Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau

June 18, 2014 |

Graduation Day is Joelle Charbonneau’s conclusion to her trilogy that began with The Testing and continued with Independent Study, and I’m disappointed I didn’t enjoy it more. The Testing and Independent Study were both exciting, edge-of-your-seat page-turners, full of action and plot twists. Graduation Day felt lackluster in both action and twists – not enough action and a few too many twists.

After the events of Independent Study, Cia is determined to get rid of the Testing once and for all. She can’t do it alone – she must partner with some of her classmates, including those who killed other teens during the events of the first book. She’s also asked to carry out a special assignment by the president, who claims that she, too, wants to abolish the Testing. But what are her true goals? Who can really be trusted?

I think what I missed most were the actual tests that pervaded the first two novels. They were clever and cruel and tremendous fun to read about. The tests were where Charbonneau’s imagination was at its best, and they were also a great way for us to get a feel for how characters behave in very tough situations. Graduation Day sacrifices these tests in favor of a more straightforward plot where Cia investigates who really wants to get rid of the Testing and what each person’s motives truly are. I say straightforward, but that’s really only true initially. By the end of the story, we’ve gone through at least three double-crosses, and I was never quite able to wrap my mind around who did what and why. It’s more than a little muddled and grew tiresome after a while.

Beyond my frustrations with the plot, I felt like many of Cia’s actions were out of character. I can understand that she would resort to more drastic measures here than she would have in the first book, but the way she reacts to certain events, the things she says – they often seemed a little off. I can’t go into much detail without revealing major plot points, but what I can say is that Cia didn’t always resemble herself from the previous two books.

Whereas I read the first two novels almost straight through in one or two sittings, this one took me several days, and I never counted down the minutes until I could pick it up again. The final confrontation, which I was hoping would be a big showdown with more secrets revealed, instead felt anticlimactic. This is obviously a must-read for diehard fans of the first two novels, but it’s not a completely satisfying conclusion, and I was left feeling a bit let down.

Review copy received from the publisher. Graduation Day is available now.

Complicit by Stephanie Kuehn

June 17, 2014 |

Jamie Henry’s crazy sister Cate is coming home.

She’s spent the last two years behind bars for starting a fire at a barn that not only killed horses, but it severely harmed one of the local girls. Everyone suspects she did it because she didn’t want that girl to be involved with the boy she had a crush on.

But what worries Jamie isn’t just that she’s coming home (and really, she’s 19, she legally doesn’t need to “come home”). It’s that Cate is coming back to see him.

Because Cate has to set the record straight with her brother.

Stephanie Kuehn’s Complicit is a dark psychological thriller that takes everything she did so well in Charm & Strange and amps it up even more. Be warned that everything from here on out is spoiler.

The first thing you should know about Kuehn’s novel is that you know pretty quickly that things aren’t what they seem. That Jamie, our narrator, isn’t reliable. More than that, you know what he’s said about Cate and her connection to the barn fire might not be true. Perhaps you don’t know how it’s not true, but you know that it’s not. So don’t go into the book thinking that it’s a mystery — it’s not.

Jamie and Cate are adopted. The two of them grew up under Angie and Malcolm’s roof, where they live a pretty nice life. Their adoptive parents are wealthy, and the two of them have had every luxury available to them. The problem is that both of them are damaged from what happened before the adoption. Their mother, who was very young when she had Cate and not much older when she had Jamie, wasn’t the world’s most stable person herself. She was a bit of a drifter, did drugs, never had much money. Even though Jamie and Cate are siblings, they’re not necessarily whole siblings; that’s not known entirely, though. Their mother doesn’t know who either of their fathers are, but the differences in their skin colors suggests that they don’t share the same father. Cate’s darker than Jamie.

They came to be adopted when their mother was killed at home by a gun shot. Angie and Malcolm came to adopt the siblings because they themselves had lost two children in a tragic accident and Cate and Jamie fit well enough into the holes of their deceased kids.

Both Cate and Jamie went to therapy because of the grief and trauma sustained in their early lives. Cate didn’t take to the therapist in the same way Jamie did, and Jamie is upright in talking about how much his life has been impacted by Dr. Waverly. She’s taught him methods of coping with his feelings, ones which can be diagnosed and those which can’t be.

Two years ago, the day things came to light about Cate and the fire at the barn, Jamie began having awful problems with his hands. They stopped working.

Hearing that she was coming home — coming for him — made his hands stop working again.

Complicit is told in the present, as well as through flashbacks to the years prior to Cate’s incarceration. Bit by bit, we’re given flashes into the experiences Jamie had as an adoptee, as well as his experiences learning to make friends and control his emotional and mental states. It’s tough though, especially knowing Cate’s after him. And she’s after him. She knows where he’s at. She knows he’s settling into a new relationship with a girl named Jenny. She knows that he needs to be talked to.

But in every moment where Cate approaches Jamie and where it seems as though she’s finally going to get the chance to tell him what it is she needs to say, he passes out. This is beyond the hands not working. This is not knowing where he is or what he’s doing and waking up unaware of what’s happened except knowing that Cate had been there.

It’s a defense mechanism.

Throughout the book, Jamie leads readers to believe that Cate needs to be avoided. That she’s the embodiment of evil, of terrible decisions, of making poor choices that have forever impacted the family. The truth, though, isn’t at all that simple.

Cate is not the bad seed.

Kuehn deftly weaves Jamie’s reality against the reality of the world around him, and they don’t match up. Those rifts are where the light shines into the story, and in many ways, it’s Cate who digs her fingers into that rift and tears it open. Jamie distracts us though and he does so very well. He recalls something about the night with the barn fire. He was there. He was there to bury the evidence of his sister’s wrongdoing. She’d borrowed his backpack, and when he saw it there that night, he grabbed it and buried it. He didn’t want her to get in trouble and he wanted to do what it was he could to protect her. Except there was no need to protect her.

He was protecting himself.

The fire that night and the fires and burglaries happening around town now had nothing to do with Cate and everything to do with Jamie. The death of their mother years ago had nothing to do with some botched drug deal nor any other theory Jamie cooked up and presented to himself (and by extension, us). It was Jamie.

Complicit is a story about mental illness and about how sick someone can become mentally. It’s about how far other people will go to protect those they love who can’t be helped in the ways that they want to be helped. Kuehn offers us some words for what Jamie’s experiencing, except through the eyes of Jamie, those diagnoses don’t matter. What matters is that as readers, we’re actually experiencing the illness right along with Jamie. We know almost immediately he’s unreliable, and because of his defense mechanisms — his hands not working, his ability to black out and not face the emotions and thoughts in front of him — we’re also left in the dark about some of what’s going on in the present. But rather than being frustrating, it’s a brilliant mimicking of exactly what’s happening at that moment. We are right there with Jamie believing that Cate is a terrible, dark person, and we are right there with Jamie in his desperate search for understanding what happened to his mother, and we are right there with Jamie as he begins falling head over heels for Jenny. As the light breaks through though, we see why we should be worried about being there for him in each of those instances. When Cate reveals herself as not the “crazy” girl we’ve been led to believe she is, suddenly everything falls perfectly into place about the rest of the story. And yes, we do have to worry tremendously about the positive, fulfilling relationship Jamie’s beginning with Jenny.

The threads of this story are woven together seamlessly. We know there’s something going on, and we develop theories about them, but the what of it is never the point of the story. Instead, the point is the experience itself. What does it look like to be so mentally ill you don’t know right from wrong? What does it feel like to be so sick that no amount of help can truly help you? Kuehn forces some really fascinating questions, too, about culpability, about guilt, and about shame in the story too. Why doesn’t Jamie feel bad about the fire? How has he managed to block out shooting and killing his mother (which was accidental, probably, and for which he never took the fall nor the guilt)? What happens when those who love you do everything to protect you?

There are very smart allusions and layers built into the story, as well. Cate is a very smart girl, even though we don’t get to see much of her on page, and what we do see of her is filtered through Jamie’s perception. Complicit will appeal to readers who love psychological thrillers, and it’s fast paced and engaging immediately. It will also appeal to readers who want a novel that forces them to reread, picking up new clues through the second and third readers. What does “The Owl and the Pussycat” really imply here? What about the books Cate has given Jamie? What about the Richard Wright novel? And, perhaps the thing that really cemented this as not just a good novel, but a GREAT one for me, what about that ending? It’s not just a literal taking of the fall, but the burning of that photo which caused the fall. That was what made it clear to me just how sick Jamie was, and it made me want to turn back to page one and see where else those clear signs emerged that I missed the first time through. Without doubt, Kuehn’s expertise in psychology only aids in crafting this story and informs not just Jamie’s worldview, but also ours as readers.

Complicit leaves the reader with big questions, despite offering answers to the questions raised in the story itself. It’s unsettling in many ways, but that discomfort is exactly what readers should walk away with. There’s not a happy ending here, and it’s possible to take aways here are scarier than they are comforting. This book will appeal to readers who want a story that hooks them immediately, and it’ll appeal equally to readers who want a story that is going to challenge them. It’s a sharp, contemporary/realistic thriller that delivers on every level, and Jamie’s voice is memorable, haunting, and authentic.

Kuehn is an author to keep your eye on. She’s only getting better.

Complicit will be available June 24 from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher.

Microtrends in YA Fiction

June 13, 2014 |

I’ve written a couple times about “microtrends” in YA fiction (here and here). What’s a microtrend? It’s an element that has popped up in more than one novel in recent memory that is strange enough to stand out but not a big enough component of multiple stories to be a proper trend. They’re interesting coincidences that stand out because they’re just odd enough to be memorable.

Here’s a look at a few microtrends I’ve noticed recently. Some of them have made me scratch my head and others aren’t necessarily weird but interesting commonalities. I’m only looking at books published in 2014, and I’m positive I might miss additional titles that could fall into any of these mini trends, so if you can think of others published or publishing this year that fit, I’d love to know. All descriptions are from WorldCat unless otherwise noted.

Interestingly, some of these novels fit more than one microtrend.

Stuck In An Elevator

Elevator romances seem to be popping up. It’s a trend I’m surprised hasn’t been seen more frequently. In each of these books, it’s a chance meeting in an elevator that allows a pair of characters to develop a relationship that may have otherwise never happened.

Elevated by Elana Johnson: The last person seventeen-year-old Eleanor Livingston wants to see on the elevator—let alone get stuck with—is her ex-boyfriend Travis, the guy she’s been avoiding for five months. Plagued with the belief that when she speaks the truth, bad things happen, Elly hasn’t told Trav anything. Not why she broke up with him and cut off all contact. Not what happened the day her father returned from his deployment to Afghanistan. And certainly not that she misses him and still thinks about him everyday. But with nowhere to hide and Travis so close it hurts, Elly’s worried she won’t be able to contain her secrets for long. She’s terrified of finally revealing the truth, because she can’t bear to watch a tragedy befall the boy she still loves. (Description via Goodreads).

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith: Sparks fly when sixteen-year-old Lucy Patterson and seventeen-year-old Owen Buckley meet on an elevator rendered useless by a New York City blackout. Soon after, the two teenagers leave the city, but as they travel farther away from each other geographically, they stay connected emotionally, in this story set over the course of one year.

Like No Other by Una LaMarche (July 24): Devorah is a consummate good girl who has never challenged the ways of her strict Hasidic upbringing. Jaxon is a fun-loving, book-smart nerd who has never been comfortable around girls (unless you count his four younger sisters). They’ve spent their entire lives in Brooklyn, on opposite sides of the same street. Their paths never crossed . . . until one day, they did. When a hurricane strikes the Northeast, the pair becomes stranded in an elevator together, where fate leaves them no choice but to make an otherwise risky connection. Though their relation is strictly forbidden, Devorah and Jax arrange secret meetings and risk everything to be together. But how far can they go? Just how much are they willing to give up? (Description via Goodreads).

The Name Lucy

I think I’ve only ever known one person in my life named Lucy. But it appears Lucy is quite the name in YA this year. And it’s not like it’s only been this year, either — Sara Zarr’s The Lucy Variations, published in 2012, also featured a main character named Lucy.

#Scandal by Sarah Ockler (June 17): When pictures of Lucy kissing her best friend’s boyfriend emerge on the world of social media, she becomes a social pariah after the scandal rocks the school.

Love, Lucy by April Lindner (January 2015): While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer before she heads off to college, 17-year-old Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in love with the culture, the architecture, the food…and Jesse Palladino, a handsome street musician. After a whirlwind romance, Lucy returns home, determined to move on from her “vacation flirtation.” But just because summer is over doesn’t mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too. Inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. (Description via Goodreads).

Chantress Alchemy by Amy Butler Greenfield (sequel to Chantress): Lucy, a chantress who works magic by singing, is called to court to find a lost instrument of Alchemy. But her magic isn’t working properly.

In A Handful of Dust by Mindy McGinnis (September 23): In a barren land, teenage Lucy is taken away from the community she has grown up in and searches the vast countryside for a new home.

Sublime by Christina Lauren (October 14): Lucy and Colin discover they have a connection on the grounds of the private school they attend, but Lucy has a startling secret.

How to Meet Boys by Catherine Clark: Best friends Lucy and Mikayla are ready for the best summer of their lives, but when Mikayla falls for a boy from Lucy’s past they realize their perfect summer might be over before it starts.

Quarantine: The Burnoutsby Lex Thomas (third in the “Quarantine” series): In this final installment of the Quarantine trilogy, David and Will are alive, but on the outside of McKinley High, while Lucy is the last of the trinity left inside to deal with Hilary, who will exact revenge before taking over McKinley High

The Nickname Noodle/s

It’s been a slower reading year for me, but this one caught me because it’s been in two books I’ve read this year: a character who has been nicknamed Noodle or Noodles.

When I Was The Greatest by Jason Reynolds: Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon (October 21): When sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson dies from two gunshot wounds, his community is thrown into an uproar. Tariq was black. The shooter, Jack Franklin, is white. In the aftermath of Tariq’s death, everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events line up. By the day, new twists and turns further obscure the truth. Tariq’s friends, family, and community struggle to make sense of the tragedy, and of the hole left behind when a life is cut short. In their own words, they grapple for a way to say with certainty: This is how it went down. (Description via Goodreads).

Audrey Hepburn

A pair of books are coming out this year that are inspired by or feature Audrey Hepburn. Maybe she’s this year’s Jane Austen? Both titles are fiction.

Being Audrey Hepburn by Mitchell Kriegman (September 16): Lisbeth comes from a broken home in the land of tube tops, heavy eyeliner, frosted lip-gloss, juiceheads, hoop earrings and “the shore.” She has a circle of friends who have dedicated their teenage lives to relieve the world of all its alcohol one drink at a time. Obsessed with everything Audrey Hepburn, Lisbeth is transformed when she secretly tries on Audrey’s iconic Givenchy. She becomes who she wants to be by pretending to be somebody she’s not and living among the young and privileged Manhattan elite. Soon she’s faced with choices that she would never imagine making – between who she’s become and who she once was.

Oh Yeah, Audrey! by Tucker Shaw (October 14): Months after the death of her mother, sixteen-year-old Gemma Beasley and friends she met through her Tumblr page meet in New York City to celebrate the life and style of Audrey Hepburn and her famous character, Holly Go Lightly.

Genies

The magical/mythical element of choice this year is the genie. I know very little about genies nor their historical and cultural contexts, so I can’t say much to what it might mean, if anything. I just know it’s an element of at least three books this year.

Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios (October 14): Nalia, a gorgeous, fierce eighteen-year-old jinni, is pitted against two magnetic adversaries, both of whom want her–and need her–to make a their wishes come true.

The Fire Artist by Daisy Whitney (October 14): As an elemental artist, Aria can create fire from her hands, stealing her power from lightning–which is dangerous and illegal in her world–but as her power begins to fade faster than she can steal it she must turn to a modern-day genie, a Granter, who offers one wish with an extremely high price.

The Fire Wish by Amber Lough (July 22): When a princess captures a jinn and makes a wish, she is transported to the fiery world of the jinn, while the jinn must take her place in the royal court of Baghdad.

Estate Sales

I can say I never knew anyone as a teen who went to estate sales. I also lived in the suburbs where there were no such things as estates to go to sales at. Garage sales? Sure. Rummaging? Sure. But estate sales? Not so much. But this year at least two YA novels feature the estate sale.

Everything Leads To You by Nina LaCour: While working as a film production designer in Los Angeles, Emi Price finds a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend which leads her to Ava, who is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han: Lara Jean writes love letters to all the boys she has loved and then hides them in a hatbox until one day those letters are accidentally sent.

Perks of Being A Wallflower Comparisons

I’ll do another round up of “meets” pitches in a future post, but I mentioned to a friend recently that I think comparisons to Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being A Wallflower will be the next trend after the comparisons to TFIOS and Eleanor & Park.

The comparisons or the note that the book would be ideal for fans of Perks come from Edelweiss descriptions. This is a small sampling of the titles I’ve seen with this comparison. I know there are others.

The Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes (September 2): Outside, Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair—the third most popular girl in school. Inside, she’s a freak: a mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if local chatter is to be believed, vampire DNA (after all, her father is Romanian). But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life hell. So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika knows she can’t get involved. It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd. So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life? Who cares if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it? Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? Who? (Description via Goodreads).

Play Me Backwards by Adam Selzner (August 26): A promising and popular student in middle school, Leon Harris has become a committed “slacker” but with graduation approaching and his middle school girlfriend possibly returning to town, Leon’s best friend Stan, who claims to be Satan, helps him get back on the right track–for a price.

Twerp by Mark Goldblatt (which is, interestingly, a middle grade book, not young adult): In Queens, New York, in 1969, twelve-year-old Julian Twerski writes a journal for his English teacher in which he explores his friendships and how they are affected by girls, a new student who may be as fast as Julian, and especially an incident of bullying.

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira: When Laurel starts writing letters to dead people for a school assignment, she begins to spill about her sister’s mysterious death, her mother’s departure from the family, her new friends, and her first love.

Are there other microtrends you’ve noticed this year worth noting?

What I’m Reading Now

June 12, 2014 |

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
This one could easily be added to our magical realism genre guide. Jam’s boyfriend Reeve died, and she’s been sent to a boarding school for “fragile and intelligent” teenagers because she’s having trouble dealing with the trauma. (Essentially, she’s depressed.) She’s assigned to a Special Topics in English class where the students read Sylvia Plath exclusively, including her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. Twice a week, they’re required to write in a journal about anything they like. When they do, they discover the journal takes them to a place in their lives prior to the trauma they’ve experienced. This is Wolitzer’s first YA novel, and it’s smoothly written, mostly avoiding the writing-down-to-its-audience plague that afflicts a lot of adult writers. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but I liked it a lot. I’ll have a fuller review closer to the publication date.

Conversion by Katherine Howe
This is a stunner. I’m only halfway through and I’m pretty impressed by almost everything about this book. Howe has taken the case of the high school girls and one boy in Le Roy, NY, who were diagnosed with conversion disorder in 2011-2012 and set it in a private girls’ school in Massachusetts. She has then drawn a parallel between this case and that of the Salem witch hysteria in the 17th century, coincidentally set in the same physical location. The book alternates between Colleen Rowley’s story in 2012 and Ann Putnam’s confession in the early 1700s (the only participant to confess, incidentally), though the bulk of the book focuses on Colleen. Interwoven through both stories are themes of academic and societal pressure on teen girls, the close policing of teen girls’ sexuality, and what it takes for teen girls to be seen for their authentic selves and heard in their own voices. This is the second novel (that I know of) to use the Le Roy case as inspiration – Kelly wrote about the other, Megan Abbott’s The Fever, on Tuesday – though Howe’s book is marketed specifically for teens. This is a well-crafted novel that juggles many different parts successfully.

Sunrise by Mike Mullin
I started this a few weeks ago and it’s been a bit of a struggle for me. It’s the conclusion to a trilogy that began with Ashfall and continued with Ashen Winter. This volume focuses, at least initially, on a war of sorts between two communities post-supervolcano. One of them is the community Alex lives in, and the other is a community that attacked them and stole most of their food and supplies. Alex grows into his role as a leader by organizing a raid/attack on the town to regain their food, essential to their continued survival. I think I’m having a hard time getting into it because it’s so bleak. Right off the bat, there’s a large amount of violence and loss, and I’m in the mood for something a little lighter, perhaps.

Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund
I loved For Darkness Shows the Stars, the first book set in this universe, so this was a natural pick for me. Where the first was a re-telling of Persuasion, this one is a re-telling of the Scarlet Pimpernel, set on two islands in the Pacific Ocean post-Reduction. I’m not as familiar with the Scarlet Pimpernel as I am with Persuasion, but so far it hasn’t infringed upon my enjoyment. These books aren’t fast reads for me; they’re books to fall into and savor slowly. Part of what I loved so much about FDStS was the yearning between the two leads. In Across a Star-Swept Sea, we trade in the intense romance for espionage and derring-do. Not a bad trade, but it does mean the book doesn’t feel as emotionally resonant (at least so far).

Unfinished Books, Part Two

June 11, 2014 |

A few more books I couldn’t finish. Read part one here.

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
I started listening to the audio and got to disc seven before I gave up. I found the writing to be very sloppy – repetitive with unnecessary dialogue. There were a lot of moments where the characters recapped what just happened (in a super! excited! voice!) and it made the story drag. I remembered, I didn’t need the refresher. Katherine Kellgren’s normally excellent narration actually made it worse for me, since it heightened the repetitive nature of the text.

Tyger Tyger by Kersten Hamilton
I think the only reason I brought this book home from the library was because of its pretty green cover. Turns out paranormal stories about goblins aren’t really my thing. I never thought they were, but hey. It was worth a shot.

The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher
This is a dystopia about a future where water is scarce and strictly regulated. It practically had my name written all over it, but I found it boring. I gave it 50 pages or so and then gave up.

Dark Mirror by M. J. Putney
This is a historical fantasy (set in two time periods!) that sounds really cool and like it would be right up my alley. Alas, it never grabbed me. Perhaps things didn’t move quickly enough for me.

Above by Leah Bobet
This is a weird book, and weird books are very hit and miss for me. Ultimately, I didn’t have the patience to learn the jargon and the specifics of the world-building, despite the intriguing premise (a group of humans with special powers/mutations live underground, survivors of some sort of apocalyptic event above).

Impossible by Nancy Werlin
I had strong, very negative feelings about this book, which many of my acquaintances rather enjoyed. There was a lot wrong with it, to the point where I wasn’t just bored, I was kind of upset by it. Ultimately, I didn’t believe in the characters’ actions and most of the good stuff happened off the page.

The Great Fables Crossover by Bill Willingham
This is a crossover with Fables and Jack of Fables. It’s also where I learned I loathed Jack of Fables.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The problem with this wasn’t that it wasn’t any good – it was actually too good. Flynn did such a great job of portraying a toxic marriage that it left a bad taste in my mouth and I couldn’t continue after I read the first big twist.