Fixing Delilah
Author: Sarah Ockler
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780316052092
Publication date: 1 December 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Summary
One night Delilah Hannaford sneaks back into her room after a late-night tryst with her non-boyfriend to find her mother waiting for her. Delilah’s grandmother, whom she hasn’t seen or spoken to in eight years, has died, so Delilah’s mother and aunt must return to their childhood home to settle the Hannaford matriarch’s estate–and Delilah will be going along, spending her entire summer in the tiny town of Red Falls.
Delilah’s not sure she can handle being taken away from her friends and being cooped up with her too-driven, too-perfect vice-president-of-marketing mother, and to make matters worse, her family’s return to Red Falls means confronting the secrets in her family everyone keeps trying to push under the rug. Delilah’s never been able to find out what started the fight eight years ago that caused her mother and aunt to break off ties with her grandmother, and when they return to the house in Red Falls, she also realizes she’s staying in the room that used to belong to Stephanie, her other aunt who died at nineteen before Delilah was even born. She’s never been able to get her mom to talk about Stephanie, and her life and death are shrouded in mystery. As her remaining family digs through their past, Delilah’s not sure she can cope with all the secrets anymore.
To make matters even more complicated, Delilah’s return to Red Falls also turns out to mean her return to Little Ricky–now grown-up Patrick Reese–whom she spent her summers with as a child. But their relationship isn’t as uncomplicated as it was before and Delilah finds herself falling for him. But what does that mean for her non-boyfriend back home? And could Patrick ever feel the same way, or have the last eight years of not seeing one another driven them too far apart?
My thoughts
The cover of the ARC I received
When this book first arrived, I almost didn’t even read it. The cover of the ARC did absolutely nothing for me and in conjunction with the original title (Fixing Delilah Hannaford), it just screamed “BORING AND ALSO WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO CAN’T WRITE FOR TEENS AND HAS COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE A TEEN.” I’m not sure why, but together they evoked some sort of horrible combination of Reviving Ophelia and White Oleander and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the time reading a story that someone decided The Teens Should Really Hear about some sort of musty old family stories no one cared about in the first place.
But I give books fifty pages, and after fifty pages I’d realized I’d unfairly judged the book by its cover. The title is still a little misleading: it and the summary on the back of the book would have you believe that Delilah’s being dragged away for the summer in some sort of effort to reform her, but it’s more just that her mom is a single mom and she has to settle the grandmother’s estate, so Delilah has to go, too. Her mother talks about Delilah making a fresh start, but she’s not particularly bent on “fixing” Delilah through her own intervention or anything. In fact, Delilah’s biggest problem with her mom is that her mom is so hands-off, so wrapped up in her own work she doesn’t have time for family. The story itself is really about Delilah repairing her relationship with her mother by discovering her family’s story. It’s about the three remaining Hannaford women becoming a family again after all of the things that have happened to them.
There are some trite scenes and imagery, like when Delilah and Patrick share a climactic make-out session during a fireworks show and at the end, everyone is clapping and Delilah feels like it’s for them instead of the fireworks, or when at the end, Delilah compares a porcelain figurine that’s been broken and glued back together to her family with its own cracks and repairs. But there are also some lovely passages and phrases, things like “our voices entwined in a thick, slow-cooked stew of memories and events and scents and sayings” as Delilah and her aunt share family memories.
I also couldn’t believe that Delilah didn’t see that Patrick was falling for her, too, so the “oh no maybe they won’t be together after all” twist that showed up near the end felt artificial. And when Stephanie’s mysterious lost diary was mentioned in the first forty pages, how could the reader not immediately know that Delilah would find it and that the diary would be instrumental in unraveling the Hannaford family secrets? But some of the actual twists and turns as Delilah discovers her family’s past did surprise me, and the final story about what happened to the Hannaford women was complex enough to feel real.
I think I might not be doing Fixing Delilah justice here because this isn’t my type of book, but I think it’s an excellent example of a relationship- and emotion-driven story about family. The relationships were rich and real, and the characters were detailed and deep. There’s a good dose of romance and mystery mixed in to the story, too, which should widen the appeal.
So despite some weaknesses in writing and structure, overall this was a surprisingly sweet summer story about family and friends and identity. Delilah isn’t really fixed so much as she discovers herself through her family and uses that knowledge to move forward and grow. There’s a lot of growth in this book, in fact. A love blossoms between Delilah and Patrick. Friendship springs up between Delilah and a local girl, Emily. The bonds between Delilah and her mother are repaired. And Delilah’s understanding of her family and her place in it and her own ideas about herself grow and change and deepen.
I highly recommend Fixing Delilah for readers looking for a little bit of mystery, a little bit of romance, and a sweet story of deep, multi-layered family relationships.
The Daughters Break the Rules
Author: Joanna Philbin
Publisher: Poppy (an imprint of Little, Brown)
Pages: 276
ISBN: 9780316049030
Publication date: 2 November 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Summary
Toward the end of The Daughters, Carina Jurgensen leaked a document that she thought implicated her dad in a major financial crime. When the news breaks, her father whisks her away to California to enroll in a private school intended to shape her up, and it’s only through the quick intervention of her friends Lizzie Summers and Hudson Jones that Carina is returned to her life in New York. But shortly afterward Carina and her father fight again, prompting the Jurg to take away her credit cards, her cash, and her car service, leaving her to make do with $20 a week and a MetroCard.
Carina’s convinced that she’s not as spoiled as her dad thinks, but she desperately wants to go on a skiing trip to the Alps with neighborhood bad boy Carter McLean, so she decides to get a job to afford the vacation. But with no prior work experience and a distaste for chain retail stores, Carina isn’t turning up many leads and soon finds herself bluffing her way into a position as party planner for local queen bee Ava Elting’s Silver Snowflake Ball. However, she does so by promising to use the connections she has through her father–connections she’s promised to learn to live without to prove to her dad that she can make it on her own. Carina must find a way to meet Ava’s high expectations (only the most popular DJ, food, and decorations will do!) without falling back into her old habits or letting anyone find out she’s learning to do without.
My thoughts
Once again, Philbin does a great job of giving young readers the rich girls/mean girls frame they crave, but filling that frame with portrayals of the importance of family, friends, and integrity. In the first Daughters book, Lizzie was able to depend on the support of her friends as she discovered her own identity and forged a better relationship with her mother, but in this book, Carina’s kind of on her own. Her increasingly risky behavior and poor decisions alienate her from her friends, and she’s forced to turn inward and define her own values and decide what her limits are. Through this self-discovery and genuine growth, she’s able to build a closer, healthier relationship with her dad, return to her friends, and find a guy who’s not a total dick.
The Daughters Break the Rules also gives readers a different angle on what it means to be the child of someone famous: whereas Lizzie was constantly physically compared to her supermodel mother and, through her own budding modeling career, became instantly recognizable, Carina’s burden is her father’s name and reputation. She can fly under the radar until the matter of who she is comes up, and then people expect her to behave a certain way, to be interested in certain things, and to be able to pull particular strings. But both Lizzie and Carina learn through their experiences how to define their own selves apart from their parents’ accomplishments.
And it really feels like Carina is genuinely changing and learning to see herself (and who she used to be) in a totally different way. She thought she was an outdoorsy girl who didn’t need a lot of material goods, but then finds herself craving new clothes or even just the experience of shopping, forcing her to reconsider that image she has of herself. But she doesn’t just have something bad happen and learn a pat lesson: she really grows and develops a new set of values.
Partway through the story Carina befriends a guy named Alex, and the portrayal of his family was too perfect to be believed. The pacing seemed a little slow at points, but these are minor flaws in an otherwise solid story, and Philbin’s writing has improved (she especially relies on fewer cliched phrases than in the first book).
Again, the book ends with a huge cliffhanger that propels the reader into the story of the next Daughter, Hudson, offspring of the famous pop singer Holla Jones. I’m looking forward to getting a closer look at Hudson’s struggle to maintain her artistic vision in the face of her mother’s overbearing ideas of what she should be and to seeing another story where family and friends are more important than fame.
Jane
Author: April Lindner
Publisher: Poppy (an imprint of Little, Brown)
Pages: 367
ISBN: 9780316084208
Publication date: 11 October 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Summary From the publisher: Forced to drop out of an esteemed East Coast college after the sudden death of her parents, Jane Moore takes a job as a nanny at Thornfield Park, the estate of Nico Rathburn, a world-famous rock star on the brink of a huge comeback. Practical and independent, Jane reluctantly becomes entranced by her magnetic and brooding employer and finds herself in the midst of a forbidden romance. But there’s a mystery at Thornfield, and Jane’s much-envied relationship with Nico is tested by a torturous secret from his past.
An irresistible romance interwoven with a darkly engrossing mystery, this contemporary retelling of the beloved classic Jane Eyre promises to enchant a new generation of readers.
My thoughts
I must start with a caveat: I read Jane Eyre in high school and hated it. I’ve since warmed to “the classics,” mostly after a college course called The Victorian Novel in which we read eight works from the early emergence of the novel to the end of the Victorian era and considered them not only in their literary context but their historical and social contexts, too. The course was taught by the best professor I’ve ever had, and her enthusiasm for the subject rubbed off on me. In fact, I still count Vilette as one of my favorite books, so it’s not even as if I have some sort of special beef with Charlotte Brontë. I haven’t taken the time to revisit Jane Eyre again, though, so it was with particular interest that I opened Lindner’s retelling: would this be a pathway to appreciating the original in a way I hadn’t before?
Unfortunately, I think there are too many elements of Jane Eyre that were so grounded in Victorian life that they’re very difficult to translate. I’m not sure contemporary American society has any societal difference so extreme as class differences then, so simply making Jane newly destitute and Nico a rockstar doesn’t put them on separate enough planes, especially in an age where people of royal lineage marry “commoners.” Jane’s sudden fall from wealth and her departure from college life was also hard to swallow–she couldn’t have taken out loans or transferred to a state school or community college?–and then her subsequent poverty on fleeing Thornfield Park seemed unbelievable, too, since she’d been working for months with her room and board covered for an incredibly rich man.
The problems also run deeper than just matters of wealth and class: when Jane discovers that Bibi, Nico’s first wife, is schizophrenic and living in the tower on the third floor of the mansion, just barely kept under control by the alcoholic Bertha, I was shocked by how offensive the portrayal of schizophrenia was. Nico’s insistence that putting her in some institution was too horrifying to contemplate (because have you seen those places?) also seemed a thin excuse. Our understanding of and treatment of the mentally ill now compared to when Jane Eyre was first published have evolved so much as to make this scene make Nico seem cruel and even dangerous. And did he really think, with our current system of computerized records and more official marriage registrations, that he could marry Jane without divorcing Bibi first?
The malice with which Jane’s family treats her both before and after her parents’ deaths was hard to believe; that she would have such selective access to cell phones and the Internet was hard to believe; her utter ignorance of and insulation from pop music and pop culture were hard to believe. Her tenure as a nanny felt not like time as a nanny but as time as a governess. Jane’s description as strong and self-assured doesn’t play out in her constant self-doubt and the way the story feels like it’s happening to her instead of because of her. Her interest only in classical music, painting, and French with absolutely no concessions to modern life make her seem like a relic from Victorian times. There was just so much in this story that seemed to happen or exist only because something similar happened to the original Jane, and the Victorian feel was too preserved within the insular grounds of Thornfield Park. I think Lindner wanted to stay as close to the original source material in her retelling, but it means her story uncomfortably straddles the original setting and values and our more modern life with a stable foothold in neither.
But I think the thing that bothered me most about this story was the relationship between Jane and Nico. I didn’t understand why their romance was forbidden from the start; their interactions are all stilted as she remains far too formal even after living at Thornfield Park for months; and there’s no reason for them to fall in love with each other (she does so mysteriously, maybe pulled in by his music, and he falls for her… because she resists his advances at first, unlike the previous nannies?). Why would you want to be with someone who causes you unbearable heartache because he’s trying to make you jealous so you’ll want him more, who lies to you about still being married, and who is super-controlling? When Jane finds out that Nico tried to trick her into a wedding while he was still married to the mentally ill person he was keeping imprisoned in his mansion, threatening the safety of everyone else who lives there, she decides to leave (smart girl!)–and then she fears that he’s going to come after her, that he’s going to use her bank activity or cell phone use to find her, that his “violent temper” will flare up again. She abandons every part of her previous life and lives and works using a new name because she’s afraid of him. All of this makes her sound exactly like a woman who’s been suffering from domestic abuse but is afraid to leave because of her partner’s violence and control over her and because she doesn’t have the financial independence to support herself away from him. That is not what love is like! Maybe in the era of Edward and Bella this is enchantingly romantic, but in the real world, these are all warning signs of an abusive relationship–and I mean that with zero exaggeration.
All of that said, I think that readers who loved Jane Eyre will enjoy seeing the story adapted to modern times and will be much more forgiving of these problems in modernization and the dynamic of Jane and Nico’s relationship. Readers who haven’t yet dipped into what Austen and Brontë have to offer can use Lindner’s retelling as their introduction to these classic stories. Teens looking for stories of forbidden romance, dangerous mystery, or sentimental tales of virtuous heroines bravely suffering through the injustices and humiliations life has heaped upon them so they can be rewarded with a man at the end will like this story. Lindner’s Jane does a remarkable job of staying true to its source material and capturing all of the melodrama of the original–and for some people, that’s exactly what they’re looking for.
More reviews
Chasing Ray (this review points out more problems in the modernization of this story)
THE DUFF
Author: Kody Keplinger
Publisher: Poppy (an imprint of Little, Brown)
Pages: 277
ISBN: 9780316084239
Publication date: 7 September 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Summary From the publisher: Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her “Duffy,” she throws her Coke in his face.
But things aren’t so great at home right now. Desperate for a distraction, Bianca ends up kissing Wesley. And likes it. Eager for escape, she throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with Wesley.
Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out that Wesley isn’t such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.
My thoughts
Before I talk about anything else, I first have to say how bummed I am with how the cover changed from the ARC to the final version.
I think the girl on the final cover looks a lot younger (both younger than the girl on the ARC cover and younger than Bianca herself). I also just don’t think she looks like Bianca–she doesn’t have wavy auburn hair and Bianca doesn’t seem like the bubble-blowing type. The final cover looks a lot more like shallow chick-lit than the ARC cover, and I think that does a disservice to a smart story. And augh, the girl on the cover of the ARC might be fat–but the girl on the final cover is definitely not fat.
But aside from my disappointment with the final cover, everything else I have to say about this book is positive!
What I found most striking about this book was how fresh and real the high school experience seems. This book doesn’t fall back on weird tropes about high school that aren’t true anymore (and maybe never were) and something in the way the characters relate to one another, bounce between school and home and popular places to hang out, and how conversations play out just feels right.
It’s possible that the reason this book felt so accurate is because Keplinger was seventeen when she wrote THE DUFF. Seventeen! Her age belies her skill, because this book is good. Except for the ending feeling almost a little too perfect (to spoil it, it turns out Toby Tucker was just using Bianca to get over his ex, too, so it’s okay that she’s using him and she’s free to get back with the reformed Wesley guilt-free), this book flows well and presents realistic internal struggles and realizations.
THE DUFF does contain plenty of underage sex (though they do use protection–and discuss the use of that protection) and lots of swearing, but it just makes the high school experience feel real. This definitely isn’t a book for middle-grade readers, though–it’s a high school book through and through.
Bianca’s narration is distinct, mostly due to her sarcasm and snarky observations. She’s the girl who’s stuck in high school for now but feels different from everyone else around her, not understanding how they can get wrapped up in petty high school things. She’s disdainful of school dances, doesn’t see the point in teen relationships, and would never show too much enthusiasm for anything. More happy-go-lucky readers may be put off by this, but it gives Bianca a strong voice and makes her a memorable character.
I really enjoyed how openly feminist this book is. In struggling with her label as the Duff and with her interactions with friends and other girls in school, Bianca comes to realize that we all feel like the Duff at times, and that “the Duff” is just another label like slut or bitch or prude that we use to hurt one another–but that we can all be those things at different times, and girls’ sexual and dating behavior is much more nuanced than those labels allow. She also sees how the other girls at her school are whole people with home lives and emotions and motivations that guide what they’re doing–they’re not just the school slut or whatever their label might be. And those realizations don’t feel forced or didactic at all; Bianca’s just figuring things out based on her own experience and her ability to emphasize with others.
But it’s not just sexual behavior and labels that Bianca realizes are subjective. When she finally tells her friends that she’s upset about being the Duff of their group, they’re both surprised that she thought that, and Casey even says that she feels like the ugly one because she’s so tall, calling herself Sasquatch. Bianca realizes through her relationship with her friends and Wesley that beauty is relative and all in the eye of the beholder. Is Bianca really ugly and fat? She might feel that way sometimes in comparison to her friends, but so do they, and no matter how she looks, Wesley’s interested in her. Along these lines, Angie Manfredi examines whether or not Bianca is fat in the first place–and whether it even matters–in her recent post at Fat Girl, Reading.
I really highly recommend this book not just for its feminism but also for Bianca’s sarcastic narrative voice, Keplinger’s spot-on portrayal of high school life, and the way the book examines real issues of self-worth and self-perception in a natural-feeling context. I can’t wait to see what else Keplinger has for us!
THE BIG STINK
Author: David Lubar
Publisher: Starscape
Pages: 164
ISBN: 9780765323439
Publication date: 31 August 2010
Review book source: I requested an ARC from the publisher
Summary From the publisher: It’s a stinky situation when Nathan’s school, Belgosi Upper Elementary, develops a mold problem and his class is forced to share space with the first graders. Soon the eighth graders show up too, including Rodney the bully’s older and meaner brother, Ridley. Could he be the reason for the stinky, putrid, rotten smell that seems to be following Nathan around? It’s up to Nathan, Abigail, and Mookie to solve the mystery of the big stink before it pollutes the entire town.
My thoughts
Nathan’s missions with BUM take a bit of a backseat to what’s going on at the school and in Nathan’s personal life in this fourth installment in the Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series. He does a few sessions training in doing dead drops and seeing how guard dogs react to him, and there’s a short mission at the end, but the nefarious doings of RABID aren’t as integrated with the two main problems in Nathan’s life right now: the close quarters at school and the stink that seems to be everywhere Nathan goes.
A spoiler: that stink turns out to be Nathan himself. He discovers that the putrid scent he just can’t seem to escape is actually the rotting of his extremities. He’s had to deal with a lot of different problems with his new zombie physiology–his fragile bones that break too easily but are repaired (painfully!) with custom glue, not being able to digest food and having to feign eating around his parents, and having to hide his lack of a heartbeat from medical professionals–but his body rotting is something new and altogether more dangerous. Abigail and Dr. Cushing set about using science to try to find a cure, and even Mookie helps, delving into comic book zombie lore in search of a cure, but will this be the thing that finally does Nathan in?
In the meantime, there’s plenty of school drama–bullies, kids of all ages crammed into one school, and a sabotaged kindergarten pageant–and family drama to keep Nathan on his stinky, rotting toes. Throughout it all, Mookie and Abigail work with Nathan to solve problems and make the world a safer, happier place.
As in the first three books, this fourth of five books offers plenty of gross-out humor. Nathan’s stink is described in particular detail, and Mookie is always on hand for some sort of bodily function in the face of danger. The vomit levels were especially ramped up in this book–there’s even a double-puking-gym-teachers scene–and Nathan’s mission with BUM has him swimming through massive piles of trash. All of this delightfully gross humor is supplemented with wry observations, puns, and a touch of slapstick that will keep older elementary and younger middle school readers gagging and giggling.
More reviews I actually couldn’t find any other reviews. Maybe we’ll see more on Goodreads after the book is published.
GIRL, STOLEN
Author: April Henry
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Pages: 213
ISBN: 9780805090055
Publication date: 28 September 2010
Review book source: ARC from the author1
Summary From the publisher: Sixteen year-old Cheyenne Wilder is asleep in the back of a car while her mom fills her prescription at the pharmacy. Before Cheyenne realizes what’s happening, their car is being stolen—with her inside! Griffin hadn’t meant to kidnap Cheyenne, all he wanted to do was steal a car to impress his low-life dad. But once Griffin’s dad finds out that Cheyenne’s father is the president of a powerful corporation, everything changes—now there’s a reason to keep her. Cheyenne is not only sick with pneumonia, she is also blind. Can Cheyenne survive this nightmare—and at what price?
My thoughts
Having not read any of Henry’s other books, I opened this one with a little trepidation. I was worried that Cheyenne’s blindness would be a gimmick or a crutch or the central point of another “noble disabled person overcomes his or her disability” narrative, but–as far as I can tell as an able-bodied person–Henry doesn’t fall back on tired stereotypes. Cheyenne’s blindness is just another part of who she is. It makes some things more difficult and she has to do some things differently, but she’s still able to live a life with friends and school and family and interests.
And in fact, Henry does more than just avoid stereotypes: she does a great job of explaining some of the different tools and techniques Cheyenne uses to get around or gather information on what’s going on around her, and she touches on a number of disability awareness issues. The reader learns about how Cheyenne’s guide dog helps her navigate a busy street or school hallway, how she uses her cane sometimes, that she has a Braille watch and a computer that can read to her (although she prefers books on CD!), and how she had to relearn things like eating. But we also learn from Cheyenne that it’s okay to say “see you later;” that when she and her guide dog are out in public, the dog is working and shouldn’t be petted or cuddled; and that when Cheyenne goes out to eat with her family, it bothers her if the waiter or waitress asks her parents what Cheyenne will be having, as if Cheyenne can’t decide for herself.
It’s natural–especially for young people–to be curious about people with disabilities, and I think this book handles that curiosity well, answering questions and still making Cheyenne a sympathetic, multi-dimensional character. Her blindness does not define her–her courage in the face of being kidnapped and her compassion and ability to see the good in those around her do. This book isn’t about a blind person. It’s about a girl who is, among other things, blind.
This book sucks you in quickly (the first chapter is only two pages long and introduces a stepmother, an illness, a carjacker, and Cheyenne’s blindness) and the action moves along at a good clip throughout the story. Narration alternates between Cheyenne and Griffin’s points of view, and Henry builds tension well, providing occasional interludes of reflection or quiet conversation between Cheyenne and Griffin that only seem to heighten the danger when Roy returns. This is a very suspenseful narrative, and the ending is especially nerve-wracking with one final twist that legitimately surprised me and made me all the more impressed at Cheyenne’s ability to outsmart her captors and escape.
Henry also blends conflict and drama with characters who have their own detailed backstories that come out as the action progresses. The way Cheyenne and Griffin find common ground and things to respect in one another sort of surprised me: most of the kidnapping narratives I’ve read are only about the emotional trauma the protagonist is suffering, so I liked the mix of action and character development in GIRL, STOLEN. Overall, Henry successfully balances lots of different elements, and it makes for a great story.
1 April Henry is coordinating a couple of traveling ARCs. I emailed her with my name and address, which she put on a list. Once my name got to the top of the list and someone else finished the ARC, she gave that person my address and the other reader sent the book to me. Now that I’m finished, I’ll be sending this copy on to another librarian on April’s list. I really like this ARC sharing circle and I’d like to see more authors (or publicists or fans or librarians?) coordinate things like it in the future!
Update: when I emailed April to get the next person on the list, she and I had a short discussion about her inspiration for GIRL, STOLEN. She wrote,
“I first conceived of the story after the local news talked about a teen girl who was taken in exactly the same fashion. The only difference was the guy forced her out of the car three blocks later. I immediately knew I wanted to write this story. But I worried that it would be untrue. I’m always a little anxious about people who write about someone who is in a minority when the writer him or herself is not. Like blue-eyed blondes writing about Native American spirituality, or inner city black kids. I’ve even read books by men where the main character, a woman, had experiences with pregnancy and birth that didn’t ring true. [...] I just didn’t want to get it wrong!”
While a writer who isn’t blind surely can’t ever completely comprehend what day-to-day life is like for blind people (Cheyenne bristles a little when Griffin tries eating with his eyes closed as if that accurately shows him Cheyenne’s experience), I really appreciate that April wanted to make sure to write a character so different from herself as correctly as possible. The acknowledgements at the back of the book and a conversation she described to me in that email indicate a real commitment to proper research. Yeah, April!
MY LIFE WITH THE LINCOLNS
Author: Gayle Brandeis
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Pages: 246
ISBN: 9780805090130
Publication date: 16 March 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Mina Edelman is twelve years old and she’s convinced that her family is the Lincoln family reincarnated. Among the other coincidences she finds to back this idea up, her father’s initials are ABE and he even dresses like Lincoln to promote his furniture store, Honest ABE’s. But the Lincolns all met with such terrible ends, so Mina worried a lot about how she’ll protect everyone: she studies medical texts, is always on the lookout for danger (especially when she’s around her father), and always has a contingency plan.
But it’s not just the name and their Illinois home that makes Mina think her father is Abraham Lincoln; it’s the summer of 1966 and her dad has discovered Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement. He takes Mina along to marches and demonstrations and lectures, making Mina even more worried for his safety. His commitment to the movement grows–even if it does miss the mark sometimes, like when he fires their black housekeeper to “liberate” her despite her protests that she needs the job to pay her bills–and he vows to bring the movement to where he lives in Downers Grove. But his work with the movement and his growing relationship with fellow protester Carla is driving a wedge between Mina’s parents. Can she keep her family safe, sane, and together?
I had a little trouble staying interested in this book–it seemed like it was taking a long time for things to actually start happening–but I liked Mina’s humorous reporting on the world around her (among other things, she writes a newsletter for her father’s store with Lincoln facts and furniture sales pitches), and I think the blend of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, her parents’ strained relationship, a short section about a mass murderer, and some sibling drama is a good one. Puberty concerns are also interspersed with the family drama, the civil rights work, and her tenuous friendship with her neighbor.
Mina’s discovery of social justice and the way her awareness of discrimination in the world develops a lot throughout the book, and the different reactions to the social justice movement of the people around her would make this a good book for class discussion for middle grade readers. There are some references to body parts (using both medical terminology and slang terms) and a few racial slurs, though.
I don’t really remember reading a lot of books set during the Vietnam War when I was growing up, but in the last year or two I’ve read or run across a number of stories set in or about the 1960s, including MY LIFE WITH THE LINCOLNS, CRISS CROSS, THE WEDNESDAY WARS, THIS MEANS WAR!, and (kind of) STRANDED IN HARMONY. I suppose it’s because we’re gaining more historic distance from this time and can better reflect on it, but also (mostly?) because YA writers grew up during this time and are writing from experience.
IMMORTAL BELOVED
Author: Cate Tiernan
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages: 407
ISBN: 9780316035927
Publication date: 7 September 2010
Review book source: ARC from the publisher
Nastasya has spent the last century in a drunken haze, partying with her friends and living dangerously, trying to drink away her pain and her memories–until one night when things go too far. Abruptly confronted by the depravity of her hedonistic lifestyle and the growing darkness within her heart, she travels to River’s Edge, a sort of rehab facility for immortals, in rural Massachusetts.
Nastasya is initially unsure of whether or not she can be rehabilitated at all and feels prickly and standoffish in a new environment where life is so different. Instead of designer clothes, all-night parties, and constant drinking, the people at River’s Edge wear sensible work clothing, operate an organic farm, and take classes on magick and the world around them to help control their power and their dark impulses.
Adding to Nastasya’s unease is the presence of Reyn, a super-hot immortal she privately names “the Viking god.” He is cold, standoffish, even at times hostile to her, but she is drawn to him and he seems strangely familiar despite his claims that they have never met.
Nastasya doesn’t really feel like she fits in, doesn’t feel like she even knows who she is or what she wants in life, doesn’t think she can handle the simple living and magickal training at River’s Edge, but she does know one thing: she can’t stand the idea of returning to her old life. So she decides to give River’s Edge a one-week trial to see if she can find–and fix–herself.
I really liked the character development in this book. Nastasya starts out as belligerent, impatient, and ignorant, but as the story unfolds, she learns a lot about herself and develops in her ability to grapple with difficult things. We learn about her past–which she’s been suppressing for centuries–through flashbacks and visions, and discover her identity and the culture of immortals as she does. She really changes from the beginning of the story to the end. I also enjoyed how a secondary character becomes darker and more unhinged throughout the story. Reyn is a little boring; all she knows about him is that he’s mysterious and hot, and she can’t really even decide why she finds him so hot. They hardly ever talk and when they do, it’s mostly by sniping at each other. I think their dynamic is pretty standard for YA paranormal romances, but it just doesn’t really do much for me.
I also found the pacing of their relationship to be strange. In their initial meeting he’s very hostile to her and then is completely indifferent and it’s only at the very end that they’re wrapped up in this climactic love/hate whirlwind. I would have liked it if their relationship had grown more gradually, especially after she discovers something that makes her loathe him but before she gives herself over to loving him.
I’m not a huge fan of the cover; it didn’t do a lot to draw me in. I also don’t think the title is very compelling or even representative of the story, since her own rehabilitation and learning about her place in immortal history is much more the focus than her relationship with Reyn. We’ll see what happens in future books: if their relationship is central to the rest of the story, I can see this title working to establish that importance.
This book is the first in a series, and I was so glad there wasn’t a huge cliffhanger at the end. The ending did seem a little rushed, but I think Tiernan strikes a good balance between wrapping up one storyline and leaving unresolved elements of a bigger narrative for the next book.
Despite a few little things I didn’t find completely satisfying, I enjoyed this book a lot. It sucked me in a lot more than I was expecting it to! The story unfolds well, has some surprising twists, and contains lots of different elements–magick, romance, a little bit of a murder mystery vibe near the end, and a dash of historical fiction.The combination of the regular human world, standard neo-pagan magick (using runes and circles, metals and crystals, salt and water), and Tiernan’s imagining of an immortal history and power structure work well together. I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the series and suggesting it to teens looking for a book with some romance, a healthy dose of magick, and a character with secrets we get to discover.
MY ROTTEN LIFE by David Lubar (Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie #1)
DEAD GUY SPY by David Lubar (Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie #2)
GOOP SOUP by David Lubar (Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie #3)
In MY ROTTEN LIFE, Nathan Abercrombie thinks he’s having a pretty rough day: he was humiliated at lunch by the most popular girl in school, he was picked last in gym class, and then everyone made fun of him for his poor video game skills. So when Abigail, a girl in his class, tells him her uncle is working on a substance that can keep him from feeling bad, he eagerly accepts the offer to be the first test subject. But then instead of receiving a few drops of Hurt-Be-Gone, Nathan is doused in it–and soon begins to turn into a zombie. While it’s cool to no longer sleep or feel pain or need to breathe, when body parts start falling off, Nathan realizes being a zombie might not be the best life (or living death). It’s a race against time before the transformation is complete and he can no longer return to being human, and he’ll need all the help he can get from his best friend Mookie and from Abigail.
Spoiler alert: Nathan winds up staying a zombie. In DEAD GUY SPY, he’s getting used to being a zombie and learning how to hide it from his parents (pretend to shower, pretend to eat, pretend to go to the bathroom, pretend to sleep) and discovering some cool new talents that come along with his living death. His body can’t heal, though, so he needs to be careful–especially in gym class with the sadistic, success-driven Mr. Lomux in charge. But when he realizes he’s being watched, Nathan starts to worry his secret might be out. He’s approached by a secret organization called BUM (the Bureau of Useful Misadventures) that wants to recruit him as a very special spy because of his new abilities. But his contact at BUM is very secretive about the organization and things just aren’t adding up and again it’s up to Mookie, Abigail, and Nathan to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Another spoiler alert: BUM turns out to be the good guys and Nathan starts working for them on secret missions to protect the world from sinister plots. In GOOP SOUP (released at the end of April), Nathan’s finally starting to get some spy training and to pinpoint what his zombie nature contributes to his spy abilities. For the first time since his living death, though, Nathan’s running up against some limitations, so he’s not sure he’s ready to take on RABID, a secret organization bent on sowing the seeds of chaos. To make matters worse, his mother has made a doctor’s appointment and Nathan, Abigail, and Mookie have to figure out how Nathan can fake normal human vital signs before time runs out and his spy career–and his life–are over.
When David Lubar spoke at the Genre Galaxy preconference for ALA 2009 about humor writing, he cracked us up with a reading of a passage from MY ROTTEN LIFE where Nathan has an unfortunate run-in with Mookie’s fork in the cafeteria and discovers he’s a zombie. While this series has a creative premise and good storylines, the real strength is in the humor. Characters crack jokes, Nathan makes funny observations, and there’s a lot of situational humor among the action scenes.
And Lubar knows his audience: there’s plenty of gross-out humor in these books with missing body parts, farts and burps, sewage, and splattered pig guts, but despite some truly amazing passages (the climactic scene in DEAD GUY SPY includes the single-sentence paragraph “The bleachers had turned into a fountain of puke.”), it never really crosses the line. The combination of bodily functions, quick-paced plots, and humor will be a good fit for reluctant male middle grade readers especially.
On a much more personal judgment sort of level, one of the things I really appreciated was the contributions of the secondary characters. While Mookie is mostly around for the farts and goofy comedic interjections, he does provide ideas at crucial times, and Abigail turns out to be a secret science whiz who is the driving force behind a lot of the solutions to problems that Nathan encounters. The story is about him and his zombie adventures, but his friends are indispensable to his continued survival.
When fourteen-year-old Lizzie Summers slips up and reveals on camera that being the daughter of a supermodel isn’t always glamorous and wonderful, it sparks a huge fight between her and her mom, but it also prompts a photographer to ask Lizzie to model for her. All her life Lizzie has felt that her crooked nose, frizzy red hair, and bushy eyebrows have made her the beast to her mother’s beauty, though, so she’s not sure she can accept the offer, even if the photographer specializes in “new pretty,” regular people whose flaws make them beautiful. Lizzie also doesn’t know if she can operate in her mother’s world–or if her mom will even let her do it.
Complicating matters further, Todd Piedmont, Lizzie’s childhood friend and the boy with whom she shared her first kiss at eight years old, has just moved back from London and she’s getting mixed signals from him. He seems to be interested in her–he even tried to kiss her before his party–but now he’s dating Ava Elting, the snobbiest girl in school.
Through it all, Lizzie knows she can always count on her friends Carina Jurgensen and Hudson Jones. Carina’s dad runs a media empire and Hudson’s mom is a famous pop star, so they know what it’s like to always be in a parent’s spotlight. Together the girls figure out who they are beyond just being their parents’ daughters and make sense of boys and social politics at school.
Gossip Girl/Clique/Mean Girls-style books aren’t usually my thing, but I liked the twist here that the parents are famous, not the girls themselves–something Philbin must know herself from experience, since she’s the daughter of Regis Philbin. THE DAUGHTERS was also less racy than I was expecting; although one character is accused of “hooking up” with a girl we never meet, the main romantic arc culminates in nothing more than a knee-watering kiss. And in general the characters here were nicer than I was expecting. Maybe all of this gentler content is because the characters are fourteen and the book is aimed at readers 12+.
At some points the writing relies on clichés (Lizzie’s friends are a Brita filter, the clouds are fluffy like cotton candy, someone’s jaw actually drops open) and the romantic part of the plot is fairly predictable and the cliffhanger seemed a little cheap (Lizzie’s story is wrapped up pretty nicely but the last page and a half introduce a new crisis in Carina’s life).
Overall, though, it’s a good first novel that I really warmed up to as I read on. The characters are what make the book interesting: they’re genuinely trying to figure out who they are and to stay true to themselves. Rather than focusing on status and scandal, Lizzie and the other daughters affirm reliability and the importance of friends and family.
A note on the cover: the ARC I have is a similar design, but the three girls are all clearly dark-haired (the girls in the story are a blond, a brunette, and a redhead). The updated cover reflects the girls’ different looks and gives them more interesting outfits. The cover was actually my biggest problem with the book, so I’m glad to see it fixed. I’m still not a fan of the umbrella, but at least the cover models look like the characters.
If you’d like to read this book, I’ll send you my ARC. You have to promise, though, that you’ll either post a review online or send one to the publisher and that you’ll pass it on to someone else when you’re finished with the same conditions attached. Whoever emails me first gets it!
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