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books

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

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Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to. In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety . . . until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, however, the end was triggered long ago. Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated—and with it, order—and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim . . . and meal. The Gladers are far from finished with running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them. Thomas can only wonder—does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?

Summary from Amazon.com

Since The Maze Runner was one of my favorite reads of last year, I made the rare step of actually pre-ordering this book (a huge deal for a librarian on a budget). When it arrived, I was in the midst of another book, so I handed it over to my husband to read. When I inquired as to how it was, he responded, “Bad shit happens. Then more bad shit happens.”

In a way, that perfect sums up The Scorch Trials, part two in James Dashner’s planned trilogy. The Scorch Trials deals with the aftermath of the maze, with what happens to the Gladers when they have finally escaped the experiment that they were at the center of. And that’s the key word here: “happens.” This book is action packed, careening from horror to horror as Thomas and his friends navigate their way across the scorched wasteland that the world has become. James Dashner’s imagination is vivid and his writing is incredibly illustrative (almost to the point of gross at times) as he describes the heat of the sun; the melting silver orbs that attack Gladers, encasing their heads in murderous metal; and the crazy Cranks, infected with the Flare, the disease that will soon reach Thomas and his friends if they don’t make it across the Scorch. But in the end, the book almost has too much action. I missed the character and relationship building that featured so strongly in the first book and that is key (for me) to any truly great dystopian novel. The action plain overwhelmed any character progression that could have occurred, until it seemed that no character growth had occurred.

In fact, my favorite parts of The Scorch Trials were when Thomas was regaining his memories, having brief flashbacks to his former life, when he and Theresa were young, co-creators of the maze that had ended up tormenting them. And although we learned a bit more about WICKED and the changed world that these characters now inhabited, it wasn’t enough to satisfy me.

But in the end, it is a middle book in a trilogy, and a journey across a scorched land is part for the course. And in the end, I will most definitely continue reading. James Dashner can write a mean cliffhanger, both at the end of chapters, and at the end of this book. I just hope that I find out more about these characters in the future.

When I Was Joe by Keren David

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How would it be to have to start all over again, to have everything you know erased? That’s what happens to Ty and his mother after he bears witness to a crime that may have cost someone their lives. But he can’t talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

By not talking, he has to follow the strict orders of the police and enter into the witness protection program. He and his mom abandon their lives in London — leaving his grandmother and assorted other relatives — and move away.

He’s no longer Ty, the shy and “weak” guy. He’s now Joe, a guy who is confident, popular, athletic and . . . a catch to many of the girls in school. As if being witness to something atrocious wasn’t enough, he has to learn to navigate new waters when it comes to high school and relationships. And let’s just say that one of these girls has a secret of her own, and he may be the only person who knows.

When I Was Joe is a thriller in the true sense: it’s nonstop and relentless in pacing, moving quickly but purposefully toward a powerful ending. As the jack flap copy notes, this story delves into issues of identity and justice, and I could not help but be reminded of Gail Giles’s Right Behind You. I mentioned on GoodReads prior to starting this that the premises sounded so similar, but when I got to reading, they are actually almost exact inverses of one another. For Joe, this is a story of surviviorship, for making it through witnessing something horribly unjust and living with the consequences every day. Right Behind You is a story of hidden identity, too, but told through the eyes of the criminal himself.

This is a swift book, one that could easily be read in one sitting. Ty is a likeable and sympathetic character and one whose complexity unravels at every page. In building a new life for himself, the old haunts him constantly, and it is no thanks to his unstable mother he never feels safe or secure.

David’s book is set in Britain, but as an American reader, I never once felt like a foreigner. The slight differences in language use and mannerisms does not detract from my reading. I found the writing itself is tight and focused as a good thriller should be. We know just enough characters and just enough about each to feel satisfied in the conclusion.

If you’re looking for a good “guy” book to pass on, this may fit the bill. Fans of Giles will find a lot to enjoy here, as will fans of a good action-packed story. For me, it was the witness protection program hook that reeled me in and ultimately left me a satisfied reader.

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

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When Gemma wakes up, she’s no longer in the airport with her parents. She’s in a strange guy’s house in what appears to be the middle of a never ending desert.

As she comes to, she can’t figure out how she got here or why she’s here, but she remembers distinctly seeing this man in the Bangkok airport. She was with her family, heading on vacation. She remembers this guy being strange, watching her, talking with her about coming to Australia and America and all the places in the world she’d like to see.

He drugged her drink and took her. She needs to escape, but there is no where to go. She’s fenced into this place with this man who greets her by telling her he hasn’t raped her. Will she got out, find somewhere in this foreign country that will guide her back to her parents or will she become so broken down and desperate to begin understanding and sympathizing with her captor?

Christopher’s debut novel Stolen is a powerhouse. The book is told through a long letter from Gemma to her captor Ty, detailing her side of the story and why she does the thing she does while living with him. Although I’ve read many reviews suggesting this book is told in the second person, it’s not. It’s told through first person but addresses the captor by the word “you” because of the letter format (see Charles Benoit’s You for a true flavor of second person narration).

We don’t get to hear Ty’s voice in this story, and we don’t need to or want to hear it. Put simply, this book is an exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, or the psychological phenomenon within victims to take sympathy with their criminal. It stems from desperation and from isolation, both of which Gemma feels here. It’s not a simple book to read nor understand.

Gemma’s captor tells her he loves her, and he took her away because of the passion he had to protect her and cherish her. He tells her he’s known her for a long time and has always wanted to take her someplace safe where he can love her in the way no one else could or would.

But she’s a flower under glass.

Maybe.

As she hears more from him, whether they’re truths or elaborate lies, she begins to develop a love for him and a belief that he needed to do what he did in order to become a better, stronger person. His life as a child was rough, and this is his opportunity to start over. Not only can he start over, but he can give his dream life to someone else who he can nurture. He’s created a utopia, for just the two of them.

Stolen is both fast and slow paced. The writing is smooth and vivid, the landscape and surroundings easily imaginable and believable. But the story itself is slow, and it needs to be. This is intentional to get to the bone of what’s going on in Gemma and Ty’s minds and why either ultimately make some of the decisions they do regarding one another’s futures. Christopher’s style makes reading this almost too easy and begged me to return to pages already read and reread for better understanding. Her careful lacing of symbols — the camel, the snake pit — add layers to what seems simple.

While reading this book, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl but be warned: Stolen won’t have the wide appeal that Scott’s title has. It’s a much more mature book in what it is doing internally for the characters and for the reader. They both are well written and powerful but with differing goals.

This is the kind of book I wait for because it begs to be book talked. The unassuming cover and the foreign setting may make it an easy one to overlook on the shelf, but once you get to the meat of it, it’s one not easily forgotten. Pass it off to your fans of psychologically-driven titles, the ones that bore into the psyche of character. The potential for discussion here is rich.

Sorta Like a Rockstar by Matthew Quick

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Amber Appleton’s got it rough, and when I say she’s got it rough, I mean rough: the girl lives out of a bus ever since asshole Oliver kicked her and her mom out of his place. Now mom’s back out there, looking for a steady man (and a place to crash).

But don’t let that fool you. Amber is a tough cookie and one of the most upbeat and positive chicks around. Her best friends are a group of guys with varying degrees of problems – the kid with autism and so forth – and she’s tight with Jesus who she remembers from a set of books she got as a child where he is nothing but a rock star. Oh, and she’s tight with Father Chee, the minister at the Korean Catholic Church in the ghetto and with Private Jackson, an old man who served in Vietnam and writes haiku for fun.

But Amber’s life is turned upside down when her mother gets involved with the wrong guy.

Sorta Like a Rock Star is the kind of book that will smack you in the face. It’s slow paced at the beginning with Amber’s inner dialog a bit meandering. She’s got a habit of using some words for emphasis again and again which grated on me. I couldn’t quite get her or what she was going for with it, but I trudged onward. There was just enough personality to Amber and enough intrigue by her to push through.

By part three of Quick’s novel, though, everything changes. Amber’s routine and what she’s come to see as stable things in an otherwise unpredictable life dismantle and the styling and pacing race along. One of the biggest stables in her life is permanently removed, and the second one comes close too. Her voice shifts from the one of positivity to nothing at all, and she stops attending school, her volunteer shifts at the church, and her job all together. This is where, as a reader, I really came to understand Amber. Where I was unsure of her in the first two parts, I was completely engrossed by her story and her pain from this part forward.

But don’t worry – this book isn’t all about pain. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When Amber was the strength in a lot of other people’s lived, despite the things she herself faced, people took note and in time, that favor is returned to her in ways she cannot fathom.

Sorta Like a Rock Star is the kind of novel you hand sell to your readers. There is a lot going on inside it, but it takes a patient reader to unlock everything that happens. I think a lot of readers may see themselves in Amber’s mental position, working through a lot of challenges in their own lives but maintaining some spot of hope things will look up. The relationships Amber develops within her community are authentic and the interactions among her own peers realistic and, at times, heartbreaking. She works for the underdog and she, too, is the underdog.

Try this one out on your fans of Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere. They aren’t exactly readalikes, but they do share many elements, including relationship building through grief, the use of poetry as a coping mechanism, and patience as a reader, rewarded in the end. I’d suggest being prepared here to both have a laugh a bit and maybe even cry a bit, but you will walk away knowing Amber is real.

True? True.

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge

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What do you get when you mix a 14-year-old baseball playing poet with a hot girlfriend and a budding interest in a poet he meets at an open mic night? You get one heck of a fun book.

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge is told through verse, and it’s done in a way that casual readers can appreciate, as can people like me who know quite a bit about poetry and poetic form. Kevin is a baseball player whose team will be lucky enough to make the playoffs this year. When his dad — a writer — gives him a blank journal and suggests he use it to write through the grief he has because of the loss of his mother, Kevin kind of scoffs at the idea. We know he doesn’t really though. He embraces it, and he uses it to write poems he’ll perform at an open mic . . . where he meets Amy, a girl who grabs his interest immediately, making him rethink his relationship with Mira. Until, that is, he finds out Amy has a boyfriend.

What Koertge has done is create a funny and lovable character in Kevin. We get to know him quite well because of his poetry. Although at times I wavered back and forth about his believability as a 14 year old boy, I ultimately was taken back to the many creative writing programs I was in throughout my teen years and realized I knew more than one Kevin. He’s a funny guy, with a passion for the typical guy things, but he’s also open and frank about his interest in his creative side, whether it is poetry, painting, or theater. This is a rare voice to hear in teen lit and have it become so believable, too.

The romance that emerges in this book is sweet and clean. Kevin really likes Mira, his current girlfriend, but his interest in Amy grows the more he communicates with her through poetry. He runs through scenarios of how he’ll break the news to Mira that he wants to end their relationship, but either he won’t follow through or the idea will blow up in his face in a funny manner.

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs is incredibly fast paced, but it’s the type of book that when I finished, I wanted to go back and read again more slowly. I wanted to appreciate Koertge’s metapoetry throughout — he writes poetry about poetry but he’s able to do it through the eyes of Kevin, too, making it poetry about poetry about poetry, in a sense. Readers unfamiliar with poetic formats will actually learn quite a bit in reading this one. Kevin shows off his pantoum skills, his sestina skills (which, random fact, is my favorite poetic form), and even rare styles of couplets.

When I dove into this title, I didn’t realize it was a sequel to an earlier title. This is a book you can read without having read the first, and it’s one that will compel you to go read it afterward. I really thought Kevin was a fantastic character, and I liked the relationship he had with his father, too. His father is transitioning from widow to dating again; for many readers, Kevin’s ideas about this will resonate as feelings they, too, may have had from time to time.

Pass this book off to your fans of clean, funny reads. Readers who love the verse format or readers who are themselves writers and poets will want to read this title, too. And while Kevin is a baseball player, the sports themselves are sort of a side thought, so those who may be reluctant to read a sports story shouldn’t fear. On the other hand, sports readers may find themselves loving this, too: there’s just enough to get them in, and the cover only helps. You better believe I’m not returning this one back to the library just yet — it’s inspired me to revisit poetry and try some of the styles I’ve not played with in a while.