YA or STFU

Pearson, Mary E. (2008). The Adoration of Jenna Fox. NY: Henry Holt and Co. 265 pages.

Pearson's book begins two weeks after its protagonist and narrator, the titular Jenna Fox, has woken from a one year coma. Following an accident about which she remembers nothing, Jenna is beginning her life anew, living with her mother and grandmother in California, far away from her home in Boston. Jenna must slowly put together the details of her former life and, as she idly watches the videos her parents have taken to document their daughter's youth, she struggles with the anxiety emanating from her mother and the disdain and suspicion she feels with every encounter with her grandmother. The central questions: who is Jenna and what has she (or someone else) done?

As a fan of Peter Dickinson's Eva, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on in Pearson's novel. Turns out I was half right; the novel does deal with the third-party control and sustenance of the body and the concomitant medical ethics attached to the same, but there are no monkeys in this one. Rather, the novel gradually reveals connections between characters and incidents in a surprising way (I hadn't predicted them, anyway), making the reading of the book a bit like the experience of the narrator: sudden "clicks" and discoveries.

The book moves quickly, not because it is breezily written, but because its premise and telling are so compelling. Brief poems meant to encapsulate Jenna's dreams, thoughts, and subconscious musings punctuate the book and I wasn't really a fan of those; however, when one of the twists is revealed near the end of the book, it made me wonder if it was really the voice of Jenna-the-narrator I was reading. If, indeed, I was reading the words of the character I suspect, the last poem kind of blows it out of the water. Then again, it's still kinda possible (and I hope I'm right).

P.S. I'm not normally a proponent of the book trailer, but there's a good one for this novel here: http://www.whoisjennafox.com/

Posted by Amy P. at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pfeffer, Susan Beth (2008). The Dead and the Gone. NY: Harcourt. 321 pages.

When I saw this one on the new book shelf at the library, I was like, "Finally!" I felt like everyone had read the Pfeffer's sequel to Life as We Knew It except me. This latest novel employs the same premise as Life--an asteroid has hit the moon, causing it to move closer to the Earth, which leads to devastating changes on the planet--but describes the aftermath in the New York City setting, rather than the rural Pennsylvania in which the first book is set.

When the moon is knocked out of its typical orbit, seventeen-year-old Alex Morales is at work in a Manhattan pizza parlor. His father is in Puerto Rico at a family funeral and his mother is at work in a Queens hospital, so Alex is the only one left at home to care for and comfort his younger sisters, Briana, fifteen, and Julie, twelve. As the city begins to deteriorate in ways predicted by Life as We Knew It--the electricity and phones fail intermittently, supplies dwindle, and flooding from high tides wipe out Lower Manhattan--Alex and his sisters begin to lose hope that their parents have survived and they try to make it on their own.

The city setting of this novel distinguishes it from the first and adds elements of unpredictability to the familiar storyline. Interestingly, The Dead ends up addressing class issues in a way never tackled by Life; though he is a rare scholarship student among the wealthier boys at his Catholic school, Alex witnesses and, in some cases, benefits from the advantages of the richer students. We learn that the government--both local and national--is taking care of its elite and is working on relocating the Fortune 500 company leaders to a safer zone where the United States' government will be re-established. Additionally, some of the higher ranking and necessary city employees are being cared for at city centers while the rest of the citizens (read: the less privileged ones) have to take their chances at poorly maintained evacuation centers.

This is another riveting novel in a semi speculative fiction vein from a classic author of young adult literature (anybody besides me have a copy of Fantasy Summer?). My one critique of this one involves the novel's expectation that the reader will have read and remembered much of Life as We Knew It. In the second book, there's not nearly the same amount of explication related to the moon's shift and its effects; rather, the floods and volcanic eruptions happen, and are sort of blamed on the moon, but never really scientifically justified. It's not that I need some kind of Nature essay, here, but I would have liked a little more explanation than I got (and that I remembered, just not so clearly, from the first book). That said, it's clear that lack of information is and would be a problem in a situation such as the one described in the book; therefore, the characters'--and our--lack of full understanding might be more of a literary device. That said--again!--it seems like the characters would be very interested in finding out exactly what was going on and what scientific folks predicted would happen, so I don't get why some of the information Alex learned during his regular sessions with the battery-operated radio weren't made public to us readers.

Posted by Amy P. at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ruby, Laura (2008). Play Me. NY: HarperTeen (Harper Collins). 320 pages.

Seventeen-year-old Eddy is known as something of a player, but he's too wrapped up in filmmaking with his guy pals to consider the consequences of his actions. See, Eddy and his two friends have entered a contest sponsored by MTV and, by making it past the first cut, now have to submit new installments of their dramatic series "Riot Grrl 16" to the channel's site every week to be voted upon by the viewing public. A semi-satire of the "Lonely Girl 15" phenom, "Riot Grrl" is pretty popular among voters until some anonymous commenter who seems to know Eddy starts flaming the voting boards with bitchy accusations and starts lowering the series' vote count with his/her lowball judgments. Meanwhile, Eddy is certain that "Riot Grrl" is the thing, even though the series "star" is an unpredictable former hookup of Eddy's who's still a little pissed about the diss she suffered at his hands. Eddy's moved on, however, and is cruising a hot tennis player who seems to like him back. Could this be the girl who turns him around?

While the description makes the novel sound like just another Alloy-esque dramatic romance, I assure you, Ruby's second book is richer than that. I didn't even mention Eddy's kind of fucked up family situation (his mom left them when he was young and acts on a CSI type show) and his hitch-your-wagon-to-a-star dreams of entering the film business right after high school. Then there's the meeting with MTV, which the adult in me recognizes as an homage to Tom Petty's "Into the Great Wide Open." Rebel without a clue, indeed.

Ruby writes Eddy, who also narrates the novel, with a compelling voice completely ignorant of what we, as readers, recognize as inevitable bravado. And that's what makes the book so hard to put down. Eddy's dreams are ones we want to believe in; but, as cynical realists, we recognize the fall that poetic justice demands.

My one complaint has to do more with the marketing and paratext of the novel than the writing, itself. The back matter reads like the book is going to be about a "playa" who gets "played" and, to a small degree, the novel engages with this concept. There's a lot more here than that--this book is no Played by Dana Davidson--and I feel like the promo material is selling the novel a bit short.

On other thing (and this is kind of a complaint, too): we never find out who the online flamer is! As in Ruby's first novel, Good Girls, which deflated a bit when the mystery that motivated the main action was revealed (I don't want to spoil the story, so I won't say much more), I wanted more of a conclusion to the very small mystery element that appeared in this book as well. That said, I'm a real mystery fan, and my reading of YA lit (and the world, if you can believe Jerome Bruner) is colored by that interpretive lens.

Posted by Amy P. at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brian, Kate (2007). Confessions ("Private" series). NY: Simon and Schuster. 232 pages.

OK, I am officially a sucker. After I read the first three books in the "Private" series, I thought I'd had enough. Never mind that I still didn't know who had killed Thomas, the hot but unstable guy series heroine and narrator Reed hooked up with (and lost her virginity to--gasp!) in the first book. The genuine boringness of each installment I read, the lack of characterization (I mentioned in my initial review that I had a hard time keeping all of the mean girls straight), and the "all tease, no tickle" promises made by the books' back matter pretty much convinced me that this was a series in which I didn't need to invest myself. Then, I saw Confessions at the library and I thought, "Hmmm . . . Maybe I should at least find out who killed Thomas." What an idiot (and a masochist) I am!

So, anyway, the drama that drives the first four books in the series centers around the mysterious murder of one of the BMOCs at Reed's exclusive private school. A fish out of water--a scholarship student among richies--Reed somehow insinuates herself among the cream of the crop at her new school and gets invited to hang with the mean (but powerful) girls and live in their exclusive dorm. Reed hooks up with Thomas (the aforementioned BMOC), then he goes missing, then he's found murdered, then she hooks up with his best friend, then his best friend is accused of the murder! Drama! The whole time, the clique at the dorm are alternating playing mean girl tricks on Reed and gifting her with designer clothes, taking her to exclusive parties, and getting her drunk on expensive alcohol. What?

Finally, it starts to look like the Stockholm Syndrome Sisters are somehow behind Thomas's death. What's Reed to do? Those bitches are her ticket to the upper class! In a dramatic (not really) final scene, the real killer is revealed. But, because none of the characters have any depth or distinction, you have to be a real idiot to buy the guilty party's confession. At least now I know who did it. I can stop reading now. I don't want to spoil it here for anyone who might be a fan of the series, but if you want to know the guilty party, just drop me an email. You'll thank me for not having to suffer through book four in the "Private" series.

Posted by Amy P. at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shan, Darren (2007 [2008, US]). Demon Apocalyspe (Book 6 in the Demonata series). NY: Hachette (Little, Brown). 200 pages.

The first two sentences of Darren Shan's sixth book in the "Demonata" series pretty much exemplify the entire installment: "A demon shaped like a giant scorpion digs its stinger into a woman's eyes. As they pop, it spits eggs into the bloody sockets, then watches with its almost human face as the eggs hatch and wriggling maggots feast on her flesh" (2007/2008, p. 3). Yes! This scorpion creature thankfully makes a few more appearances in the story and, lucky for us, performs that little maggot-hatching trick more than once. Some folks might judge Shan's latest series to be gratuitously violent, but I think it's totally hysterical.

Those who have been following the "Demonata" know that the series revolves around the mythic war between humans and demons, each of whom live in alternate worlds. While demons seem to live in a variety of created non-human worlds, the latest demon plot involves sneaking into the human realm and taking over. Enter Grubbs Grady, the primary hero of the series, who has become embroiled in the counter-plot to stop the demons, led by the evil demonmaster Lord Loss. I have to admit, I hadn't read book 5, so I was a little lost at first when I entered book 6; however, the primary conflict here follows much of what anyone who's read more than one of the previous novels understands as one of the series' main struggles: namely, the "good" guys want to stop the "bad" guys from opening a gate between Lord Loss's demon world and the human one.

Interestingly, though this book seems to conclude and resolve some major issues, Shan has indicated (via his website) that this is not the end of the series, but the beginning of what he considered the series' major plotline. At any rate, Demon Apocalypse delivers much of what we've come to expect from the series' installments: the sixth book sets up the battle to be fought in this episode and describes it and its results in grisly detail.

As I mentioned earlier, I think some folks might consider the series to be overly gory; however, I think that it is this aspect of the series that really distinguishes it in a rather hysterical way. For one, the creative descriptions of the demons and their attack patterns (e.g. the scorpion dude) are actually so over-the-top as to be morbidly funny. There were so many passages that could be read as either horror or lampoon and that, to me, is one of the attractions of the books. That Shan includes this level of detail (and really, the book's aren't that descriptive in terms of pain and suffering, just in terms of action) shows, in my opinion, a level of respect for readers that you don't often see in a middle-grade horror novel. Yes, there is a lot of what some might call violence, but I don't really consider "violent," per se. It's more like gross-out description that titillates in the same way that violence in standard (adult) horror novels does, but that excuses its readers from really suffering along with the fictional victims. At any rate, I think the series is hilarious, and I have no doubt that others find it so as well.

Posted by Amy P. at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

de la Cruz, Melissa (2007). Angels on Sunset Boulevard. NY: Simon and Schuster. 240 pages.

This is the first book in what I hope is a new series (or at least a trilogy) by "Ashleys" and "Au Pairs" author de la Cruz. Decidedly unlike the "Ashleys" and "Au Pairs" and deeper than de la Cruz's other fantasy/horror series "Blue Bloods," Angels blends mystery and elements of dystopian fantasy in a Scott Westerfeld-type way.

Narrated in the third person with limited omniscience, the novel follows Taj, the ex-girlfriend of an Internet music sensation turned legitimate rock star. When the rock star, known as Johnny Silver, disappears, a boy on the fringe of Taj's scene tries to make sense of the web of intrigue surrounding Taj, Johnny, and embedded in a popular social networking site known as TAP.

This book has it all: rock and roll cool (that, for once, is not overdone), social networking conspiracy, a slowly revealed mystery, and even a little twist at the open ending. Fans of de la Cruz will find the same easy to read but fast paced prose here as in her other novels, but may be surprised at how suspenseful and downright mysterious the narrative is. Unlike the "Blue Bloods" books, which, I think, pretty much lay everything mysterious out in front of you and which seem to take pains to resolve most of the suspense within a single novel, Angels slowly raises a number of questions and doesn't leave any of them answered. Again, unlike "Blue Bloods," and other series of its ilk, Angels doesn't manufacture a cliff-hanging hook in the last chapter to keep readers waiting for the sequel. Instead, the first book in the series (I hope!) answers a question readers may not have even posed and then complicates the other mysterious elements in the plot.

According to de la Cruz's website (link here), the author plans on releasing a second book, in the fall of this year (2008). I hope I'm not the only one sweating this one out.

Posted by Amy P. at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cohn, Rachel (2008). You Know Where to Find Me. NY: Simon and Schuster. 208 pages.

When I saw on the book's jacket flap that Rachel Cohn's new novel promised to address a myriad of issues--including "alternative family configurations," "prescription drug abuse," and "depression," I wasn't sure if I was in for a real book or just the latest incarnation of problem fiction. Turns out, You Know Where to Find Me is not a problem novel, per se. Yes, it does include the issues mentioned on the book flap; however, it doesn't address them, list-style, and then "solve" them by page 208.

Miles (who narrates the story) and Laura are cousins and best friends who live on the same property; Miles and her mother live in the carriage house attached to Laura's father's D.C. digs. The two girls are the same age and have essentially grown up together and Miles, at least, considers them soul-mates. When Laura commits suicide, Miles is both intensely saddened and also jealous. Laura, the golden girl of the pair--blonde, slender, and popular--had everything to live for while Miles--hair dyed black, overweight, unpopular--considered herself the best candidate for elimination. Miles deals with Laura's death by indulging in the cousins' favorite pastime, taking prescription drugs, smoking cigarettes, and hanging out in the treehouse Laura's father had built for the girls.

When I think about the essential plot of this book, my summary goes something like this: Good girl dies; bad girl cries, takes drugs, and considers dropping out of high school, then decides to go back to school as the school newspaper's editor and campaign for DC statehood. What? Yeah, the DC statehood issue is one that runs more strongly throughout the book than those "social issues" featured on the book flap. While I can definitely see this inclusion of an uncommon (in YA lit, at least) social issue as a metaphor for Miles, herself, as she approaches her own independence with equal parts anxiety, cynicism and fear, I'm not sure it all works in this slender book. I get that including this type of content is an important part of setting the novel in DC, especially among some of DC's political actors; however, I don't think that the book was long enough or deep enough to handle as much statehood stuff as was included.

That said, I don't think the novel was all that bad. I like that it didn't make a big deal out of its drug content and call attention to Addiction in a contrived way. The scene where Miles goes to Laura's funeral stoned made the points that were necessary without preaching and, intriguingly, without vilifying the character. That said (again!), I though the drug use issue was resolved in a sort of deus ex machina way that didn't seem true to the book as a whole. I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll just leave it at that.

So, yeah, this book was OK. Rachel Cohn's name will probably sell it to folks who dig her stuff (both alone and with David Levithan). I'll admit, I was curious about her new novel, and I'm not even a fan. That said, I'm still not moving Rachel Cohn to my personal list of best YA authors of all time. Why? Because (and this is a somewhat bitchy and personally readerly critique) almost every book I've read by Cohn is narrated by some character that gets on my nerves. I don't know why everyone likes Cyd Charisse (from Gingerbread, and others), nor do I get the whole David Levithan pair-up narratives. There's something (to me, anyway) alienating about Cohn's narratives and I think it comes from the attempts the characters seem to make to distinguish themselves as cool and edgy and over it. I've always said that if you're really cool, you've transcended all signs of coolness already, so I guess what I'm doing is calling out Cohn's supposedly authentic characters as posers. But, then again, what do I know? I'm no cool dude. But then again, maybe I'm just saying that because I've transcended coolness.

Posted by Amy P. at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brian, Kate (2006). Private, Invitation Only, and Untouchable. "Private" series (books 1-3). NY: Simon Pulse.

This relatively new series by Kate Brian would seem to have everything a cheap reading date like me could want--rich bitch characters, an exclusive private school setting, adolescent intrigue, the promise of a mystery--however, the first three books didn't really do it for me the same way the "Gossip Girl" series does. I'll admit it: I initially read the books out of order (I read book #2 before I read book #1). But even when I did finally get myself oriented, I just didn't find this latest mean girls series to be that satisfying.

The first book in the series begins with fifteen-year-old Reed's arrival at an exclusive private boarding school. A lower-income Pennsylvania girl, Reed's scholarship to the prestigious Easton Academy is her ticket out of town. When Reed spies a group of uber-wealthy, popular and--it would seem--powerful girls on campus, she sets her sights on becoming one of Them. Turns out, the girls are interested in Reed, too, and by the end of book 1 in the series, have accepted the newbie into their exclusive clique and set her up in their posh dorm. She even gets a hot boyfriend. By the end of the book, however, the boyfriend has disappeared, and the next two installments detail the mystery surrounding his disappearance.

Like I said before, the "Private" books seem to have all the ingredients that made Cecily von Ziegesar's "Gossip Girl" series the smashing success it is; however, author Brian seems to have left something important out of the mix: the heart. Say what you want about "G.G.," I think that series has balls, wit, and even humanity; "Private," on the other hand, does not. It was hard to distinguish Reed's girl crushes from one another and I had to keep going back to their beginning-of-the-book descriptions to figure out who was who. I thought that as I got to know the cast of characters better, I'd sort all those bitchy girls out in my head, but I was wrong. By the end of Book 3, I still had to consult the first pages to figure out who was talking.

On a more prurient level, by reading Book 2 first, I was privy to some sexy information readers of Book 1 would have to wait until the latter part of the first book to discover: Reed gets devirginized! Unfortunately, for all the attention paid this event in retrospect, the whole shebang is barely described when it happens. How disappointing! I was hoping that "Private" would at least have some hot sex going for it (It is called "Private," after all). Something tells me this one isn't going to be optioned for a TV series . . .

Posted by Amy P. at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)