STACKED

books

Cress by Marissa Meyer

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Meyer knows so well how to write a good series. Focusing on a different character for each book is such a brilliant way to tell a larger story. I feel like we get all the benefits of a series without sacrificing the good things about a standalone. Each volume provides a satisfying beginning, middle, and end with a unique storyline. Then we also get a larger, overreaching plot that brings things to a more epic level – plus the chance to revisit and follow characters we grew to love from the prior volumes. I know Meyer isn’t the first to do this, but it works really well for her.

While I enjoyed Scarlet, I think Cress is even better. It uses Rapunzel as its springboard, focusing on a girl named Cress who lives in a satellite and spies on the Earthens for Queen Levana. Her hair grows long because she has no need to cut it. She has connections to Cinder, as you’d expect, which are teased out over the course of the story. As in Cinder, some of the major plot revelations are expected – but not all.

Cress as a character is different from both Cinder and Scarlet. She’s incredibly naive due to her situation – she’s never been out in the world and has no clue how to interact with anyone other than her captors. With no one around to keep her company, she’s taken to fantasizing about the people she spies on, namely Carswell Thorne. It’s easy to admire someone from afar, to create elaborate stories about them in your head. It can be very difficult to then reconcile the person as they are with the person you imagined them to be. Such is Cress’ dilemma. Cress and Thorne’s interactions are often funny but also quite painful (secondhand embarrassment is a killer for me). Cress herself is socially awkward, and not really in a “I’m a special snowflake” sort of way. She’s awkward in a way that makes you cringe. She’s awkward in a way that I know teen girls can relate to.

Cress is full of action and excitement. These books are long but never feel long. The major plot is furthered nicely. Nothing feels extraneous or makes you think “Wow, I can really tell this is a middle book in a series.” And the end of this volume has a fantastic tease for Winter, due out in 2015. So far, this series hasn’t disappointed.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Cress is available now.

Links of Note: May 3, 2014

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Anna’s contribution to #WeNeedDiverseBooks

It’s been a crazy few weeks on my side of the (non) internet world, so my links of note post this week is a little shorter than normal. But since I didn’t do one a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to have a few things for this week to make up for it. If there’s been great reading around the web recently, I want to know about it, so feel free to link me in the comments to things I shouldn’t miss.

I guess, too, it’s worth mentioning that I got on Printz for 2016 (!!!). A huge, tremendous thank you goes out to everyone who helped me get on the ballot by petitioning for me, and a huge thank you goes out to everyone who voted for me. I’m so excited about this opportunity, and I’m excited because the other three people who were elected — Lali, Paige, and Frankie — are three excellent fellow committee members. I’ve known Lali and Paige for a couple of years, and Frankie served on Outstanding Books last year (though we never got to work together because we were on different subcommittees).

That said, here’s some worthwhile reading:

  • Are you a fan of Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries? To honor the series anniversary, which is coming up soon, Cabot announced that she’s publishing a middle grade and an adult novel to continue the story. Neat! 
  • Molly Wetta wrote a really nice reader’s advisory guide to books for fans of John Green. I had mentioned in my presentation in Connecticut this week that I think John Green might be the hardest contemporary author to find read alikes to because it’s not always easy for people to express what it is they like about Green’s books. Molly does an excellent job breaking down appeal factors and offering great ideas for next reads. 

My work elsewhere:

  • Over at Book Riot, I wrote about the “slut shelves” discussion Alexandra Duncan kicked off, and I dug into how we do disservice to girls and girl reading. This is a piece I’m pretty damn proud of. Good and thought-provoking comments, too! 

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

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It’s nearing the end of high school and big changes are brewing in Emi’s life. Her brother’s gone overseas, leaving his apartment to her and her best friend for the summer. Her best friend will be moving to Michigan come fall to go to school, and Emi’s brother’s single expectation for his sister is to “do something epic” in the apartment that summer. To make a memory that will stay with her forever.

She will, but it won’t be in the way she expects.

A little about Emi: she works in film, but she’s not an actress nor a director. Her role is working on the design and arrangement of the set. When the story opens, she’s in the midst of acquiring a couch she thinks will be perfect for a scene in the film she’s working on. She haunts estate sales and flea markets and thrift stores in order to find those pieces that will make a set sing.

And it’s while she’s doing this that bigger things unravel for her. She’s found herself at the estate sale of a former western actor who was well known in his day for his work. While procuring possible items for a set, Emi and best friend Charlotte discover a letter addressed to a woman who lives not too far away. The two of them decide it’s their duty to deliver the letter.

Of course, it’s not going to be that easy. When they arrive at the addressee’s home, they discover that she is no longer alive, either. So they choose to open the letter, and upon further research, Emi and Charlotte realize there’s a lot more to this letter than they thought — and they choose to pursue any and all leads possible to get the letter (and subsequent information about a bank account) to the person it most belongs to: the granddaughter of the deceased western star, Ava.

While it sounds like a mystery, Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You is not. It’s a love story. Ava, the girl who the letter eventually gets to, becomes a romantic interest for Emi early on. Emi, who is nursing the wounds of an on again off again relationship with Morgan, wonders whether she’ll ever fall in love with someone who cares about her as much as she cares about them. And it’s something she’ll continue to wonder as she becomes closer to Ava, even as she allows herself to have the feelings she does for Ava without pursuing them.

The world LaCour creates in her novel is worth noting. There’s an appearance of privilege and freedom, but it’s done in a way that feels real and authentic to the story. Emi and Charlotte live in an apartment by themselves, but now that they’re done with high school, it makes sense that they have that freedom. Both girls have a lot of freedom to move around and do what they want to, but both girls also work. Work is a big part of their lives, in a really positive way. They have jobs which seem strange for teenagers to have — especially when Emi manages to land a new gig being the director of design — but for two girls living in Los Angeles, it’s also not a piece of the plot that feels impossible. It’s just the lives they lead.

Ava, on the other hand, lives a very different life than Emi and Charlotte. She comes from a different world, where her life has been a series of chaoses and instability. But what makes her so standout is she not only recognizes and owns that part of her, but she is who she is because she’s able to live her own life in spite of those things. Her best friend Jamal she met because the two of them had to take the same bus to get to work everyday, and that lengthy bus trip allowed them to talk and get to know one another. And while Jamal looks like he plays a minor role in the story, I enjoyed his presence and would have loved even more. Jamal wasn’t easy. He didn’t play around. And he was willing to call people out and force them to dig deeper into who they were.

It’s because of Jamal that we learn Emi is not entirely white. That despite her skin looking white, she’s one-fourth black. This scene, dropped into the book nearly two-thirds of the way through, isn’t splashy nor some kind of big reveal. It’s a fact-laying scene, but it’s woven and incorporated so well that it made me want more from Jamal because clearly, he had a way of getting people to give of themselves. While Ava had made it clear he was a great person, it’s in this scene we see Emi discover it herself.

We know Emi and Ava find one another through this letter, but it’s when Emi is offered a part as a design director in a small, low-budget film that their relationship becomes something more. Ava had always wanted to act, and Emi tells her about the film’s need for a female to play one of the parts. After an audition, the part becomes Ava’s, and the two of them work together closely as Ava learns her lines and as Emi works on designing the look of the scenes — which leads her to offering the apartment she’s living in as one of the apartments for the film.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was how Emi’s need to solve the mysteries of Ava’s life tied into her role in putting together films. Emi, as a person who assists in designing sets, was reluctant to listen to those who told her some of her ideas wouldn’t work well in the particular scenes being filmed. She thought her ideas were perfect, and she becomes upset when those around her prove their vision to be more correct than hers. She’s less happy being a spectator than she is being the person who gets to direct the entire look and feel. So when Emi realizes she can’t solve the issues of Ava’s life, that she has to accept the fact that Ava’s challenges and means of resolving her problems fall squarely into the hands of Ava and not her, she has a hard time accepting this role. It’s not that she’s a control freak; it’s that it comes hard for her to accept that not every problem and not every puzzle is one she can nor should attempt to solve all on her own. Despite the independence and freedom she has in her life, she can’t expect the same from those around her. Things do and will come up that force her to see that not everything can nor should be handed to her. She sometimes has to step back from directing and sit back to be a spectator in order to to see an entire scene come alive.

While I didn’t love the way that everything relating to Ava’s discovery came as easily as it did — even the dead ends were resolved a little too quickly and cleanly for me — I loved the way that she and Emi became girlfriends. Ava offered Emi more than one opportunity to act upon her feelings, but it wasn’t immediate. Emi was more reluctant, more put off because of her own past relationships, than Ava was, but it was ultimately Ava who showed her it was okay to pursue those feelings.

That epic summer adventure in Emi’s brother’s apartment was, of course, Emi falling in love.

LaCour weaves in the set design metaphor quite nicely. The actors in any film are important, but as Emi explains early on, what people tend to overlook when watching a film, are the ways that the spaces the actors play in are created, designed, and used to enhance their story lines. Those interiors are things that are present, that are thought about, that are developed and redeveloped, in a way that’s not always seen on the screen, despite how hugely important they are in the film and to the characters playing in those spaces.

The interior, of course, is love and how it’s created and recreated, how it’s fashioned and refashioned, how it’s carefully constructed and then reconstructed. The actors matter, but they only matter as much as the thing holding them together. In this case, it doesn’t matter at all that it’s one girl falling in love with another girl. What matters is that it’s something holding them together.

Everything Leads to You is a love story, with a full cast of well-rendered characters and a setting that comes alive. This one will especially appeal to older YA readers and those who never saw — or don’t see right now — high school as the kind of thing they’re invested in too deeply. Readers who want a story with heart will want to pick this up, as will those readers who are seeking lesbian romance stories and finding that the bulk of them are less focused on the love and more focused on what that love might look like to others. Here, those cameras aren’t even part of the story.

Everything Leads to You will be available May 15. Review copy received from the publisher.

Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

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I dug Fama’s part-historical fiction, part-ghost story Monstrous Beauty. Plus One is a major departure from it, though it’s still within the SFF genre. It postulates an alternate history where the Spanish flu separated American society into two groups of people. The Rays live during the day and sleep at night. The Smudges live during the night and sleep during the day. It’s an interesting premise that isn’t fully explained until pretty far into the novel, requiring a rather hefty suspension of disbelief.

Sol is a Smudge. She may have had potential at some point in her young life, but she occupies a dead end job in a factory now. She hatches a stupid and desperate plan to go steal her brother’s child – the brother who had been born a Smudge but was transferred to day – from the hospital during the daytime so that her dying grandfather – also a Smudge – can hold it before he passes. Things take off from there and don’t really ever slow down. It seemed to me that the entire novel takes place within the span of a few days.

Her kissing partner from the book’s cover is a day boy named D’Arcy whom she meets at the hospital while undertaking her foolish plan. He’s privileged, studying to be a doctor, and has powerful parents. He initially tries to foil Sol’s plan, but then becomes caught up in it, and the two fall in love (bet you didn’t see that coming).

There are a lot of little details that I liked. The society has a French flavor, which is not something I’ve seen before. I thought the setup of the day/night divide was an interesting way to explore privilege and class, though it strained my credulity and I didn’t ever really buy it. The explanation came too late for me. (Yet I didn’t care about Delirium‘s farfetched-ness. Go figure.) The love story is nice and features a pretty empowering (non-explicit) sex scene that I think will resonate with many teenagers. There’s some nice emotional moments between Sol and her grandfather and a complicated, thorny history between Sol and her brother as well.

Fama’s writing is good – she has a way with words. But all in all I just don’t think this story felt as polished as Monstrous Beauty, which juggled two time periods expertly. There are frequent flashbacks in Plus One that slow the pace considerably, though they’re interesting and provide necessary backstory. (I’m a tough reader for flashbacks; they’re too easily skimmed. I dislike them almost as much as I dislike dream sequences and visions.) The world-building wasn’t as strong as I wanted it to be. I liked the book; I didn’t love it. It’s a solid entry in what seems to be the moderately popular subgenre of alternate histories, though, and if you have readers who dig that sort of thing, this should interest them.

(P. S. – This book is not a dystopia.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Plus One is available now.

TLA Trends

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I was able to attend TLA (the Texas Library Association annual conference) for a day earlier in April and walk the exhibit hall for a bit. I always enjoy talking to the publicists and other staff there to see what their favorites are and what they think is going to be hot in the coming months. I grabbed several titles that looked interesting, and a staff person at the Penguin booth even convinced me to give a few contemporary titles a try. (Please contain your gasps of astonishment.)

I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a few observations – trends for the upcoming seasons, what titles are really being pushed, what’s not being pushed at all. Synopses are from Worldcat or Goodreads. My comments are in brackets.

What’s Hot With the Staff

The publicists and other staff there (I’m never quite sure what their titles are!) were really pushing the contemporary realistic titles. My first stop was at the Penguin booth, where I asked one staff person’s personal favorites and she talked up Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun, Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar, and Katherine Howe’s Conversion. The staff at Harper were really pushing Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern (the fact they compare it to John Green and Rainbow Rowell means it’s one of their darlings). Also talked up big was Alex Mallory’s Wild.


At the Tor booth, one of the staff told me that Ben Tripp’s The Accidental Highwayman was her favorite of the fall list and compared it to the Princess Bride. A couple of horror titles being pushed were Michael Grant’s Messenger of Fear and Micol Ostow’s Amity.

What’s Not There

I asked a lot about fantasy, science fiction, and horror titles, and to be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot that the staff were eager to recommend. I think this may have to do with the fact that there are a bunch of sequels coming out now, rather than series starters or standalones. I did ask specifically about science fiction a couple of places and was met with regretful apologies – there’s just not much there. (I’m kind of surprised by this since I’ve read quite a few fascinating SF titles recently.) They seemed much more eager to talk about the contemporary realistic titles; those seemed to be what resonated with a lot of the staff.

There’s definitely been a significant decrease in the number of dystopian and post-apocalyptic titles as well. I noticed more high fantasy than hard sci fi, which is pretty exciting to me (I love both, but high fantasy is my original love). That said, I did pick up some interesting galleys in all genres, which I’ll talk more about below.

I tried to keep an eye out for books (particularly SFF books) featuring people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ characters. There were a few, but I didn’t really notice them being singled out and hand-sold. One exception was Sarah Tregay’s Fan Art, which features a gay teenage boy. I’ll talk a bit about these books featuring more diverse characters in my list of trends and other observations below.

Re-tellings

Re-tellings are alive and well in summer and fall of 2014. Fairy tales, legends, classics, myths – they’re all being re-worked in new and interesting ways.

Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine (August 2014)
There are whispers of a
ghost in the slaughterhouse where sixteen-year-old Wen assists her
father in his medical clinic—a ghost who grants wishes to those who need
them most. When one of the Noor, men hired as cheap factory labor,
humiliates Wen, she makes an impulsive wish of her own, and the Ghost
grants it. Brutally.

Guilt-ridden, Wen befriends the Noor,
including their outspoken leader, a young man named Melik. At the same
time, she is lured by the mystery of the Ghost and learns he has been
watching her … for a very long time. [This is a re-telling of the Phantom of the Opera; the main character is Asian.]

Of Monsters and Madness by Jessica Verday (September 2014)
In 1820s Philadelphia, a girl finds herself in the midst of a rash of
gruesome murders in which her father and his alluring assistant might be
implicated. [This is a reimagining, in some ways at least, of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s stories.]

Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann (September 2014)
Christine Heppermann’s powerful collection of free verse poems explore
how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, their
friends–as consumers, as objects, as competitors. Based on classic
fairy tale characters and fairy tale tropes, the poems range from
contemporary retellings to first person accounts set within the original
stories. [We’re giving away a finished copy of this as part of our five year anniversary giveaway!]

Stitching Snow by R. C. Lewis (October 2014)
A futuristic retelling of Snow White in which seventeen-year-old Essie, a
master at repairing robots and drones on the frozen mining planet
Thanda, is pulled into a war by handsome and mysterious Dane after his
shuttle crash-lands near her home.

Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay (December 2014)
After ten years of exile among fairies who teach her to use her
magically-enhanced strength and courage, Sleeping Beauty’s daughter
Aurora enlists the help of Niklaas, eleventh son of King Eldorio, in the
fight to reclaim her throne.

Survival 

I think a lot of these stories spring from the post-apocalyptic trend, but they’re set in present day and don’t always involve the usual culprits (technology run amok, global warming, etc.).

Nil by Lynne Matson (available now)
Transported through a “gate” to the mysterious island of Nil,
seventeen-year-old Charley has 365 days to escape–or she will die. [Like Lost but not as fun. I’m trying to read it now and finding it rough going.]

Wild by Alex Mallory (July 2014)
When Cade, a boy who has lived in the forest his whole life, saves a
regular teen from a bear attack, he is brought into modern civilization
for the first time. [Publicist described this as a modern Tarzan story.]

The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan (August 2014)
In this fast-paced
survival story set in Hawaii, electronics fail worldwide, the islands
become completely isolated, and a strange starscape fills the sky.
Leilani and her father embark on a nightmare odyssey from Oahu to their
home on the Big Island. Leilani’s epilepsy holds a clue to the disaster,
if only they can survive as the islands revert to earlier ways. [Features a half-white, half-native Hawaiian protagonist.]

Plagues and Epidemics 

This is a trend that’s been going strong for a while (think Morris finalist In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters and The Program by Suzanne Young). Authors seem particularly entranced by the Spanish flu epidemic.

A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier (available now)
When the Spanish influenza epidemic reaches Portland, Oregon, in 1918,
17-year-old Cleo leaves behind the comfort of her boarding school to
work for the Red Cross.

Conversion by Katherine Howe (July 2014)
When girls start experiencing strange tics and other mysterious symptoms
at Colleen’s high school, her small town of Danvers, Massachusetts,
falls victim to rumors that lead to full-blown panic, and only Colleen
connects their fate to the ill-fated Salem Village, where another group
of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago.

Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson (September 2014)
Emily Bird is an African American high school senior in Washington D.C.,
member of a privileged medical family, on the verge of college and the
edge of the drug culture, and not really sure which way she will
go–then one day she wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what
happened. [This synopsis doesn’t mention that the book heavily features a widespread flu virus.]

High Fantasy Picks 

There were some intriguing high fantasy offerings that didn’t fit into any of the above categories.

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis (June 2014)
A seventeen-year-old boy finds that every time he closes his eyes, he is
drawn into the body of a mute servant girl from another world–a world
that is growing increasingly more dangerous, and where many things are
not as they seem. [Characters in this book are disabled, LGBTQ, and people of color.]

The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas (August 2014)
After returning to Eton College, Titus makes a shocking discovery in his
mother’s diary that causes him to question everything he believed about
his and Iolanthe’s mission. [Sequel to the Burning Sky]

Lark Rising by Sandra Waugh (September 2014)  
Sixteen-year-old Lark sets out on a journey to help her village fight
off monsters called Troths and learns she is the Guardian of Life, fated
to recover a powerful amulet from the Breeders of Chaos. 

The Fire Artist by Daisy Whitney (October 2014)
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. [Features a protagonist of Greek ancestry.]

Snow Like Ashes by Sarah Raasch (October 2014)
Orphaned Meira, a fierce chakram-wielding warrior from the Kingdom of
Winter, must struggle to free her people from the tyranny of an opposing
kingdom while also protecting her own destiny.

Other Good Stuff

Below are a few other titles that I’m excited to read and share with patrons and readers.

Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter (May 2014)
Tagus is a medical slave who wants be a gladiator, Lucia is the daughter
of Tag’s owner and betrothed to an older man, and the two teenagers are
in love with each other–but it is the year 79 and soon Vesuvius will
alter their lives forever. [I’m such a sucker for historical fiction like this. I loved reading about doomed places as a teen – Atlantis, Pompeii, Troy, anything.]

V is for Villain by Peter Moore (May 2014)
Brad Baron is used to
looking lame compared to his older brother, Blake. Though Brad’s
basically a genius, Blake is a superhero in the elite Justice Force. And
Brad doesn’t measure up at his high school, either, where powers like
super-strength and flying are the norm. So when Brad makes friends who
are more into political action than weight lifting, he’s happy to join a
new crew-especially since it means spending more time with Layla, a
girl who may or may not have a totally illegal, totally secret
super-power. And with her help, Brad begins to hone a dangerous new
power of his own.

The Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Robers (September 2014)
After a powerful new drug causes havoc and deadly addiction,
seventeen-year-old Faye trains to take revenge on those who took her
future and murdered the boy she loved. [I think this is a super intriguing title. I’m less sold on the synopsis, but I’ll give it a shot.]

Loop by Karen Akins (October 2014)
A time traveler
accidentally brings a boy from the past into the 23rd century, only to
discover he’s already in love with her future self and is keeping his
own set of secrets. [I will never tire of time travel in my fiction. Always fascinating!]

Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers (November 2014)
Annith’s worst fears are realized when she discovers that, despite her
lifelong training to be an assassin, she is being groomed by the abbess
as a Seeress, to be forever shut up in the convent of Saint Mortain. [This was quite possibly the title I was most excited to snag.]