STACKED

books

From the same photo session

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This isn’t a double take, but it is the same couple and outfits, outside. When I saw the first cover, I immediately thought of the second and realized they were from the same photo session and photo set:

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti, paperback edition, March 2010.

Followed with getting a little more up close and personal with this one:

For Keeps by Natalie Friend, to be published April 6, 2010.

I quite like both of them, as the green really does make them stand out. I like the way the images portray something different on both but give the readers enough sense to know what the book is about (as much as people scoff the idea, I think covers can be one of the best tools for determining content, genre, and tone of a book).

I pulled out my ARC, though, and guess what the cover for For Keeps was? I guess they caught the double take before and chose a different cover for the final book.


Do you prefer one to the other? I think the paperback makeover for Caletti’s title is an improvement from the hard cover, which also was a double take feature.

Trend Spotting: Cult Societies

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I talked about the suicide trend in teen lit earlier. Here’s another one that keeps popping up again and again, with definite mixed results: cults. More specifically, plural-marriage-accepting-religiously-fundamentalist cults. Here’s a quick over view of three of those titles, along with what works and what just doesn’t.

Last week, Michelle Dominguez Greene released her Keep Sweet with Simon Pulse. Keep Sweet follows Alva Jane as she falls in love with a boy within her Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group in rural Uta (approximately an hour outside Moab, if that helps with setting up the story more). Of course, as readers we know this is going to be a problem because the boy was not decreed to be her husband by the Prophet.

Alva chooses to not “keep sweet” and escape her situation. Unfortunately, it takes over 100 pages to find Alva interesting in the least, and it seems as though her switch from being a believer in the Prophet and her religion is sudden and abrupt. Quite frankly, Alva chose to “keep sweet” for most of her life, and it takes little to change her. It’s the beating of another woman that makes her snap, but it wasn’t convincing to me as a reader. Here’s your spoiler warning, guys, so stop reading this paragraph if you don’t want this one ruined for you: within — I kid you not — five pages, she escapes, runs away to Moab, gets picked up by a couple going to California, stops in a gas station to see her sect was raided, makes the news, and then the folks who picked them up say (this is the icing): “Okay, I figure you are the girls they mentioned in the newscast.” The people who picked them up, along with everyone else in the sect, are utterly flat, voiceless, and nothing but air in the story. I mean, that’s some of the worst dialog I’ve read in a long time.

I found Keep Sweet a disappointment. It lacked on plot, and when the plot began to thicken, the writing and lack of development made it fall completely flat. The last chapter was utterly unrealistic, despite having a good premise. In my ideal world, this book would have about eight more chapters, with more development, more believability, and more character insight. It could have been a knock out. I think most readers will leave this one feeling cheated.

I feel comfortable making those comments because last year, Carol Lynch Williams released what I think was the strongest book of this ilk: The Chosen One.

It’s been over a year since I read this one, but I remember that the main character, Kyra, escapes to read at the bookmobile that often sits at the edge of the compound where she, too, lives with a polygamist-practicing family. She wants out, and it seems quite clear throughout the book this isn’t where she wants to be in her life.

This book was sparse, and it works. Williams develops a character — and she chooses not to overextend herself and develop more than a couple of characters — and a situation. In rereading my GoodReads notes, I mentioned that the characters aren’t especially well developed because of the sparse writing and that this was the important point in her story line. We know in this particular cult that who you are does not matter. It’s what you do. It is not a judgmental scenario in the same way that Greene’s is. Rather, we know Kyra’s not happy and wants to get out. Although Greene seeks to prove the same point about girls being simply there to provide children for the profit, her decision to dig into character development and fall flat while doing so (especially with characters like Brenda) weakens and buries that issue.

The Chosen One, I noted, was satisfying and fast-paced. This one seemed aimed at the younger end of teen readers, too. I think Greene’s may have aimed higher, especially with the end note about FLDS. It was published last May by St. Martins Griffin.

Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka was the first book published with this theme (at least during the “trend” — I know others were published before this one) by Orca in October 2008.

Again, it’s been a year or more since I read this one, but thanks to GoodReads, I’m able to pull some memories together. To quote myself (oh I’ve always wanted to do that!), “My biggest problems were poor pacing (the end seems to skip years over pages), uninteresting characters, and unrealistic plot lines (the faith lines were so loose and sketchy, even in the polygamist setting, it was hard for me to really believe any of that backdrop). I think the stone setting and interaction among those within Unity and those outside was strange — in the polygamist stories we hear in the news, there is security and the places are compounds not easily broken into or out of. While certainly the story isn’t meant to be a strict telling of any of the real situations, I thought it had a lot of basis in reality and could have been better pushed in that direction. I just couldn’t get into this one because there were too many questions in my mind and none were really related to the characters themselves but on the writing/story choices.”

I did note that it deserved praise for the unique premise and situations that I hadn’t stumbled upon quite yet. And to be fair, knowing now this was an Orca publication, the pacing and the more shallow plot development makes sense. This publisher aims at the reluctant reader market, and I think this *is* a book that will appeal to them.

What struck me as most interesting in the trend of these books is they all have the same basic story line and characters — a girl, unhappy, tries to escape. We know that girls shoulder a lot of the weight in polygamist sects, but you know what I want? I’d eat up a book from the male’s perspective. What about a male who is fighting for power and control? What about a male trying to escape? There’s plenty of juice here, writers, and I’m eager to read it. It’s clear the trend’s big because of the news and the images we see in the news, but I’d like something with more twist to it.

That said, if you are looking for a good read, you have choices. I think of the three, The Chosen One holds the most promise, and perhaps that’s in part due to Williams’s experience in writing for the teen market.

Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus

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Sometimes, a book clicks with you, and other times, it just doesn’t. For me, Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus falls on the “does not” side of that equation.

Persephone (“Phe”) Archer lost her sister not too long ago from mysterious circumstances, and as if that weren’t bad enough, Phe has suffered from a series of horrifying dreams in a graveyard, where a mysterious man has stepped in to play a significant part. Like her sister, Phe is drawn to Devenish Prep School in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts — quite a distance away from her home in Los Angeles. But because of the recent death of her sister, Phe’s parents aren’t too argumentative when she asks to enroll in the school.

When Phe gets to Devenish Prep, weird things start happening. She’s having the dreams more and more, and in addition, she’s been called Rebeckah by a local shop owner who is convinced she is actually someone else from the 1700s. Oh, and this guy, Zach, is able to know her thoughts, feel her energy, and make weird things happen with electromagnetism. Add to that the graveyard Phe happened to stumble upon behind the school, and you have a paranormal adventure with a hefty dose of mystery to unravel about the school, Phe, and her sister’s death.

Shadow Hills is a lengthy book, but it never once felt that way. This is a fast moving book, but it suffered from too many elements that never seemed fully developed. Throughout the story, I felt like Phe had too many issues going on — the dead sister, the dreams, the utter fascination with Shadow Hill’s mysterious grave yard, friends who may or may not be friends, romance with the magnetic boy, and more. These story lines never gelled for me, and many times, I thought I was rereading Twilight, as the bulk of the story’s arc was near identical.

What I would have really wanted from this title (and note, this is something I hardly ever say) was more length. I think this was the sort of book that could have benefited from the length and description and back story that Beautiful Creatures had. I felt throughout this book, the mystery and the paranormal aspects were made up on the spot without a lot of history imbued within them; the rules kept changing and appearing without much rhyme or reason. This could have been better developed and lengthened, and in that, I could have more easily fallen into the story and the world. Likewise, there were too many characters, and their importance in the story seemed to shift too much for me to keep track of. I never sunk into their histories or their experiences, thus when someone held the key to unsolving an aspect of the mystery, I didn’t find myself questioning why or how. I skimmed it and went on without hesitation. I didn’t get to know the characters in enough depth to warrant more than the passing read. And the added aspect of the electromagnetism left me confused and could have probably been edited out. That alone may have helped the issue of too many strings and not enough puppetteers for me.

As a non-reader of this genre, I wasn’t pulled in as I was in others I’ve tried. The ability to see too many other story lines in this was a little disappointing, too, as I didn’t find enough new here. And Phe was far too male-dependent, much like Bella. Phe was kind of an irritating character throughout. I think Graham — who she meets when she first enters Devenish — was my favorite. I wish there was a little more of him. Oh, and good grief, did the librarian NEED to be described as an old lonely spinster? This isn’t making friends with the profession…

When I mentioned that this book wasn’t doing it for me, one of my friends said this sounded like something totally up her alley. Shadow Hills will have a definite audience, and I think for those who did like Twilight, this is a natural go-to. This may appeal to more mature paranormal readers, as well, who will find themselves digging the mystery aspects more than perhaps the actual paranormal moments.

Shadow Hills is Anastasia Hopcus’s debut novel, due out in July of this year. She’s an Austin based writer, and I think had this book been set there, rather than a distant place in Massachusetts, I’d have maybe eaten it up just a little more (yep, I’m sometimes that shallow a reader).

The Beautiful Between by Alyssa Sheinmel

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Connelly doesn’t come from a broken home, nor is she unattractive or unintelligent. She’s also not perfect, but she feels like a princess the day that Jeremy Cole — the guy anyone would be crazy about — decides to sit next to her at lunch. Not only does he want to sit by her, but he wants to get to know her.

Connelly’s been struggling a bit with physics, where Jeremy’s a pro, and he’ll offer her his insights in exchange for her SAT preparation in vocabulary … and her first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to have a close family member go through a tough disease. But what Connelly can’t do is just that. She was only 2 when her father died and she’s never been quite sure what caused his death. Her mother won’t tell her what happened.

It must just be Jeremy who is able to unearth what happened to Connelly’s father when he himself must experience something terrible.

The Beautiful Between was a surprisingly refreshing read. Although the topic’s been tread many times before, I think Scheimel offers something fresh to the story line, and she does so with two very likeable main characters.

One of the first and very shallow things I liked about this book was its length: it’s slated to be 192 pages. If you take a minute to reflect upon the length of the hundreds of teen novels coming out lately, this stands out. Sheinmel’s debut is able to contain an entire story in under 200 pages and still make it an engaging page turner with strong characters, an interesting plot, and never once did it feel like there was excess fat. This isn’t a “sparse” novel, either, in the way of writing. The writing itself is fluid and descriptive, weaving in fairy tale analogies to both Connelly and Jeremy.

This isn’t a book that is going to give you a long set up into the history or lives of these characters. No, instead you are plopped into the middle of a high school cafeteria to live alongside Connelly the moment Jeremy notices her. Oh, and don’t worry: there are no mean girls to be had, no clique drama, or other “typical” high school lunch-time scenes.

Connelly’s a strong female character and doesn’t fall victim to head-over-heels-live with Jeremy. Although there are a few scenes and few selections of dialog that hurt me to read (really – Jeremy kisses Connelly on the cheek way too many times to feel real or believable . . . those scenes felt a bit inauthentic) for the most part, it’s spot on for a pair of teens living in a wealthy part of New York City. The book’s time setting isn’t entirely clear; it is contemporary, as the characters more than once make a comment about something being “so 1990s” (another ick-inducing phrase included more times than necessary), but there wasn’t a reliance on gadgets to make the setting. I think this is a very positive aspect to the book, as it won’t date itself quickly. The cringe-worthy moments don’t kill the overall positive aspects of the novel, and I suspect with more writing, Sheinmel will avoid this more easily. I’m excited to see what she does next. Oh, and please, please, PLEASE continue writing with restraint. Two-hundred pages was the perfect length for a story like this.

The Beautiful Between will appeal to Sarah Dessen fans. There is a slow development of a very close friendship between a guy and a girl, and there is depth to both characters. Actually, this book really struck me as one that would appeal to fans of Jenny Han’s Summer I Turned Pretty or Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer.

Sheinmel’s debut hits shelves May 11.

What I’m Reading – Twitter Style

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Welcome to what I’m reading, Twitter-style. Here’s a quick glance of what I’ve got a book mark in or have at the top of the pile for when I’ve got a book mark to put somewhere.

War Dances/Sherman Alexie: Alexie’s a favorite – audio is narrated by author, hope it’ll add a huge element to these short stories. New format for my listening needs.

Epitaph Road/David Patneaude: Post-apocalyptic thriller by debut ya author with interesting premise. Mixed reviews in blogosphere but hoping for unique dystopian take.

Government Girl/Stacy Parker Aab: Non-fiction memoir of an intern during the Clinton administration. She sounds kind of irritating herself, but the politics sound fascinating.

Dark Life/Kat Falls: Another debut author, another dystopia. Abby promises a thrilling & memorable read, and w/setting under water, I am 100% sold on this one!


Zeitoun/Dave Eggers: Non-fiction story of man who stayed in New Orleans during Katrina. Great story, characters but audio quality horrific, muffled, unpolished.

Shadow Hills/Anastasia Hopcus: Girl starts new school, meets mysteriously attractive new boy and falls in love. Sound familiar and overdone? Cliche and disappointing read.

It’s Not Summer Without You/Jenny Han: Second “Summer I Turned Pretty.” Lest you worry, I eat up sweet romances. Hope this sequel is as good as first. Perfect for spring/summer!