Over at Book Riot this week . . .
I’m also really, really thrilled to share this piece. I was asked months ago to write about my experience with depression for To Write Love On Her Arms. Here it is: 5 Lies Depression Told Me.
It’s time for another round-up of debut YA novels of the month.
Like always, this round-up includes debut novels, where “debut” is in its purest definition. These are first-time books by first-time authors. I’m not including books by authors who are using or have used a pseudonym in the past or those who have written in other categories (adult, middle grade, etc.) in the past.
All descriptions are from WorldCat, unless otherwise noted. If I’m missing any debuts out in September from traditional publishers — and I should clarify that indie presses are okay — let me know in the comments. As always, not all noted titles included here are necessarily endorsements for those titles.
The Distance From Me to You by Marina Gessner: McKenna and her best friend planned for over a year to defer their freshman year of college to hike the Appalachian Trail all the way from Maine to Georgia, so when her friend backs out McKenna embarks alone on a physical and emotional journey that will change her life forever.
First & Then by Emma Mills: Devon is a high school senior, wondering if she really wants to go to college, what to do with her cousin Foster (a freshman) who has moved in with her family in Florida, and whether she likes Ezra, the stuck-up football star at her school, or cannot stand him.
An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes by Randy Ribay: As their senior year approaches, four diverse friends joined by their weekly Dungeons & Dragons game struggle to figure out real life. Archie’s trying to cope with the lingering effects of his parents’ divorce, Mari’s considering an opportunity to contact her biological mother, Dante’s working up the courage to come out to his friends, and Sam’s clinging to a failing relationship. The four eventually embark on a cross-country road trip in an attempt to solve–or to avoid–their problems
It’s A Wonderful Death by Sarah J. Schmitt: Seventeen-year-old RJ always gets what she wants. So when her soul is accidentally collected by a distracted Grim Reaper, somebody in the afterlife better figure out a way to send her back from the dead or heads will roll
Romancing the Dark in the City of Light by Ann Jacobus: A troubled American teen, living in Paris, is torn between two boys, one of whom encourages her to embrace life, while the other–dark, dangerous, and attractive–urges her to embrace her fatal flaws.
Underneath Everything by Marcy Beller Paul: Mattie discovers surprising things about herself and her long-term best friends when she decides she has had enough of her self-imposed isolation from most of the school and two of her three friends, reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, and enjoys all the parties senior year has to offer.
We’ll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean: Haunted by memories of the fire that killed her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Alice Monroe is in a mental ward when, with support from fellow patient Chase, she begins to confront hidden truths in a journal, including that the only person she trusts may be telling her only half of the story.
Willful Machines by Tim Floreen: In a near-future America, a sentient computer program named Charlotte has turned terrorist, but Lee Fisher, the closeted son of an ultraconservative President, is more concerned with keeping his Secret Service detail from finding out about his developing romance with Nico, the new guy at school, but when the spider-like robots that roam the school halls begin acting even stranger than usual, Lee realizes he is Charlotte’s next target.
Now that I’m selecting children’s materials for a large public library system, I’m looking through review journals and publisher catalogs a lot. This means it’s easier for me to spot cover, title, or plot trends than it was in my previous position. The one that’s stood out to me most recently is the phrase “real life” used somewhere in the title; I find this interesting since it implies there’s a “fake life” the characters could be leading. Most of these book titles refer to online lives or lives led on some other screen (like the Castle). Here’s a tip for writers and editors: if you’d like your next book to stand out, don’t title it In Real Life. Just a thought.
All descriptions are via Worldcat unless noted otherwise.
Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff (May 2014)
The lives of two Minnesota teenagers are intertwined through the world of role-playing games.
You Look Different in Real Life by Jennifer Castle (June 2013)
Five teens starring in a documentary film series about their ordinary lives must grapple with questions of change and identity under the scrutiny of the camera.
In Real Life by Cory Doctorow (October 2014)
Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively-multiplayer role playing game that she spends most of her free time on. It’s a place where she can be a leader, a fighter, a hero. It’s a place where she can meet people from all over the world, and make friends. But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer — a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person’s real livelihood is at stake. [Kelly’s review]
In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World by Joey Graceffa (nonfiction, May 2015)
A confessional, uplifting memoir from the beloved YouTube personality. It’s not where you begin that matters. It’s where you end up. Twenty-three year old Joey Graceffa has captured the hearts of millions of teens and young adults through his playful, sweet, and inspirational YouTube presence (not to mention his sparkling eyes and perfect hair). Yet, Joey wasn’t always comfortable in his skin, and in this candid memoir, he thoughtfully looks back on his journey from pain to pride, self-doubt to self-acceptance.
In Real Life by Jessica Love (March 2016)
Hannah Cho and Nick Cooper have been best friends since 8th grade. They talk for hours on the phone, regularly shower each other with presents, and know everything there is to know about one another. There’s just one problem: Hannah and Nick have never actually met. Hannah has spent her entire life doing what she’s supposed to, but when her senior year spring break plans get ruined by a rule-breaker, she decides to break a rule or two herself. She impulsively decides to road trip to Vegas, her older sister and BFF in tow, to surprise Nick and finally declare her more-than-friend feelings for him. [Description via Goodreads]
In Real Life by Lawrence Tabak (November 2014)
Fifteen-year-old math prodigy Seth Gordon hopes to compete professionally playing Starfare, the world’s most popular computer game, but when he gets the chance to move to Korea and train full-time, he may not be ready for the culture shock and leaving his possible girlfriend, Hannah.
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
Ahdieh gives us one of a slew of recent stories inspired in some way by the Arabian Nights, and it’s a strong one. Teens who know a bit about the frame story of Scheherazade will love the twist Ahdieh puts on it, while those completely ignorant of it will have no trouble becoming invested. Shahrzad’s best friend was killed by eighteen year old Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan, after he took her as his wife. He has taken dozens of wives and none of them has survived beyond the morning after their wedding day. Shahrzad intends to become his next wife – but not his next victim. Instead, she plans to take revenge. Readers will know from the beginning that Khalid is not the murderer he is believed to be – a prologue gives this bit away, so it’s meant to be known – but unraveling just why the girls all end up dead and how (if) Shahrzad can put a stop to it is great fun to read about. It’s also a romance, of course, which is also not unexpected, but it’s a good one. The setting is especially well-drawn (the food!). This is a solid story with lots of appeal.
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
I’ll confess something: I have never read anything by Holly Black before this. But immediately upon starting it, I was struck by the level of craft apparent; it’s obvious why she’s so highly-regarded. This novel is one of the best-constructed I’ve read in a while, and I found myself marveling frequently at how neatly and effortlessly the story built, layer upon layer. Hazel and Ben live in Fairfold; so do the fairies. The human inhabitants know that the fairies are mostly benign and will only hurt those who don’t follow the rules – tourists, mainly. And if a Fairfold resident is harmed or killed every once in a while, well, they were probably doing something they shouldn’t have. But then the horned prince who has rested in the glass coffin in the middle of the forest wakes, and the Fairfold citizens seem to be fair game. Is the prince, whom both Hazel and Ben thought themselves in love with when he slept, behind it? It’s difficult to give a pithy plot description for this book, because it has a lot going on. Hazel and Ben once hunted fairies, Ben was cursed/blessed with a knowledge of fairy music as a small child, Hazel once made a terrible bargain with one of the Fair Folk, one of the teenage boys is actually a Changeling that the human family decided to keep, and so on. There’s a really rich background to the story, and it all feeds in to the main plotline featuring the horned prince. Fairfold is so well-realized and the characters so well-drawn; fans of urban fantasy and stories about often-malevolent fairies should snap this one up.
Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge
I loved Rosamund Hodge’s first book, Cruel Beauty, to pieces. I loved her writing and her complex plotting and how the book was familiar (fairy tale influenced) yet managed to take me by surprise, too. Crimson Bound is the same – it’s Little Red Riding Hood, but darker than even the original story. That’s something I love about Hodge’s writing: she’s not afraid to give her characters real darkness. Her protagonist in Crimson Bound is a murderer, a girl who has been given terrible, unwanted gifts due to a mistake she made as a young teen. She hopes to atone by finding the sword that could destroy the evil threatening her country, but she’s haunted by what she’s done, what she’s capable of doing, and what she wants to do – as well as what she is becoming, something even worse than what she is. This is a fairy tale mash-up and retelling, a quest story, and a romance (of sorts) all in one, but none of those threads coalesce in a way you’d expect, a hallmark of Hodge’s storytelling. Go into this one without knowing a huge amount of the plot and prepare to be whisked away.
October is on track to be the best reading month of 2015 for me. I’m not particularly surprised, though. Since I track my reading, it looks to me like this is a regular occurrence: every October I tend to read more books than in other months. Part of it is that the weather always seems to give me more energy, and the other part is that I tend to let myself read more than one book at a time, since I love trying to read as many horror novels as possible, in addition to my regular reads.
Instead of talking about those horror reads, though, here’s a look at two recent YA novels I devoured. One of these came out recently, and the other will be hitting shelves shortly. They’re both novels featuring characters who aren’t your typical white girls, and both are the kinds of stories that will really resonate with teen readers.
One by Sarah Crossan
Grace and Tippi are conjoined twins. Their bodies are connected from the hip downward, and they’ve been operating as two girls in one shared body for their entire lives. But now that money is tight at home, they’re being sent to a special private school, paid for by the state. Entering a new school has both girls concerned about how others will look at them, react to them, and treat them. Lucky for them, they find two new friends — maybe one who is a little more than a friend to Grace — who accept them and help them make the transition more smoothly.
It’s anything but smooth, though, as both girls begin feeling their body/ies falling ill. It starts slowly, but then things begin to get more serious. And when a visit to their specialist doctor reveals there’s a serious problem, they and their family have to make the decision on whether or not it’s time to surgically separate them.
Told in verse, Crossan develops a really thought-provoking, sympathetic, and emotionally-engaging story about Grace and Tippi. This is the kind of book readers who want a tear-jerker will love, since it’s going to bring tears throughout.
More than being a story about the conjoined twins, though, this book looks at the whole life of the girls. We see how their parents struggle with keeping a job and an income. We see a father succumbing to alcoholism. We see a younger sister whose life has been upended time and time again because of the needs of her conjoined sisters. Where many would see this as a novel packed with a lot of things, Crossan weaves these threads together effortlessly and shows how stories about “big things” like conjoined twins are never confined to a single narrative. There are so many elements that are a part of their lives outside of their body/ies, and Crossan offers us such a nice picture of that. One of the things Grace talks about is how she and her sister get tired of answering intrusive questions, and by offering an insight into the bigger, more life-altering elements of their lives, we as readers are forced to pause and wonder why it is we’re curious about the weird things, rather than empathetic about the whole picture.
One should also be applauded for having a beautiful design. This is a book you want to read in print because the verse is laid out elegantly, but more, the little design elements throughout really do pack a punch. The silhouette on the cover goes throughout the story, and it is one of the pieces that will further the need for a tissue at the end of the story. A smart, fast, and engaging read for readers who are curious about twins, conjoined twins, verse novels, and more. One is available now.
See No Color by Shannon Gibney (November 1)
Alex has never thought about the fact she’s a mixed-race girl who was adopted by a white family. She’s never put too much thought about the fact she has both a younger brother and sister who are white, born from the mother and father who adopted her after thinking they could never have children. Alex’s big driver in life has been being the great baseball player that her father has pushed her toward being. After his own career as a potential big leaguer in Milwaukee falls apart, he pours all of his energy into making Alex and her brother the next big stars on the field.
Her game, though, begins slipping. And when Alex’s game begins slipping, she begins to pay more and more attention to her racial status. She begins hearing what people say about her and more, she begins to think about the lies she tells people, including the black boy she’s met and begins taking a shine to. Where other people regularly say they don’t see her race, Alex begins to understand that’s not necessarily a compliment. Yet she’s not quite sure what to think of herself, either.
Alex begins to spend more time with her black boyfriend’s family, and she begins to really think about blackness as part of her identity. She also discovers, through the aid of her sister, the name of her real father, and she takes it upon herself to drive out and visit him in Michigan — where she’s confronted again with the reality of her black identity. These are situations in which she’s uncomfortable, but they’re ones that force her and the reader to understand that her black identity matters. There’s a particularly moving scene where Alex goes to a black beauty shop for the first time and learns — really learns — how her hair and her looks require a different sort of treatment that she has to learn for herself. But more, what this scene reveals is that her white family has to step back and recognize and acknowledge blackness as a part of her identity, too.
This fast-paced, shorter novel packs a punch. Transracial adoption, black identity, baseball, and romance all play a part in the story, but they’re not the whole of Alex’s story. This slice-of-life story will resonate with so many readers, including more reluctant ones, so make sure you find space on your shelf for it and more, make sure this is the kind of book you’re promoting and book talking with readers. There is much to dig into here, and it’s timely, relevant, and more, it’s timeless. Gibney doesn’t offer a time period setting in this one, though as a reader, I found it to be set in the late 90s or early 00s, simply because of a lack of technology/access to technology. But that lack of true time setting is a benefit to the story, as it furthers the themes as ones that always resonate.
Pair this book with Renee Watson’s This Side of Home. They’d make for outstanding conversation about race, identity, and family. Hannah Gomez wrote in depth about this title over on her blog, and because she can talk about things I cannot in terms of experience, I highly recommend reading her take on this book, too (it’s positive!).