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.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman YP FIC FORMAN

The companion and sequel to If I Stay, Where She Went gives us Andy’s side of Mia’s story. For starters Andy did not…take…it…well. Fortunately he parlayed his mix of guilt, grief, rage, loneliness, and sadness into songwriting and has become a rock star. Unfortunately, its three years later and he still has all of that guilt, grief, rage, loneliness, and sadness. At the same time as he is living it down in LA, Mia is a rising star at Juliard. When chance gets Andy stuck in New York they intersect for one night. As Mia shows him the city their past, present, and future collide and leave both wondering where to go from here.

Told in first person in a similar straight forward style as If I Stay, this book has all of the lyrical strength of the first book. It’s very different in tine, however, as Mia was usually sad, wistful, happy, or longing and Andy is usually bitter and angry. His moodiness may put some readers off, but I found it gave the book an edge and drive that was unique from the first title and made his voice refreshingly different than Mia’s. I honestly picked this book up a little hesitantly. If I Stay had the Big Decision to drive the plot: Will Mia Live or DIE!!!? was quite the hook. I was worried a book about hanging around a city and talking wouldn’t compete. But it totally does. We get to learn about how Andy dealt with the events of the first book and see the results of Mia’s decision. The question of “How can they possibly fixed their broken relationship?” is just as compelling a Big Question. This is a perfect companion to the first book and has just as much to say about life, grief, and the power of love.

Friend is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft YP FIC EHRENHAF

Hen Birnbaum is having a bad day. His way too cool for him girlfriend Petra Dostoevsky just dumped him AND kicked him out of her band, his parents are over compensating on the life advice because his sister disappeared a year ago and no one will tell him the where or the why (for his own good!), and now his sister reappears and expects him to just wait until she feels like letting him know what’s up. The only thing keeping him sane are the distractions he makes for himself and his best friend Emma, but before the summer is over he’ll realize the distractions really are his life and Emma may be more than a friend.

I’ll admit that I picked this book up because I saw the title as a challenge. Friend totally is a verb! When I started reading I found out that despite it’s clearly wrong title this is a very good read. It stands out from the many other slice-of-life-coming-of-age novels by virtue of great and seriously witty characters. Ehrenhart keeps the cast relatively small except for the occasional walk on here or there, so he can focus on keeping his characters distinct and memorable. He has a real flair for it too. Pretty much everyone Hen runs into is a New York stereotype of one type or the other, but fresh writing keep them feeling like cardboard clichés. Hen, himself is very likeable with a nice self deprecating humor and a million pop cultural references that amuse without seeming forced. The plot moves along well, but I found the ending to be a little anti climatic and neat. However, even with some small flaws the book is still a huge win. If you want something not too heavy with extra clever writing, check it out.

Derby Girl by Shauna Cross

Bliss Cavendar cannot wait to finish high school so she can get out of Bodeen, Texas as soon as possible. The small town only seems to offer her misery with its Miss Bluebonnet pageant, lack of hot, cool guys, and cowboy mentality. If it weren’t for her best friend, Pash, and a mutual love of all things indie rock there would be little happiness in the world that imprisons them. That is until Bliss discovers the extreme excitement of roller derby, which takes place an hour away in her cool, indie-dream capital, Austin.

According to Bliss roller derby is her ticket out of small town, narrow-minded living and an escape from her reality of having to soon compete in the Miss Bluebonnet pageant. She leads a double life, high school attending teenager by day/ 18-yr-old heartbreaker roller derby babe by night, which bring her both happiness and pain. She meets and dates the hottest band guy and becomes a roller queen. However, this new life comes with sacrifices, like best friendship, which Bliss discovers is more important that making out with a boy.

The author Shauna Cross is from Austin, which is apparent by her description of the city and hipster hot spots. For those high schoolers who feel stuck and out of place in the typical high school setting, Bliss’ story will make you wish you could transport yourself to Austin’s Lamar Street or South Congress to do some vintage clothes or record shopping. Bliss’ journey around the rink is full of hilarity and growing pains, but it is also dressed in fish nets and roller skates.

The 'Catcher' Cult

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King Dork / by Frank Portman

"I suppose I fit the traditional mold of the brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded." (p.5)

Tom Henderson might be called "Chi-Mo" by others (hint: not a coffee), but he'll always prefer his own self-tailored moniker, King Dork ("...a silent protest and acknowledgement of reality at the same time"). No, he doesn't command a "nerd army, or preside over a realm of the socially ill-equipped"; he's just been rendered inferior by all his "psycho-normal" peers that stalk the halls of "standard, generic High School Hell". When his personal dignity's not under assault, he and co-dork Sam Hellerman like to hang out at his ultra-dysfunctional house where, avoiding whiny sister species and flaky parental units, they continue work on their band's next album. Make that its first album...rather, its first song...or, failing that, a new band altogether.

Being 'below the bottom' of the high school pecking order's bad enough, but not knowing why your cop father was killed in the line of duty is its own self-sustaining mystery. Indeed, it seems a hopeless quandary until strange clues unearth in the most insanely ironic places; a wackjob teacher's crusty sarcasm, an old copy of Catcher in the Rye, mysterious Bible coding, etc., all start to shed light on the "accident" in question. Meanwhile, something even more mystifying emerges. Tom/"Chi-Mo" begins having "girl" encounters after a clandestine incident at a halloween party--involving a rather precociously attired female--sets him on the trail of an altogether different mystery.

Longtime Rock singer/songwriter Frank Portman has quite a knack for fiction. Not only is this book an authentic characterization of protagonist Tom/"Chi-Mo"/"King Dork"..., it's a downright laugh riot as a totally dead-on depiction of the cynical teenage mentality. Where soooo many books/movies/TV/music go wrong-wrong-wrong in duplicating the teenage microcosm is where King Dork gets it right: a recognition that the high school domain is all too often just the "familiar monotony" of "tedious" and "horrifying" incidents. Even with the somewhat tacked-on subplot, this book is a can't-put-downer as Tom eventually establishes some authority to accomodate his angst-ridden, skeptic-laden identity.