More Than This by Patrick Ness YP FIC NESS

"Here is the boy, drowning.
In these last moments, it's not the water that's finally done for him; it's the cold.
It is too late for him.
He will die.
And he will die alone.

He dies."

He wakes up.  He's covered in weird bandages. Well, partially covered.  He's in a strange, desolate, dried up town that seems totally empty and totally dead.  Then he finds something that cannot be. His childhood home.  The one in England. The one an ocean away from where he died. The one he left years ago after the tragedy that no one in his family will talk about.  The tragedy that is all. his. fault.  It is a dusty dead, burnt out world. A world in which he doesn't dream, so much as relive his past life in painful, frustrating detail. Since he can't really be alive and he can't really be in England. He realizes that he must be in his own personal, private Hell.  But even in Hell, there has to be more than this!  Doesn't there?

This is a tough book to review, because so much of what I love about it would reveal plot twists that should go unspoiled!  I can say that Ness has hit it out of the park once again with his deft use of realistic reaction and emotion in fantastic and seemingly impossible situations. The boy, Seth is a scared and scarred teen trying to survive and looking for a reason to survive. His doubts and frustration in the dead world he wakes up in and in his reliving his past are so well conveyed they feel universal.  I found myself rooting for Seth whether he was gripped by loneliness and despair or searching anywhere for a glimmer of hope.  Ness is able to wring drama and action aplenty with Seth just wandering around his new wasteland home, before he ever begins to reveal any of the books mysteries. For the price of one book (free because we are a library) you get a weird sci-fi (maybe) apocalytpic adventure, a devastating and harrowing look at living (and dying) with grief, a TOTAL brain twisting look at the very nature of reality itself, a beautiful and painful contemporary romance (as told in flashback), and several other wonderful surprises I won't spoil!

Young Adult fiction definitely has a lot of books where the main character has a painful past that is revealed bit by bit every few chapters until the final cathartic reveal. What makes More Than This stand apart is that the structure isn't just used to string the plot out, it becomes a part of the plot and the deeper themes of the book itself. Also, unlike some books that use this device, you never want to yell "HURRY UP ALREADY!!!", because BOTH worlds Seth is living in are fascinating in their own way.  I highly recommend this to anyone taht wants to read something truly unique.  It is going SUPER high on my Best Of list this year, and I think it will top yours too.

Check our catalog for More Than This here.

Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin YP FIC BEAUDOIN

Ritchie Sudden has 90 days.  90 days to think and write about why he's got 90 days.  Well, maybe not think.  Ritchie doesn't want to think the way he thinks you want him to think, but he's worried that that's a cliche so he doesn't care about that...I think.  He does care about his one true friend El Hella, his new very old guitar, a girl that may be just screwed up enough to like him, and his terrible band Wise Young Fool.  Maybe just one or two of those days he'll figure out why everything happened and if it means anything.  Maybe he won't. He may even end up a wise young fool. If not, two out of three ain't bad.

Ritchie has a hilarious and very genuine voice.  Beaudoin totally nails the trying-way-too-hard-to-not-try-too-hard that comes all too often with being a teenager.  Ritchie's crushingly stupid mistakes and unnecessary (but totally awesome) punk rock defiance end up making sense and seeming almost rational as he slowly lets us know more about who he is and what his last few weeks of freedom were like. Especially excellent is the very authentic understanding of music and being in a band.  Beaudoin nails this to the wall and slam dunks it and sundry other expressions for exactitude. It is a welcome change from the often idealized and false look at teen music that comes from writers that have clearly watched too many of those super-awesome movies form the 80s about teen bands Makin It! (this is NOT really the title of a movie starring Lea Thompson and a young Demi Moore, but it could be. It could be.) The music , the grime, the feeling of crushing conformity all make this a book with unique texture, attitude, and spark.  My one gripe is that it definitely suffers from Main Character Making references that are From Author's Teen Decade and Not His Own Too Often, but hey I'm old too so I actually get them! It may be one of many wayward young man write from a correctional facility in a snarky voice and eventually (maybe) learning something from the writing (symbolic of how writing and reading of novels can form a catharsis, perhaps?), but it is definitely one not to miss. 

You can find Wise Young Fool in out catalog here.

Winger by Andrew Smith YP FIC SMITH

Meet Ryan Dean West, Ryan Dean is his first name. This is the least of his worries You can just call him Winger like everyone else that doesn't care what his name is and just knows he's a winger on the rugby team. not the least of his worries? Being in O-Hall the wing for miscreants and screw ups at prestigious Pin Mountain Boarding School. Worse, yet?  He's only 14 and a Junior. He reasons it could be worse he could be 15 and a Senior.  Either way every single person he knows is a minimum of two years older than him and considers him "a kid." Especially, and heartbreakingly Annie, the girl of Ryan Dean's heart (and other body parts we won't mention). Though the scrums, the blood, the puke, and the other body fluids of the year he'll learn more about life than he ever wanted to know and that there way more than one way to break your heart. 

Winger  is So! Darn! Great!  Stop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and read Winger. Don't even finish this review.  It's a waste of Winger reading time.  For those of you doubters out there that are still reading this and not Winger, a) ouch, where's the trust and b) I guess I'll have to convince you. For starters, this book is utterly hilarious.  Like busting guts and snorting milk funny. It will speak to the 14 year old boy inside of everyone!  Even if laughing uproariously at brilliantly stupid humor isn't your thing, it has genuine human emotion to spare!  The book is bursting with great supporting characters that are awesome enough to be the protagonists of their own book. even the total jerks are really well written total jerks and some (SPOILER ALERT) turn out not to be jerks at all! It has a great central love story!  Heck it has two!  Ryan Dean and Annie and Ryan Dean and his best friend Joey.  it is able to look at first friendship and first love in a way that is bracingly unsentimental.  You'll find yourself rooting for and against Ryan Dean throughout the book as he goes big and goes stupid in equal measure (again he's 14), but in a way that feels human and all too familiar for anyone that ever felt 'small' and hated it. The book also has a wonderful flow.  It's got Ryan Dean's cartoons, loads of weird asides from our narrator, and loads of seemingly inconsequential but clearly monumental important (when you're a teen) stuff actually happens.  It feels like Smith had such great material, dialogue, characters, and jokes that he could have easily doubled the book, but cut down to keep only the best of the best. The book feels really tight, like every scene serves a real purpose to further show character or move the story forward.  It makes for a really hard to put down book.  So for all of you out there that still aren't reading Winger and are actually reading this review, I apologize.  Clearly I am not a good enough persuasive writer to get you to read what might the best YA book of the year yet.  For everyone else enjoy reading what is DEFINITELY my favorite YA book of this year*.

You can find Winger in our catalog here. 

*Even if the ending was a total gut-punch/face-punch/kick-in-the-ribs of sadness!

 

manicpixiedreamgirl by Tom Leveen YP FIC LEVEEN

GOOD NEWS: Tyler Darcy has just been published! And he's just a teenager!  BAD NEWS: It's complicated.

Tyler Darcy has loved Rebecca Webb since the moment he first saw her, separating her animal crackers into broken pieces and whole pieces. She only ate the broken ones. ever since then she has been the Unattainable One, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl that shakes up your life and teaches you how to really LIVE, man. He tried to find out more about her with Sydney, but just ended up sort of dating her...for two years.  He finally managed to make friends with Rebecca, but never got the courage up to tell her how he feels.  Which brings us back to GOOD NEWS/ BAD NEWS. BAD NEWS: Tyler went and wrote a beautiful story all about Rebecca (well the one that lives inside his head at least) so Sidney has dumped him, his friends think he's at least a little psycho, and he has to finally tell his dream girl all his squishiest feelings.  Unfortunately, dreams don't always come true and when a girl is on a pedestal she has an awfully long way to fall.

DISCLAIMER: I should admit that I hate the fiction trope of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (a girlish, whimsical young woman that brings troubled moody men out of their doldrums by teaching them to let go and live life to the fullest).  Fortunately, Rebecca isn't really a MPDG at all and this book is a very intelligent look at the dangers of idealization. Really, this book is almost TOO well written. that seems like a pretty unfair complaint, but Tyler is often too witty to read as a real teenager, BUT he is a (newly) published author so it ends up working.  In fact the whole book ends up working really exceptionally well.  It has pitch perfect dialogue, a likeable, relatable, and infuriatingly real (read that as totally blind) protagonist, and a really well developed supporting cast. The book takes place over one night with frequent flashbacks to show how the story got to this point. Leveen is quite good at picking the best moment to jump back and forward to keep us hooked and to highlight his themes and illuminate character.  By only getting flashes of Rebecca we have to first rely on Tyler's (faulty) view of her and his friend's (faulty in a completely different way) view of her.  This keeps the reader as seeing her as mysterious and alluring as Tyler does, and makes her slowly revealed reality more compelling as well. It takes pretty much the whole dang book, but you eventually get to really know both Rebecca and Tyler and they get to know more about themselves.  It's a great book about how stupid love, lust, and impossible ideals make us all.  It's equal parts fast, funny, cool, smart, and memorable. I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a great book about love that isn't always lovely.

You can check our catalog for manicpixiedreamgirl here.

Tap Out by Eric Devine YP FIC DEVINE

Tone knows the rules.  Keep quiet. Keep hidden.  Try to survive.  That means ignoring the cries of his mom’s latest boyfriend beating her, the drug dealing biker gang next door, and all the pain and horror that he sees on a daily basis.  But his one and only friend has found something that seems to actually make him happy.  MMA.  And when Tone gets pulled into the world of sport fighting he starts finding things in himself he thought were long dead.  Things like pride, respect, and even hope.  But those things can get you killed in Tone’s neighborhood.  Now Tone has to make a choice between hope and survival, and he’s not sure that he has a choice at all.

This book is a dark, bleak, gritty, and hard.  It felt like a punch to the gut, or maybe repeated hooks to the head and knees to the face.  Something very painful and violent anyways. That being said, I think it’s a great read.  The characters are sort of straightforward and the language is simple and direct, but all that works for the world this book describes. The action scenes are clear, direct, and brutal.  They will leave you pumped for the MMA style fighting and feeling beat and disgusted at the street violence.  The contrast between the two was a clever way to show the difference between violent sport and violence at home. The action scenes are wisely spaced far apart and the book focuses on the day to day drudgery of Tone’s life. This may not make you feel sunshiney and bright, but it is a real slice of what all too many teens have to face in the real world. Now, that’s an entire subgenre of realistic fiction and I can understand wanting to take the occasional break from the dreariest corners of the world and read about vampires and whatnot too.  However, if you want a hard knock book that will keep you hooked then this is a really solid title.

You can check our catalog for Tap Out here.

Happy Families by Tanita S. Davis YP FIC DAVIS

“That thing Tolstoy said about happy families got to me. Happy families all are alike-all of them are safe and confident that nothing on this earth can take that away from them. Just like we were before Dad’s little secret hit us like a wrecking ball.”

Ysabel and Justin are two twins on the right track.  Y is a rising art star and Justin has the Ivy League beckoning in his future, but when their dad’s secret life is revealed the ground opens under them and swallows them whole.  Both lose friends and bury themselves to hide from the confusion, guilt, and shame.  When they are forced to go live with their dad during Spring Break and face his secrets head on, they start to question what family really means and how any family can ever be ‘happy’.

So the blurb on the jacket doesn’t let you in on the secret, but the dedication and cover art do AND it’s revealed pretty early on, so SPOLIER ALERT: Y and Justin’s dad reveals that he wears women’s clothing and feels that he is a woman.  So, a bit of a shock is an understatement.  The novel starts with Y and Justin before the big reveal and then cuts to right before their trip with their dad and their lives sort of wrecked.  We get the story from both Y and Juston’s viewpoints and fortunately, both feel like real and different voices. The twins go gradually through the stages of shock, anger, and disbelief into understanding and eventually acceptance.  This is dealt with realistically and doesn’t turn into a lecture or an after school special (Dear Teenagers, ask your parents about after school specials!). They meet people, learn from them, question things, and eventually adapt.   

What I liked most about this novel is the real sense of a loving family torn apart and eventually reunited through love.  Way too often families are entirely on the sidelines or cardboard cutouts in YA lit, but this book has a genuine and warm focus on the family. The book is about a controversial and tough issue to address, but it looks at it in a clear-eyed and non-sensational way. I think it is a great read for anyone that likes family dramas or wants to read about a provocative and unique subject.  

You can check our catalog for Happy Families here.

The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison YP FIC ELLISON

Lo (short for Penelope) collects things, well everything actually.  Is started as a hobby, it became an obsession. Ever since she couldn’t save Oren.  Shouldn’t have thought about him! Can’t breathe. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, banana, banana, banana. Better. But she can make it right, maybe.  She finally found something important.  A butterfly necklace that belonged to a dead girl named Sapphire. A girl killed when she was moments away.  It has to mean something. The girl that was killed was also deemed damaged and unimportant, as was her runaway brother, as is Flynt the young man that lives in the shadows of the streets and tells her she’s beautiful. Now she can’t stop thinking about Sapphire and has to find out who killed her.  But this obsession could prove fatal.

This book made my brain itch. It is a strange, dark, and twisty thriller.  Lo is a unique voice, because she is very disturbed and using Obsessive and Compulsive tics to try to push away her pain and sadness. Not the Nancy Drew type, clearly.  But that’s what makes the mystery so thrilling.  Lo is drawn to venture into in underworld of Neverland (the homeless kid shanty town) and Sapphire’s dark past, because she knows what it’s like to feel discarded and deemed a freak.  Also her obsessive nature means she notices things other people don’t, but fortunately it isn’t turned into gimmicky gift ability either. Ellison does a great job at getting into Lo’s scary psyche.  Her ticks and obsessions and overwhelming anxiety are very compelling and got deep under my skin.  That underlying unease and tension elevated the murder mystery element and made me feel that the danger was real and palpable in a way most thrillers never do.  I kept worrying for Lo in every dark corner she went down and jumping at every shadow with her. I won’t say I enjoyed being in Lo’s mind, but I certainly was affected by it.  That’s hard to do for someone that reads as many books as I do! The central mystery is complicated by the slow reveal of what happened to Lo’s brother and by the developing relationship with Flynt.  Which means Butterfly Clues is always working on multiple levels at the same time.  This book won me over in spite of myself and I found myself caring about Lo even as she drove me crazy.  If you like dark lit like Ellen Hopkins and want a creepy mystery with a twisted twist, definitely grab this one.  

You can check our catalog for The Butterfly Clues here.

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler YP FIC ASHER

In the long ago past of 1995 Josh and Emma are neighbors and former best friends.  Things got awkward and they don’t want to talk about it! But when Josh gets a free AOL CD (google it kids!) in the mail his mom insists that tech savvy Emma helps install it. Strangely the home page is an odd website called Facebook.  Emma eventually manages to log on and finds that she already has an account…15 years into the future!!!  Now Emma and josh know what their future holds and every little change they make in their life seems to change their Facebook future!  Will knowing their future ruin their present?  Can you pick the life you really want?

Okay, there is NO WAY that a Facebook page of the NOW will load in any reasonable time on a PC running AOL from 1995.  For teens of today just know that you live in a golden age of technological advancement and feel blessed.  Besides that MINOR quibble this book is fantastic.  Told in the alternating perspectives of Josh and Emma, we bounce between characters frequently enough to keep things interesting, but not so fast that we get dizzy.  The premise is just so great that I’d normally be skeptical that the writing would equal it, but with Asher and Mackler you know you’ll get something special.  They both are great at getting inside a character’s head and making them feel real with small touches.  The book really looks at our current obsession with social media and how we try to live our lives constantly being watched by others.  Emma and Josh are obsessed with what Facebook tells them about their future, but they learn quickly that it’s hard to really KNOW anyone on Facebook.  

Another great touch in the book is the slow build romance.  It feels utterly genuine and warm and sweet, without ever overwhelming the focus of the book or being the only thing that defines Josh or Emma.  Having multiple authors helps both characters to have their own lives and problems and unique reactions to shared situations.  I also love that they made it hard for Emma and Josh to believe what is happening.  Far too many teen books insert something wholey improbable like future technology or magic to characters that have never encountered it and the character just goes, “Oh well, magic is real I guess.”  No.  That is silly.  I would go absolutely crazypants if I saw my Facebook for a week from now today, much less 15 years from now and during a time Facebook wasn’t born yet. A lot of the reality and weight of the situation works because this improbable set up is treated realistically.  It keeps you drawn in and feel invested in Josh and Emma.  This is a great read with a great premise and a great story and great characters.  If you want something that is both realistic and has a touch of the fantastic, this is a can’t miss.

You can check our catalog for The Future of Us 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