an easy journey, obviously, but it is a gripping one. The book is long and the pages fly by.
Ashfall is best described as a survival story. I’d also categorize it as an apocalyptic (and post-apocalyptic) tale, at least on a small scale – there are hints of worldwide catastrophe as a result of the eruption, but the bad stuff is mostly kept to the United States – but it’s not a dystopia. I think that’s an important distinction to make for this book. While there’s widespread chaos and many people act horribly, there’s no repressive society at work here. And that’s a strength. Often the dystopian societies that form in books such as these – sometimes following a natural catastrophe – are chilling but unbelievable. The fact that no such society forms here makes the book, in my mind, more genuine. Couple that with the fact that many scientists do say the supervolcano at Yellowstone is “overdue” for an eruption, and you have a pretty darn believable story. And it’s all the more engaging for it.
I loved reading about survival during the ashfall from a boy’s point of view. I also loved that Alex’s survival wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of Darla, an extremely capable and non-traditional girl he meets partway through the book. Darla’s a farmer and knows how to skin rabbits and jimmy farm equipment. She’s abrasive and not always pleasant to be around, but she’s got a good heart and isn’t always the strong one. She’s also a bit older than Alex, and watching their relationship develop is quite interesting.
I never thought anything would make me say this, but I enjoyed Ashfall so much that it’s making me want to go back and re-read that classic survival story for kids, Hatchet, a book I never liked as a child. I wonder if my reading tastes have changed enough in the ~15 years since I last read it that I would like it now. I haven’t ever bothered going back and re-reading books I disliked as a youth, always assuming I’d dislike them now, but Ashfall makes me wonder.

Book borrowed from my local library.

Crazy by Amy Reed

|

Connor and Isabel (Izzy) met at camp, and when the summer comes to a close, they promise to keep in touch with one another via email. They’re good friends — though perhaps “friend” is a term Connor wouldn’t quite use. He’s definitely more interested in Izzy romantically, but he’s not the kind of guy to say that.

Over the course of the following school year, they exchange emails regularly, updating one another on what’s going on in their lives. Connor lives on one of the islands outside Seattle and Izzy lives in Seattle proper, so they’re not too far apart from one another. They just seem to not get the opportunity to see each other in person.

As these two characters exchange regular messages with one another, not only do we see Connor becoming more infatuated with Izzy, but we see Izzy spiraling into depression big time. It’s not pretty nor elegant. It’s downright ugly. We see it coming through in each of those emails she writes (or doesn’t write), as does Connor. But what will it take for either one of them to get her help?

Crazy is Reed’s third book, and I think it might feature her most fully-developed characters so far. Connor is a romantic kind of guy, but never once does he fall into the idealized male character many male leads can fall into. His life looks pretty good all around, too. His father’s not in the picture, but he’s got a mother who takes care of him and begs him to give back to his community. He’s happy, for the most part. Izzy, on the other hand, isn’t as happy. She goes to a good school (of the hippie granola variety), but she feels like she’s an outcast. Even in her small school, she doesn’t feel like she has any friends. Her parents and her siblings aren’t anything worth bragging about, and mostly, she feels like she just doesn’t belong anywhere.

When the story starts off, we get to see Connor and Izzy in their immediate buzzing post-camp state of minds. They’re funny and raunchy in their initial email exchanges, but even in the laugh out loud humorous moments, there’s something slightly off in the tone with which Izzy writes. In fact, she’s almost mean to Connor. But he takes it. He plays off it. Eventually, though, Connor gets tired of letting her treat him that way, and he dishes it right back at her. Their relationship — which I reiterate is all via email — is dynamic and painfully realistic. It’s a good and a bad thing for both of them, as they treat one another as best friends and confidants, then as bitter enemies. They’re loving and destructive toward one another.

Reed is smart in setting up the book with dual narrators and offering not physical interaction. We’re forced to understand Izzy and Connor as individuals and as a pair through only their words. As a reader, I was immediately drawn to Connor, and it was because I thought Izzy used him. She’d made it clear she was lonely, and Connor was an easy person to turn to. But she makes fun of him and she doesn’t really talk to him. She talks at him about her problems and doesn’t ask how he feels. As the story progressed, though, and as I saw Izzy unraveling mentally, my heart really went out to her and to Connor. It’s brilliant because I became Connor in a sense, since I never quite believed Izzy’s stories after being mistreated; but when she hits her complete breaking point, suddenly her entire storyline made perfect sense to me. I was now everyone she’d been complaining about, and I was Connor, feeling like I had been a terrible friend in ignoring her cries for help. Moreover, the set up also helps us see why Izzy would feel comfortable telling Connor what she does and why she would feel he really wasn’t an ally to her. Aside from the skewed perspective she has because of her mental illness, she’s also aware of the screen divide. She’s comfortable treating him as she does because there’s not a physical repercussion.

There is no shying away from the details of bipolar disorder in Crazy, so don’t expect something watered down. That’s what made this book so powerful. Reed isn’t afraid to give an honest picture of how consuming this mental disorder is, and anyone who has suffered from depression or knows someone who has will see this hits very close to home. When Izzy hit her lowest points, I found myself choking up, not only because of what she was going through mentally, but also because I had misjudged her the entire time. I felt like I did to her exactly what she said everyone else did to her. I was so, so happy she had someone like Connor in her life at those moments, and since I don’t want to spoil it, I’ll just say that at the end, those characters got exactly what they needed and deserved. I think Connor and Izzy may be two of my favorite characters in a long time.

Crazy is a fast-paced read, due in part to the alternative format. It was an uncomfortable book to read, and it was effective because of that. I was never quite sure whether I should be laughing when I was or crying when I was. The emotional tone shifted frequently and needed to. Reed writes with a frankness and honesty, and she’s authentic. It’s easy to make a comparison to Ellen Hopkins, as fans of Hopkins’s storytelling will no doubt find Reed’s books appealing, but I think Reed is really carving a niche for herself. Her work appeals to both more reluctant readers because of her set up, execution of story, and pacing, but she also appeals to those who like having something to dig into because of those same reasons. Crazy will appeal to contemporary fans, particularly those who are fascinated with or have experienced depression.

Previously:
Review of Amy Reed’s Beautiful
Review of Amy Reed’s Clean 

Review copy received from the publisher. Crazy will be available June 12, and you will get a chance to hear from Amy herself that week as part of our Twitterview series and the summer blog blast coordinated by Colleen Mondor.