Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis

McGinnis has a lot of breadth as a writer. She’s tackled contemporary fiction about rape culture and the opioid epidemic, historical fiction about an insane asylum (my favorite of hers I’ve read), as well as fantasy and dystopias. In her latest, she tackles the survival story. Ashley is on a camping trip with some friends in the woods near her Tennessee home when she catches her boyfriend hooking up with his ex. Drunk and furious, she punches him in the face and runs off, injuring her foot. When she wakes up, newly sober, she doesn’t know where she is, and she realizes that her friends will think she was upset about her cheating boyfriend and went home. No one will be looking for her. She must make it out on her own.

What sets this book apart from others in its survival genre is the prickliness of its main character (Ashley is not often kind, and her life has been hard) and the extremes she must go to in order to stay alive. McGinnis is explicit in her descriptions, making this book not for the faint of heart. The details about survival in a hostile environment will keep readers hooked, and Ashley’s emotional journey as she spends days with only herself as company, reflecting back on her life, will satisfy fans of character-driven stories. As a collections librarian, I’m always happy when I can add the rare book about a poor teen in rural middle America to our collection.

 

What I Want You to See by Catherine Linka

Sabine is a freshman at the prestigious CALINVA art school in California, having won the full-ride Zoich scholarship for her promise as a painter. But so far she’s failed to impress Colin Krell, famous portrait artist and teacher of her Painting 101 class. He publicly destroys her cruelly in his critiques and makes her think she might lose the scholarship, which is performance-based. He does give her one tip to improve her work, finally: “translate” a painting from a master she admires. For those who, like me, aren’t artists, this means essentially copying a famous piece to better understand the artist’s perspective and technique. So when she runs into grad student Adam whose work-study arrangement gives him access to Krell’s studio, it seems like fate: he offers her the chance to translate Krell’s current work in progress. Krell would never know she was in there, and her own painting would be destroyed at the end, after the end of the exercise. Sabine can’t resist the opportunity to really learn from the master whose work she so admires – especially since he won’t teach her anything useful in class.

Most readers should know where this is going, but Linka is such a good writer that she makes us believe that Sabine wouldn’t know how she’s being duped. Linka turns what could have been a story about a privileged talented white artist on its head by giving Sabine a history of homelessness: when her mother died in a car crash, Sabine was thrown out of her home where her mom worked as a personal assistant to a Hollywood star. Sabine ended up living in her car for months. She is ashamed of this and hides it from almost everyone. It gives dimension to her desire to paint a homeless woman who spends time near the school, an action that would be potentially exploitative without Sabine’s own struggles for context. Linka’s important author’s note at the end explains how widespread homelessness and housing/food insecurity is for college students.

While the mystery concerning Krell’s painting and Sabine’s translation of it is less than surprising, Sabine’s journey is engaging, and the lack of a perfectly happy ending almost made my heart break for her. I also found it fascinating to read about all the different kinds of art Sabine’s classmates were working on, including fashion and mechanical installations. This is a good pick for readers who love art – and might even inspire teens to try their hand at something creative and new.

 

The Vanishing Deep by Astrid Scholte

Sometime in the future, the world has been flooded and people live on what are essentially cobbled-together trash heaps in the middle of the ocean. There are a few small islands here and there, and the one closest to protagonist Tempe is called Palindromena, so called because they have the ability to bring a loved who drowned back to life – but only for 24 hours. Tempe’s sister, Elysea, drowned two years ago, and Tempe now has the Notes to pay for her revival. She plans to get to the bottom of how their parents died – something Elysea’s best friend told Tempe Elysea knew and kept secret from her.

The premise for this book is ludicrous, and it just keeps getting more so as it goes on. There’s a hand-wavy explanation for how the world flooded, and an even hand-wavier explanation for how the revival process works that has zero basis in science. I don’t expect my science fiction to be accurate or possible, but this book really strains suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. And then it just keeps getting worse as the book goes on and more secrets about Palindromena and revival are revealed. This does have the benefit of keeping the reader on her toes – since nothing about the process makes sense, it’s constantly a surprise what’s going to happen next with it.

Yet despite the absurdity of the entire plot, I found myself engaged with the story and its characters. I wanted to know what happened to the girls’ parents, as well as uncover the secrets of Palindromena and its teenage Warden, Lor, who has gotten caught up in the girls’ adventure. The bond between the two sisters rings true, and there is positive asexual representation with Elysea. Read this for the shocking (and entertaining) twists and turns, not for the world-building or any internal logic.