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Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

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In Uncommon Criminals, Ally Carter’s sequel to the fun and well-written Heist Society, fifteen-year-old Katarina Bishop is back for another heist.  This time, she’s been directed by “Visily Romani” to take a break from returning priceless stolen works of art to their rightful owners to steal the famous Cleopatra emerald, which had been stolen from an excavation in Egypt many years ago.  Visily Romani’s messenger tells Kat that the emerald will be given back to an Egyptian museum, and Kat is all too willing to undertake the job, even though the emerald is rumored to be cursed and impossible to steal.  After all, even her Uncle Eddie wasn’t able to steal it when he attempted it years before.
But Kat is smart and a very, very good thief, and she sets in motion a heist that is sure to work.  She has Hale with her, of course, as well as Gabrielle and eventually the Bagshaw brothers and Nick.  Things aren’t what they seem with the pseudonymous Visily Romani and his messenger, though, and the book quickly takes a turn – Kat and her crew must steal the emerald once more, and also exact a little revenge on someone who conned them.
I really enjoyed Heist Society.  It’s the kind of popcorn book that I’ve always loved – a fun, fast-paced story, snappy dialogue, sarcastic characters who banter with each other endlessly, and a promise that everything will turn out alright in the end.  Nothing about it was terribly realistic, but that’s not really why I read most genre fiction anyway.  So, I was excited to get my hands on its sequel and I sped through it in a day.  I enjoyed it a lot, but I had a few gripes.
Uncommon Criminals, while a fun follow-up, feels too slight.  Events happen so quickly that there’s hardly any time for the reader to process them, making the twists and turns not as impactful as they should have been.  The crew from the first book are all back, but only Kat and Hale really have any development.  The Bagshaw brothers, Gabrielle, and Nick all make token appearances, but it felt they were only included because it was expected.  Gabrielle, who turned out to be a surprisingly complex character in Heist Society, is here reduced to comic relief.
This is not to say that Uncommon Criminals wasn’t a fun read.  It does have its moments.  Carter gives us more tidbits into certain characters: Uncle Eddie’s background is illuminated a bit more, Kat and Hale’s relationship grows, and the history of the thieving families is expanded upon (very slightly).  The central plotline is certainly entertaining, albeit a bit too breakneck for my taste.  I often complain that thrillers or spy novels written for adults are too long-winded, but Uncommon Criminals could have taken a page (or maybe a hundred pages) from them and given the reader more: more time to understand the heist, more insight into the secondary characters, more of that witty banter and narrative style so prevalent in Heist Society.  
Overall, this is a definite recommend for fans of the first novel, but Carter can do better.

Copy borrowed from my local library.

Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge

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Paige’s family moves from Virginia — where she’s always lived — to New York City, and suddenly, she’s torn from everything she’s known. Her life has fallen into a new place, and she’s lost any sense of who or what she is. She knows she’s an artist, but having that label applied to herself is tough to understand. She doesn’t know where she fits into the new scheme of her high school, an urban high school where everyone seems to know exactly who they are and where they fit in. She doesn’t want to be the “new girl” forever, but it’s tough finding a place to slide into.

Paige pours those feelings into her notebook, one where she’s also noted the rules her grandma gave her when it comes to making art. As she begins unraveling her feelings about her new life and about who she is, Paige begins making new friends — both by accident and by purposeful interaction on her part (though she’d never admit to that). While making these new friends, she begins to understand what her purpose in this new life is, as well as begins to understand that being an artist is part and parcel of who she is. It’s how she deals with things, and it’s how she processes and understands the world around her.

Page by Paige is a new addition to the slight world of stand alone graphic novels geared toward teen girls. There are no superheroes in here. Instead, it’s a fully fleshed story about growing up and about change. It’s perhaps most about better understanding who you are as a person and embracing the things about you that make you unique. It’s a bit of an artist’s manifesto, even. As a reader, I understood everything that Paige said and struggled with when it came to making art and to valuing the role art plays in understanding oneself. I think anyone who has ever done something artistic, something that really requires delving deep inside to express a feeling or a thought or an idea, will relate to Paige easily; there’s a real tension between going out and living, sometimes and sitting back and letting life live around you, and Gulledge captures that strongly in both the words she’s written and in the illustrations that heighten those words.

The book is structured around the nine rules which Paige’s grandmother told her about creating art, and I think that the set up and execution of the book are successful because of this. The rules help Paige process herself and her place in this new, foreign, even exotic world she’s entered, and at the same time, they serve as her guidebook to creating meaning in her art. What was extremely smart on Gulledge’s part in illustrating the story, though, was not putting all of the rules out there from the beginning. Had she done that, we’d know the whole of Paige’s story from the set up; instead, we’re given the first three rules in an early illustration, but we’re lead through the remaining rules as the story progresses and as we begin to sympathize and urge Paige on in her path to finding who she is.

Characters in this book were well done, and I appreciated that they never swerved into stereotypes. Paige falls into a group of artistic kids, but they’re not set up as the strange ones in school, and neither are they outcast or the popular kids. Instead, they’re all individuals, and I could keep them apart in my mind. Since the book’s told through Paige’s point of view, it would have been easy to have these secondary characters fall into a trope, but they didn’t — which is both proof of Paige’s ability to grow up and work toward her goals, as well as proof of Gulledge’s ability to flesh out individuals quite well.

The illustrations in the book — done in black and white only — are unique, and I found them to be strong and in harmony with the text. The details included in the illustrations make it modern, as many of the characters wear t-shirts sporting favorite bands (that are current), and perhaps my favorite little details included seeing what the characters were reading at different points in the story (Paige, for example, delves deep into Y: The Last Man). I found these little details important because they really spoke to an idea Paige brings up in her own art and in the rules she follows: inspiration. It was fun to be right there with her as she sought and found moments of inspiration in the world around her, and again, it makes these things relatable to readers who also find inspiration for their own art all around them. I won’t lie: I found the fact Paige has her own treadmill desk one of the highlights of this book for me.

Perhaps my only issue with the graphic portion of this story is that at times it felt very young, given the strength and the wisdom in the text itself. For me, the cover and font used on it speak more to a middle grade readership than a young adult one, and this is not a book for a middle grade audience. Middle school, definitely, but not middle grade.

My biggest challenge with the book, though, is that at times it borders on didactic. The points Gulledge wants to make with readers are important, but they’re almost served a little too clearly and obviously in the story. The rules from Paige’s notebook work perfectly to service the story’s goal, but there are instances throughout the book that these points are hammered home a little too much. As an adult, I found myself a little frustrated with those things being hit on again and again, and I can imagine that might turn some teen readers off entirely. Paige is a quieter character, and she’s one who is very internally focused. In no way does this make her dumb or unaware of herself and the path she needs to take to fit in and to understand the role art plays in her life. I think a lot of times characters who are quieter and more focused internally are branded as the kind of characters who need things repeated to them since they’re not showing off these lessons or their thoughts out loud or in showy ways; as someone who’s had people talk down to me because of my own need to process internally, I was annoyed for Paige that these “big lessons” were repeated and repeated and repeated. At the end, it felt like Paige’s coming to terms with herself was too adult-like, too reflective and insightful. It was a little too idealized.

While reading, I spent a lot of time thinking about audience for Page by Paige and actually had little trouble figuring out who’d like this book — fans of realistic fiction, artists, or anyone who has ever felt like an outcast or experienced a huge change in their life. I read this at the same time I was rereading Siobhan Vivian’s Same Difference, and I saw countless parallels between Emily and Paige. In fact, I almost brought Gulledge’s book to my teen book group’s discussion of Vivian’s book because I thought they’d be an excellent pairing. Fans of Liz Gallagher’s recent title, My Not-So-Still Life will also find great parallels between the stories and characters.

This is the kind of book you could sell easily to regular fans of realistic fiction, even if they’re not usually fans of graphic novels. Fans of Cecil Castellucci’s Plain Jane books will also enjoy this one. As I mentioned earlier, this book will work well for middle and high school students, though I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing it to middle grade readers. There aren’t language issues, but some topical ones that make it more appropriate for those ages. And while I think there are certainly males who will read and relate to this story, I think the audience for Gulledge’s book will be primarily female.

If you want more information about the book, want to check out the inspiration for the story, or want to download some of the cool art associated with the book (like Paige’s rules shared above), make sure you check out the author’s website. There’s also an entire blog devoted to just Page by Paige here. For anyone who does art or writing workshops, these look to be great places for ideas and inspiration.

The Revenant by Sonia Gensler

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The Revenant by Sonia Gensler is a hybrid book: part mystery, part ghost story, part historical fiction, part coming of age.  Seventeen year old Willie Hammond is attending a school she loves in the late 19th century when her mother writes her a letter, telling her she must take a break from school and return home to help on the farm.  Willie doesn’t feel like she belongs at the farm, so she steals her classmate Angeline McClure’s teaching certificate and runs away to accept a position as a teacher at a Cherokee female seminary in Indian Territory.

Once at the seminary, Willie finds it not at all what she expected.  Many of the Cherokee girls come from very wealthy families, and the school is far from rustic.  She struggles to get her bearings as a teacher and understand the complex socioeconomic situation at the school, where lighter-skinned and wealthier girls look down upon the full-blooded and more traditional girls.  What’s more, one of the students drowned in the river last year and she supposedly haunts her old room – the room where Willie now sleeps.  Willie becomes caught up in solving the mystery of the student who drowned and also becomes romantically involved with a student from the boys’ seminary.  She must juggle all this while keeping her true identity a secret.
I had two main problems with The Revenant, and the biggest one lies with the protagonist, Willie.  Willie’s reason for fleeing her home and impersonating Angeline McClure is an incredibly selfish one, although her feelings that led up to her actions are understandable.  To sum up: Willie’s father has died, and her mother has remarried, given birth to twin boys, and is pregnant with another child. She needs Willie’s assistance at home with the new baby, which means Willie’s schooling will be delayed awhile, but Willie doesn’t want to return home to a life of drudgery with a stepfather she loathes and a mother she resents for remarrying so quickly.  Therefore, Willie runs away from school to the Cherokee seminary and pretends to be a teacher.
I can understand the resentment toward her mother and stepfather, both for remarrying and for forcing Willie to leave school, even temporarily.  What’s harder to understand is Willie’s lack of an inner struggle.  It’s apparent that she’s not interested in getting to know her two little brothers or her new sibling on the way, and she hasn’t given a thought to how difficult it is for her mother to raise three children and run a farm without additional help.  She also doesn’t consider how her mother would worry about her.
One thing that can be said for Willie is that she routinely sends money back home, reassuring her mother that she is well.  This aspect makes me think Gensler wanted to portray some sort of guilt or inner struggle, but it’s virtually absent nonetheless, something particularly telling in a first-person story.
Part of the reason we read stories is to see how characters change and grow.  While some protagonists may not start out completely likable, they usually develop over the course of the story, making some kind of transformation.  Willie certainly does this, but it’s all taken care of in the last fifty pages, when she’s already returned home.  There’s almost no character development during her time at the seminary and she remains solidly unlikable until nearly the end.  
What’s more, Willie arrives at the seminary very much a girl, constantly intimidated by the senior female students and falling for the good-looking male students, and she leaves the same way, without learning how to really lead a class, assert her authority, or even grade papers.  The Revenant would have been a much stronger book if Gensler had begun Willie’s transformation during her time at the seminary, showing how the events that took place there shaped her character.  Instead, it is events that happen at home that cause her growth, making the story feel oddly divided.
The more minor problem has to do with the romance.  It might just be my old fuddy-duddy sensibilities at work, but the relationship between Willie and the male student, Eli Sevenstar, made me uncomfortable.  Granted, he is not in any of her classes and she’s not even technically a teacher, but the position of authority is still there.  Perhaps it unnerved me because situations like this have been in our modern news so much lately.  Beyond that, though, is the fact that Willie and Eli fall for each other before they even converse much.  Their romance is built on Eli’s good looks and Willie’s ability to blush.  
Neither of these faults make the book one not worth reading.  Gensler, a debut writer, has made a good start with The Revenant.  Her writing is fluid and she kept me interested.  I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery and Gensler delivered a fairly juicy one, full of secret trysts and red herrings.  The historical details, while not ubiquitous, were fascinating, and I appreciated learning about a time and place I knew almost nothing about.  I also feel she treated the school and its denizens’ culture with the sensitivity required.  I’d recommend The Revenant to fans of light mysteries, historical fiction, or not-so-scary ghost stories.  There’s a lot to enjoy here.

Review copy provided by publisher. The Revenant is on shelves now.

Audiobook Review: Nation by Terry Pratchett

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Mau is thirteen-years old, in the midst of the boyhood ritual that will transform him into a man, according to the beliefs of his island nation. All he has to do is cross the ocean in a canoe, return to his own island, and undergo the ritual and tattooing that will mark him as a man. He has already shed his boyhood soul and just needs to make it home to be granted the soul of a man. But just as he sets off, a vicious tsunami hits, wiping out the population of Mau’s home, called the Nation, and devastating the surrounding islands. While Mau is lucky enough to make it home, he soon finds that he is the sole survivor of his people. Well, just Mau and a girl, the daughter of a British governer, whose ship, the Sweet Judy, was shipwrecked on the island. Ermintrude, or Daphne, as she prefers to call herself, as she despises her given name, and Mau soon form an alliance and a friendship, realizing that they have only each other (and a foul-mouthed parrot) for both company and any hopes of survival. And as trickles of other shipwrecked seagoers and island-folk arrive at the island, bit by bit, seeking salavation, somehow the Nation, a new Nation, is born again.

My brother-in-law is perhaps the biggest Terry Pratchett fan (perhaps the biggest fan of any author) that I have ever met. He has been dogging me for years to try Pratchett out, and I am so, so grateful that I finally did. Nation was an absolute marvel, well-deserved of all the honors and awards that it garnered. What seems on the surface a story about re-populating an island and finding a community is enhanced by Pratchett’s exploration of some key life questions: what happens when two (or many) cultures collide? And what is the role of religion in our lives, especially in a world where the gods can warn the birds and beasts about an impending tsunami, but neglect to alert the human who worship them so ardently?

Mau is a fully developed protagonist, one who is absolutely open with the reader about his hopes, fears, doubts, and anxieties about the future. We see his trepidation and casual arrogance as he goes about the ritual to become a man. Then witness his absolute disassociation as he goes about the necessary business of weighing down the dead bodies on the Nation (dead bodies who could easily be his family or friends) with coral, so that they will sink into the ocean for their final rest. We see his gratitude when he finally meets Daphne, gratitude for having someone, something, to give him a reason to stay alive. And then, in perhaps the most powerful scenes of the book, we witness Mau questioning his faith. Why are the grandfathers, the revered spirits of his ancestors, nagging at him to restore the god stones? Why should he, if worshiping in this way before only brought death and destruction?

As Mau and Daphne also begin to navigate this new society they are building, with the “soulless” Mau as its chief, they also have to navigate the nature of gender roles. Daphne, born into a civilized family, with a grandmother with rules and standards for every possible occasion, is soon called upon to help birth a baby, learns to make beer, and eventually, in the heat of the island, sheds the layers of clothing that have been stifling her for her entire life. Mau has to venture into the “women’s place,” previously forbidden to him, as he knows this is necessary to save his new people.

But Nation does not just involve the exploration of these theological and philosophical issues. Pratchett seamlessly weaves in these themes through a fairly fast-moving plot that includes a mutinous crew, a murder, hastily re-patched cannons, scientific discoveries, and a character coming back from the dead.

Narrator Stephen Briggs, who has also narrated a number of Terry Pratchett’s other books, was an ideal choice for this production. His deep commanding voice perfectly agreed with the heavy themes of faith, gods, and survival that Nation covers, and, in fact, it often seemed like he was issuing an edict from on high. The tribal music interspersed between scenes and chapters also helped greatly in establishing atmosphere. In fact, this production of Nation won ALA’s 2009 Odyssey Honor Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production.

I will definitely be seeking out more books by Sir Terry Pratchett in the future.

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

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There are few taboo topics in YA lit. The idea of the taboo itself has been a topic that’s been misunderstood, too, as this article incorrectly suggests abortion in teen lit as one of those topics (I can think of two books off the top of my head that deal with that issue straight on). You know what’s been taboo though? What’s always been taboo: incest.

Back at ALA Midwinter during the Simon and Schuster preview, Forbidden was one that was pitched as an in house favorite. I was eager to read this one, knowing full well the topic at hand. And everything that the publicists suggested about this book is indeed true.

Lochan and Maya are the oldest two children in a family with many siblings. Mom’s a deadbeat, always out for long nights with one guy or another, despite claiming that this one will be the right one. Dad skipped down long ago, moving from England all the way to Australia. He’s never been back and frankly, Lochan and Maya know he won’t be back.

In short: Lochan and Maya have become the surrogate parents to three siblings. But to one another, they’re more than siblings. They’re best friends. Or maybe they’re something more. Is that a line they can cross? Absolutely not. It’s clear that incest is wrong, illegal, disgusting. For these two teens, though, amid surging hormones, a rocky home life, and genuine attraction, it’s hard not to control themselves. There’s a lot of push and pull — they want to follow their guts but their minds tell them not to.

Until, of course, they make the decision that changes the entire course of their lives forever.

As I’ve mentioned a couple times, my educational background is in psychology, and one of the things that you learn in relationship psychology is how situational stress can heighten any emotion. When you’re in an emotionally heightened state, you can transfer those feelings elsewhere as a way to calm those feelings. So, it’s been said that if you’re on a first date, you should do something involving a lot of adrenaline or fear — going on a roller coaster, climbing somewhere very high — rather than going to a movie. You move your fear or anxiety elsewhere, and it can become instead an emotion of investment and attraction to the person you’re with, and vice versa.

I bring this all up not to discredit whatever genuine emotional connection there is between Lochan and Maya, but instead as a way to further inform your reading of the title. The home life that these siblings have is atrocious. They’ve really become makeshift parents to their younger siblings, and the stress and aggravation therein compels the two of them to find some solace, and their solace happens to be with one another. There’s definite frustration, and it’s palpable. And when these two decide to pursue their relationship, the frustration only multiples and intensifies, until they make a decision that literally changes their lives forever.

Forbidden is a fast-paced read, but it is in no way an easy read. Because of the topic at hand, you read carefully, and if you do it well, you go in with an open mind. The challenge, of course, is that our innate sensibilities tell us over and over that what these characters are experiencing is wrong. This is again why I offer a means of thinking about this differently, a way of navigating this tricky story if you can’t emotionally invest in that aspect of the story. I could; I thought Suzuma did something pretty significant in making me buy into their love for one another. Although I was uncomfortable throughout the course of the story — both the moments leading up to their admissions to one another and in the moments where they let their emotions play out — I was able to read it without judging and without letting my own mind mess with the greater arc of the story.

Lochan and Maya are both fully fleshed characters, as is their mother. Despite being in the story very little, she still plays a major role in the story, and we do get to know her pretty well. She’s neglectful, but only to a certain extent (or arguable, she’s only neglectful — that’s something for you to decide when the story concludes). I found myself really liking and sympathizing for both Lochan and Maya in the story, though I latched on a little bit more to Lochan’s story because he’s also earned a reputation at school for never talking. He’s a very attractive guy, but he’s repelled most peers because he doesn’t talk much. I found this to be a part of the story that’s left a bit open throughout, and it was something that could have been filled out a bit more. But with the ending of the story, it almost makes sense we don’t get to see this aspect of his character come full circle.

This book is not shy. That should be fairly obvious from the topic explored, but I want to be clear that it is explicit when it comes to sexual situations. This is not a book to hand to your sensitive readers, nor your younger readers. If you are at all familiar with the VC Andrews classic Flowers in the Attic, you will know this going in. The two stories tread similar worlds, though Suzuma is more successful in crafting a contemporary, believable situation that tugs more at the reader’s emotions, especially in the end.

Reading Forbidden reminded me a lot of reading Lucy Christopher’s Stolen (reviewed here). I think it’s going to be a title that’s just as divisive as Christopher’s, too: some readers will be enthralled with the story and engrossed with how such a tricky topic can be tackled and some readers will want nothing to do with the story and be repelled by it. I felt a little bit of both sets of emotions reading it, though in the end I think it’s one that is worth reading. Again, there’s a lot of barriers to remove prior to going in, but it’s worth it. Suzuma’s writing itself is smooth and fluid, and she’s convincing enough to keep you reading. For American readers, some of the Britishisms might be a little challenging, but it’s not insurmountable nor something that will turn off readers entirely.

Know your readers before handing this title over! It’s one you should definitely have in your collection, since there is a readership. Fans of V. C. Andrews, especially her now-ya-branded Flowers in the Attic will want to read this one, as will fans of Stolen or other psychologically-gripping realistic fiction. Those who’ve always wondered about the what ifs will find this an absorbing read. I do think that the young adult audience is the right readership for this sort of book: adult readers can be more close minded, more willing to turn away at the instance of anything that disagrees with their moral/ethical/legal compass, and I think that this story will tap into the curiosity toward the taboo that teens are more willing to explore. That said, I’m pretty positive there will be plenty of adults who have their interests piqued by this one.

Review copy received by the publisher. Forbidden will be released June 28.