The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

As with most of the books I read, I came late to the wildly enthusiastic The Fault in Our Stars party but better late than never. The novel, written by John Green, came out in January 2012 to pretty much universal acclaim, climbing the bestseller charts both here and in the United Kingdom as well as earning a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice award.

Green is well-known for both his young adult books as well as his collaboration with his brother, Hank, the YouTube channel "Vlog Brothers," and the community that their online conversations have spawned, Nerd Fighters.

Anyways, back to the book. The Fault in Our Stars takes the trope of star-crossed lovers and transforms it into this astonishing lovely, heartbreaking piece of literature. It is Shakespearean in its execution, mixing romance, comedy, drama and philosophy into what is essentially a girl-meets-boy story. Except girl has Stage IV thyroid cancer and boy has already lost a leg to Osteosarcoma.

Yes, this is a book about kids with cancer. It's told through the eyes of the girl, 16-year-old Hazel Lancaster, who has to cart an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes. She meets the quick-witted, dashing Augustus Waters at cancer survivor support group. Their chemistry, apparent in their verbal exchanges (which are silly, sad and moving, sometimes all at the same time), is as certain as their diagnoses. As their friendship blossoms, we fall in love with the teenaged pair just as they fall in love with each other. They bond over Hazel's favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, which ultimately proves critical to how their own story plays out.

But let's face it. This is a book about kids with cancer. In our heart of hearts, we know, or at least suspect, what's coming. Green gives us an unflinching look at young love made all the more poignant by the vagaries of fate. This is a book for those ready for some intense feelings: Be ready to laugh, to cry, and to muse about mortality.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa J. Bick YP FIC BICK

Jenna Lord has already died three times in her short life: twice by fire and now by ice.  She’s made it through all that to realize she may have nothing left to live for.  She sits in the hospital telling her story for the detective in the recorder he gave her.  But there’s a story and there’s the truth and sometimes people can’t know which is which.  There’s her teacher that’s more than just her teacher, her brother that’s more like a ghost, her parents that want to live a lie, and then there’s her.  Telling this story is a bit like drowning. The deeper she gets the more she struggles for air, and the more likely she is to pull someone down with her.

Leave it to Bick to write a novel MORE depressing than her book about a zombie apocalypse (Ashes YP FIC BICK). Then again, for us Kevin Brooks, Laurie Halse Anderson, Ellen Hopkins, etc. fans, dark and depressing makes for the best reads!  This is a gut wrenchingly tough read at times and it is certainly not for everyone.  I really loved Jenna’s dark sarcastic voice and found her compelling and real. The first person talking into a recorder trick really works to make the book feel intimate and conspiratorial; since this is a book about secrets and lies, it brings the novel to another level. Jenna is a self-described ‘liar’ and even when she’s telling ‘the truth’ it’s her ‘truth’. I highly recommend this to fans of very dark contemporary fiction, but be aware: this book is dangerous*. The ‘relationship’ that develops between Jenna and Mr. Anderson is presented entirely from Jenna’s POV and that’s where things get tricky. Jenna doesn’t see this as a predator/victim relationship and we get her point of view of falling in love with her adult teacher. That moral gray area in something as absolutely inappropriate, immoral, unethical, and illegal as the relationship actually is makes for very uncomfortable reading.  However, Bick wants her readers uncomfortable and packs enough sad and sick gut punch twists throughout the book that even the most jaded of readers is going to eventually start to get involved in the book on a real emotional level.  The most impressive thing is that this doesn’t feel crass and manipulative like it might in the hands of a lesser writer.  This is my favorite feel-bad book of the summer!  I won’t say it was fun, I didn’t quite ‘enjoy’ it, but I’m glad to have read it and I’ll be thinking about it for a long while.

*Lots of great fiction is dangerous, but it’s also not for everyone.

You can check our catalog for Drowning Instinct here.

The Disenchantments by Nina Lacour YP FIC LACOUR

Colby has it all figured out, has had the same plan for years: tour with his best friend Bev’s terrible awesome band for their senior summer and then backpack through Europe together. Bev changes everything when she announces that instead she is going to start college in the fall and all his dreams are shattered and get used to it.  Now Colby begins the last summer of freedom on a heartbreaking, life changing road trip.

Like Everything You need to Survive the Apocalypse, (which I just reviewed) this is a definite ‘have a hanky handy’ read.  The cover tricks you with light-happy-summertime image that makes you think this will be a fun summer romp. No.  Suuuuure, there’s loads of fun in this book, but it’s also a very genuine and real look at first love and first heartbreak and why you will almost always have to abandon certain dreams to grow up.  The characters feel like real people and have their own drives and backgrounds beyond what they mean to Colby.  This makes the book come alive and lets different readers take different things form the book, because different readers will likely identify with different characters.  Heck, I identified with different characters at the end of the book than for the middle or the beginning.  This is one of these great coming-of-age, love-and-loss books like The Big Crunch (YP FIC HAUTMAN) or How to Say Goodbye in Robot (YP FIC STANDIFOR)that I’ve reviewed previously.  It didn’t move me or grab me quite as much as LaCour’s first novel Hold Still. This one is certainly just as good, so some readers will probably even like it better.  DEFINITELY read both.  LaCour is definitely shaping up to be one of the best new voices in realistic fiction for young adults. 

You can check our catalog for The Disenchantments here.

Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss YP FIC KLAUSS

Phillip is a sort-of atheist (maybe) falling for an evangelical Christian named Rebekah. That’s a problem. His dad is a DEFINITELY atheist; and the fact that his mom decided she believed in God and turned their basement into an Apocalypse shelter right before she DIED makes the whole ‘religion thing’ an atomic bomb.  So starts a funny, sad, honest look at friendship, love, faith, doubt, and all the other things that will help you survive an apocalypse. 

I picked this one up because the cover is unique, but was worried.  NOT ANOTHER APOCALYPSE BOOK!!! Fortunately, the apocalypse is just symbolic and emotional! This isn’t dystopia, it’s (really good) contemporary fiction.  Contemporary fiction (books set in the present where there are no robots, dystopias, ghosts, vampires, zombies, etc.) are a tough thing to make work, because you can’t use the fantastical to bring interest. What works best about this book is that all the major characters feel flawed, real, and relatable.  They don’t just represent an idea the author wants to examine or a character ‘type’ to move the plot forward. The characters are funny, but without seeming like professional comedy writers in teenage bodies.  I loved Phillip and Rebekah and really found myself rooting for them, even when it was obvious that they both have real issues.  The most impressive thing is this book is able to look at faith and religion in a very funny but open-minded way.  They do poke fun at the excesses of the sub-culture that is evangelical life, but they also show that is has plenty of good people in it who aren’t crazy or mean in any way.  So pick this up and you’ll laugh, cry, learn about the importance of letting go whilst simultaneously holding on, and find out how to survive symbolic apocalypses. 

You can check our catalog for Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse here

Walter Dean Myers named National Ambassador for Young People's Literature

But not everyone is happy about it.

Commentator and former public school teacher, Alexander Nazaryan has written a scathing rebuke of the choice in a blog for the New York Daily News, calling Myers work 'insipid'.  He claims that all Myer's work does is reflect the worst of life and failing to inspire or elevate beyond it.  Instead he believes kids and teens should be reading the classics such as  Homer's The Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. However, he doesn't ever say why kids and teens couldn't or shouldn't read both classics and contemporary literature, which is something that Myers can do in his role as ambassador. The fact that Myer’s spends a great deal of his time traveling to juvenile halls, halfways houses, inner city schools, and many other places where teens need inspiration to encourage reading and education, shows that he already is an ambassador.

As a young adult librarian I have read many of Myer’s novels and personally think that Nazaryan is not just off base, but insultingly so.  The off repeated refrain that teens need to read the classics and not the ‘trash’ that they enjoy is a classic exercise in faulty reasoning. Of course teens should read classic literature, but if it is not preceded by a love of reading, it is doomed to fail.  How do you build a love of reading, how about by encouraging teens to read authors they already love? 

You can read Nazaryan’s missive here and decide for yourself if Myer's is the best choice for ambassador.  To help listen to this NPR interview with Myers himself here. Also, check out his wonderful books in our childrens, young adult, and biography sections.  Ask a librarian and he or she will gladly help you find our full holdings of his titles.

Brooklyn Burning by Steve Brezenoff YP FIC BREZENOF

Kid loved a junkie named Felix until he disappeared and left Kid with nothing more than pain and the questions of who started the fire.  Scout comes along and gives Kid a shot at reclaiming the life, love, and music Kid that had disappeared forever.

This is a true original.  Kid is our narrator and he always talks directly to ‘you’.  However, in this case ‘you’ isn’t an imaginary, unnamed audience.  ‘You’ is Scout.  We learn all about Scout through Kid’s eyes and eventually more about Kid.  This is not only a way to keep the reader wondering about who the characters are, but also allows for the story to be very ambiguous in a wonderful and surprising way. We NEVER find out the gender of Kid or Scout.  The book never reveals if Kid is male or female or Scout is male or female, so this story is universal.  No matter gender or orientation, you can see yourself as a reader in Kid, Scout, or both.  This doesn’t just feel like a gimmick, because the story is all about identity, love, loss, and how easy all three get mixed up together.  Kid feels like Felix took away love, music, and Kid’s identity.  They are all rediscovered in Scout.  I liked Brezenoff’s previous book The AbsoluteValue of -1 or l-1l for short, but found it sometimes lacked focus with the multiple narrators, but Brooklyn Burning is a perfect and original use of the single narrator.  This book is honest, gritty, and raw.  It would be good for fans of edgier contemporary fiction.