Love & Romance

Gabi a Girl in Pieces

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by Isabel Quintero
First sentence: “My mother named me Gabriela after my grandmother who — coincidentally — did not want to meet me when I was born because my mother was not married and was therefore living in sin.”
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Content: There’s a lot here: talk of drug use, sex (off screen, not graphic), and swearing (including multiple f-bombs). It’d be in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this up. I’d heard good things about it, and it won the Morris Award this year. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of emotions I’d feel while reading it.

It’s Gabi Hernandez’s senior year, and life has gotten more complicated than usual. One of her best friends is pregnant; the other just came out, and has been kicked out of his parents’ house. She’s still struggling with math in school, but she has hopes that she can get into college, the first in her family, since her parents immigrated from Mexico. She wants a boyfriend, but is afraid since she’s a self-proclaimed “fat girl” that she’ll never find love. Then there’s her meth-addicted father, and her punk younger brother. Not to mention a mom who is constantly placing pressure on her to be a “good” girl.

Writing all that down, it both sounds like a lot and not quite enough to hold a book together. One of the things that makes this book shine is the voice. Told in diary form, we get Gabi’s innermost thoughts, her insecurities and feelings, her poems and heartfelt letters to her father (which she never sends). Even though her life is complicated and hard, you can’t help but connect with Gabi on the most elemental level: she’s just a girl trying to live the best she can.

But, it’s also a feminist book, showing us the double standard we have for girls and boys. Which leads me to: oh my gosh, her mom. I wanted to smack her. She was SO hard on Gabi, from nagging her constantly about her weight to lectures about sex (while she tells Gabi’s brother “be sure to use a condom”). I know she was trying and doing the best she could under the circumstances, but I wanted to shake her. Call this another one of those reverse-parenting books, but there is no way I want to have the sort of relationship with my daughter that Gabi had with her mom.

It was Gabi’s awakening to the double standard, and her actively trying to do something about it — which came near the end of the book –which endeared me to the book. There was so much crap going on (if there’s an issue out there that deals with teenagers, it was in the book) going on in Gabi’s life that I found it difficult, initially, to relate. But by the end, I was cheering for Gabi, for her attitude toward her life, and for Quintero’s unflinching portrayal of her.

Rebel Belle

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by Rachel Hawkins

First sentence: “Looking back, none of this would have happened if I’d brought lip gloss the night of the Homecoming Dance.”
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Content: There’s some mild swearing, and some (somewhat oblique) references to sex. Plus some violence. None of which is enough to make it “objectionable”, so it’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Harper Price is one of those annoyingly perfect people. She’s the president of everything, super involved in her school. Great grades, popular friends, the Perfect Boyfriend. She’s even going to be crowned Homecoming Queen. (Seriously: about 50 pages into the book. I’m thinking she’s the embodiment of everyone I loathed in high school.) So, the last thing she expected, when she went to the restroom the night of the homecoming dance to touch up her lip gloss, was to get superpowers. She inadvertently stumbled into a world with Mages and Paladins — who are protectors, and it’s the powers Harper ended up with — who have sworn to protect the Oracle. Who just happens to be the person Harper loathes most.

There’s a lot more going on in this novel, including boyfriend drama and a Cotillion, but that’s basically the gist of it.  Harper, the annoyingly perfect girl, gets powers and becomes awesome.

I was in the mood a while back for something completely fluffy, something that was fun, but not taxing, so I turned to an author who I knew would deliver. And Hawkins did. Yeah, there’s probably some inconsistencies in the book and it’s definitely really white. (Then again, it’s Alabama.) No, it’s not as good as Hex Hall. However, it IS fun. It’s got that delightfully quirky Southern feel to it (I loved Harper’s great-aunts), and the magic is clever and different. But mostly, it was just FUN. Which is all I really wanted out of this book.

I even enjoyed it enough to pick up the second one. 

The Winner’s Crime

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by Marie Rutkoski
First sentence: “She cut herself opening the envelope.”
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Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Others in the series: The Winner’s Curse
Content: There’s some violence, sometimes a bit graphic, and mention of sex (but only illusions). It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

There will be spoilers for Winner’s Curse. You’ve been warned.

Kestrel handed Arin his country, a treaty that gave them a pseudo-independence from Valoria after their brief revolution. Even though she’s in love with Arin, she knows she can’t have him. He’s Herran. He was her slave. And, probably most importantly, she offered herself to the emperor to be his son’s bride in exchange for Herran’s independence.

But, of course, things are not simple. She can’t get Arin out of her head. The emperor is cruel and manipulative, which means Kestrel is constantly playing games with other people’s (and her own) lives. Especially because she wants — no, NEEDS — to help the Herrani out. By becoming a spy for them. She’s definitely playing with fire.

First: I LOVED being back with Kestrel. She’s so smart, so wily, and yet feels everything deeply. She’s just a fantastically complex character, and I thoroughly loved being in her head as she went through the paces. I loved hating the emperor (oh, man, he’s despicable). And even though Arin is pretty annoying, I enjoyed his character growth.

That said, it’s very much a middle book in a trilogy. It’s moving things forward, sure, but it’s also very much spinning in place. Kestrel, while fun, doesn’t have any character growth, really, until the end when she does something completely out of character (but leads to a pretty great cliffhanger ending). Arin did grow, however, and after he stops being moody about Kestrel, he has some pretty great scenes. It took me a while to get going, but once I did, I plowed through straight to the end which left me begging for the last book.

Even with the second-book-in-a-series curse hanging over it, it’s still a GREAT read.

The Forgotten Sisters

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by Shannon Hale
First sentence: “Miri woke to the rustle of a feather-stuffed quilt.”
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Others in the series: Princess Academy, Palace of Stone
Release Date: February 24, 2015
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves of my place of employment.
Content: There’s some violence, but nothing graphic. And some kissing, which may be ew-inducing in the younger set. Still, I think it belongs in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, though it might do better with the 5-7th graders.

Miri finished her year at the Palace and was looking forward to going back home to Mount Eskel, seeing her family, enjoying getting back to the life she once had before the Princess Academy changed her path. But, her winding road isn’t finished yet: the neighboring country, Stora, is threatening invasion, and in order to pacify them King Bjorn has offered up some distant cousins as a bride to the aging Storan king. And Miri is sent, unwilling and unprepared, to the swamp of Lesser Alvan to find these cousins and whip them into shape for a royal wedding.

What Miri finds when she gets to the swamp are three motherless girls — Astrid, Felissa, and Sus — who have been resourceful enough to find a way to survive without the help of the castle. They were supposed to be getting an allowance, which has been stolen by the local village overlord. They were supposed to have servants and a family, and they’ve been robbed of that, too. However, they made to, and once Miri figured out how to connect with them, things went well.

In fact, Astrid and Sus were my favorite characters. Felissa was nice enough — her main characteristic, as Hale often reminded us, was smiling — but Astrid was tough, no-nonsense, responsible, and just plain amazing. Sus soaked up the knowledge, and there’s a scene at the end (I won’t spoil it) where she talks coolly and rationally and logically and in the end makes everyone listen to her. Miri,too, was a bastion of resourcefulness: she adapted to the swamp life and fought back against the bandits and robber barons. She fought for justice and did so in a way that wasn’t violent.

The thing that kept running through my mind while reading this was that it was a girl power book, but not in the way we usually think of it. Usually, we want our girls to be like guys: kicking butt, fighting. But, Hale has given us girls and women who Do Things and stand up to people without violence, without force. In fact, you can look at this book as the myriad of ways women survive what men in power do to them. From making decisions to making war to actual physical violence, men can be (are often?) cruel and unthinking. But, women can survive and flourish.

It never got didactic or heavy-handed, though I did think some of the twists and turns of plot were a bit much. It came together in the end, though, in a very satisfying way. Because above all, Hale is a consummate storyteller. And this is definitely a good story.

I Was Here

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by Gayle Forman
First sentence: “The day after Meg died, I received this letter:”
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Review copy pilfered from the Penguin rep pile.
Content: There is drinking, illusions to pot smoking, language, and some tasteful sex. It’s also a post-high school graduation book. For these reasons, it’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Cody and Meg have been best friends for as long as Cody can remember. Since her mother was gone pretty much all the time, Cody practically grew up at Meg’s house. Meg’s family became her family, Meg’s dreams her dreams. Until they graduated, and Meg got a full-ride scholarship away from their small Eastern Washington town and to a fancy liberal arts school in Tacoma. Suddenly, Cody was the one left behind.

A year later, though, Meg committed suicide. Leaving Cody behind again.

An aside here, in case this sounds crass: this book isn’t about Meg’s suicide. Not really. It’s about Cody, and her reactions to Meg’s suicide. Dealing with grief, dealing with loss, dealing with the reasons why. Meg isn’t a character in this book, even though you kind of get to know her. She’s a reason. A cause.

Cody heads to Tacoma to clean out Meg’s apartment and discovers an encrypted file. Suddenly what seemed like a simple suicide looks more suspicious. And with the help of one of Meg’s roommates (stereotypical Korean computer whiz) and an ex-boyfriend (tortured rock soul whom Cody ends up “saving”) Cody tries to make sense of the senseless.

In the end, it was less of a mystery than I hoped for and more of a romance. And while the romance was okay, I kind of thought it took away from the whole grief thing. Cody is hurt, and maybe one needs a Man to heal, but it kind of felt out of place here. Forman is a good writer, though, and she got across Cody’s raw grief and her questions that didn’t have answers and her need for closure.

A good read, if not an exceptional one.

The Shadow Cabinet

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by Maureen Johnson
First sentence: “The curtains at 16 Hyssop Close hadn’t been opened all day.”
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Review copy snagged from the box from the publisher rep.
Others in the series: The Name of the Star, The Madness Underneath
Release date: February 10, 2015
Content: There’s a lot of murder in this one, some of it gory, but never graphic. Other than that, it’s just intense. The series is in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, but I wouldn’t oppose giving it to a younger kid who was interested in ghost stories.

First off: spoilers for the other two books, obviously. You’ve been warned. (And if you haven’t read them, you really should. They’re excellent.)

Two years is a long time to wait for a book. And in the process, I’ve forgotten all the anxiousness I experienced when I finished the last one. So I do have to admit, that this one took a little bit of time to get back into the swing of things.

It begins forty years ago, with the grisly murder of 10 teenagers by a pair of odd, unusual twins named Sid and Sadie (though in my mind, Sadie was always the Thrilling Adventure Hour Sadie…). It’s a violent way to begin a book (then again, they are murder mysteries) and it’s important, though it doesn’t come to fruition until the end. The main story is the two prongs leftover from Madness: trying to figure out what happened to Stephen when he died and trying to figure out where crazy Jane took Charlotte. Both of those lead Rory and the rest of the ghost team: Thorpe, Boo, and Callum down increasingly crazy paths.

Things I really liked: I loved the addition of Freddie, a new ghost hunter. She was spunky and funny and a breath of fresh air in the midst of Rory’s loss. And I loved that MJ brought back Jerome from book one. Even though he’s mostly kept in the dark, he plays an important role in all of the crazy that follows.

It’s as good as Name of the Star, I think. And it sets up an epic conclusion (I hope). Now, it’s just waiting until that conclusion comes.

All the Bright Places

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by Jennifer Niven
First sentence: “Is today a good day to die?”
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Content: There’s teenage smoking and drinking and some off-screen sex. Not to mention the several f-bombs, and the weighty subject matter. All this puts it squarely in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore.

Finch is just coming out of a two month’s “sleep”, as he calls it. Violet is dealing with survivor’s remorse, being the only survivor in a car accident that killed her sister. Both find themselves at the top of the school’s bell tower one wintery day, contemplating the idea of jumping off, ending it all.

It’s a weird way to start a relationship, saving each other from suicide, but Finch can’t get Violet off his mind. And slowly, through a class project and sheer determination, he wins her over.

There’s really not much else to the plot. I’m sure this one will get huge comparisons to Fault in Our Stars (teens fall in love in spite of Obstacles) or Eleanor & Park (teens fall in love in spite of Differences in background and in spite of Bad Circumstances), but I didn’t feel like it was as good as either of those.  I wanted to like Finch and Violet, but didn’t connect with either one. I felt like Niven was throwing WAY too much at me: suicidal thoughts, car accident deaths, neglectful parenting, abuse, depression, bi-polar, actual suicide, and bullying, with a smattering of eating disorders in there as well. It’s like all the crappy things that could happen to anyone in life were happening to Finch and Violet. And that was just too. too. much.

What I did like, however, were Finch and Violet’s trips exploring the state of Indiana. I enjoyed seeing the state through their eyes, exploring the nooks and crannies and off-beat places that people don’t usually go.

But that wasn’t enough for me to truly enjoy this book.

Unmade

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by Sarah Rees Brennan
First sentence: “Kami Glass was standing to close to the fire.”
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Others in the series: Unspoken, Untold
Content: There’s a lot of violence, some of it brutal, plus some almost sexytimes. Not enough, however, to move it from the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Remember last time when I said the book was a bit of a middle book, and that the ending had me excited for the conclusion? (No? Well, neither did I?) Even so, I was able to fall back into Sorry-in-the-Vale with the Lynburns and Kami Glass with all her snarky confidence and contagious hope with ease.

Rob Lynburn has all the cards, all the power. And that has made Jared and Ash and Kami and their “side” quite desperate. Desperate enough to do desperate and dangerous things. This is an epic battle, a long, slow buildup to an intense climax. And interspersed in all that is heartache and love, loss and life, and a lot of heart.

This is a series, I think, that demands to be binge-read. And, thankfully, now you can. Sit down over a long weekend (like… Thanksgiving!) and immerse yourself in this deep, complex, wonderful world Brennan has created. Enjoy the characters, the good vs evil, the humor, the mystery, all at once without the wait.

I wish I could have. I enjoyed this book, but I think I would have enjoyed it SO much more had I read them all at once.

Mortal Heart

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by Robin LaFevers
First sentence: “For most the bleak dark months when the black storms came howling out of the north is a time of grimness and sorrow as people await the arrival of winter, which brings death, hunger, and bitter cold in its wake.”
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Others in the series: Grave Mercy, Dark Triumph
Content: Like the other two, it has death (though no murders, I think), some sex (off screen) and more mature themes. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Annith is the one who was always left behind. Quiet and dutiful, the Abbess always passed her over when it was time to go on missions. First Ismae left, and then Sybella. And Annith is the one to babysit the new novices. However, when the resident seer gets ill and Annith overhears the Abbess say that Annith would be perfect for the position, Annith panics. And takes off in the middle of the night: dang it if she isn’t going to get her adventure.

She ends up being overtaken by hellequins — servants of the God Mortain, like Annith herself — and their leader Bathazar, takes it upon himself to protect her from the, shall we say, less savory of the bunch. They ride around together — nominally to get Annith to some city I can’t remember the name of right now — for a couple of weeks, falling in love. And then Annith — and this is what I liked most about the book — decides that she really wants to be Independent and Have and Adventure, so she takes off. And she does. She never really becomes as Awesome as Ismae (who is still my favorite) or Sybella, but she holds her own.

Of course there are twisty twists and swoony swoons, and over it all is some very interesting (if only vaguely) historical setting. At some point, though, the twists made my eyes roll, and the swoons stopped being swoony, and I was predicting things right and left, which is never much fun for me.

It’s not my favorite in the trilogy, though it does wrap things up nicely. Even so, it’s a good series, and one worth reading.

Graphic Novel Roundup – Raina Telgemeir Edition

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Drama
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Content: There’s middle school drama, but other than that, it’s pretty tame. It’s in the teen graphic novel section of the bookstore, but only because it feels a bit mature for the middle grade section.

Callie is a theater nerd. She’s not one to be on stage — she can’t sing, and her acting needs some work — but she LOVES being backstage, helping create the sets. And so, for the middle school production (middle school!) of Moon over Mississippi, she’s been assigned to be in charge of the sets. That’s overwhelming enough, but Callie’s personal life has taken a turn for the confusing. She thought she was getting somewhere with her long-time crush, but he went back to his girlfriend (who’s not terribly nice). And then a set of twin brothers show up in her life to just confuse things more.

I really liked Telgemeir’s depiction of middle school (spot on!) and the theater program (again, spot on!). I loved Callie’s spunk and drive and her longing to feel accepted and belong. And even though it was Callie’s story, I thought that all her friends — from the twins to her best friend, Liz — were fully developed. (Though there were some stereotypes, the mean girl girlfriend being one.) My only real complaint was the inclusion that all guys who do theater (at least on-stage) are gay. It’s a stereotype, and although there are gay boys who do theater, not all theater boys (even on-stage) are gay. I know I’m nitpicking, but here in Kansas, that’s the kind of stereotype that really takes hold and so parents discourage boys from participating in the arts because of it. I would have appreciated one character, at least, who wasn’t part of that.

Even so, it was a lot of fun to read.

Smile
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Content: much the same as Drama; it’s got some themes that are a bit old for the younger elementary crowd, but there’s not much “objectionable”. It’s in the Teen Graphic Novel section, mostly because it seems to do better there.

Every once in a while, there’s an author (or in this case an author/artist) who gets the middle grade years so absolutely perfectly. The awkwardness, the challenges with friends, the wanting to be liked and not feeling liked.

Telgemeier is one of those people. It’s loosely based on her early teen years, and tells the story of how she lost her two front teeth in an accident and the dental work it took to make her smile what it is today. But it’s also the story of acceptance (inner and outer) and the things we’ll do and put up with so we don’t feel alone.

One thing I liked (well, I liked lots of things) was that the middle and high school Telgemeier drew was a diverse one. From her friends to the boys she liked, there were all shades of skin. And it wasn’t  this one’s the “black friend” or the “Asian friend”. They were all just friends — well, sort of; some of her friends, as A pointed out when she read it, were not very nice — and it wasn’t like Telgemeier was forcing a diverse world on things. It felt natural.

And, on top of that, she set it in 1989, which was a lot of fun to revisit.

Sisters
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Content: This one is “tamer” (not that the other two are wild) than the previous two books, and has a more universal appeal, being about sibling rivalry. It’s in the middle grade graphic novel section of the store.

This is another memoir(ish) graphic novel, that takes place during Smile (though you don’t need to read that one to enjoy this one). It’s centered on Raina’s relationship with her younger sister, Amara. It has their backstory, their relationship as siblings as well as a road trip (yay road trip!) to visit cousins in Colorado for a family reunion.

It’s not an easy relationship, the one between Raina and Amara. There’s jealousy, age difference, interest differences, and (of course) just plain sibling rivalry. It’s the usual stuff: hitting, yelling, punching, name-calling. But an event on the road trip (I knew they were useful!), helps the sisters see that maybe it’s okay if they’re different. They can still get along.

I think, out of the three, this one was the least angsty, the least middle-school drama-y, and my personal favorite. Not only because I still remember fighting with my siblings, but because I’ve got all these girls around here who fight and squabble and don’t get along. Maybe, someday, they’ll figure it out. So, this one hit home in a way the other two didn’t.

A word on her art: it’s a bit cartoon-y (that’s the techincal term), but I thought it fit her story-telling style. It’s not terribly detailed, but it served it’s purpose, and the bright colors drew the eye in.

I handed all three of these off to the girls and they enjoyed them as much as I did. I’m glad we finally got around to reading her work!