Homecoming, by Cynthia Voight

Before I tell you about this book, let me say that finding the cover that I remember it having (the pinkish one that I posted up there) was a giant pain.  I even re-bought this book recently at the goodwill and it had this cover, but the one that I found every time I searched was this:

Isn’t that kind of way cool and trendy looking?  They did the whole series with these kind of covers.  If I were a kid, I’d go totally crazy for these books. Again.

Anyway.

I loved this book.  I think that there were three or four in the series about this family and I know that I read all of them, but I must have read this first one 20 times, no exaggeration.  I think that the first couple of times that I read it, I was probably too young to really “get” it and it is one of the first books that I remember that kept revealing new stuff to me as I continued to read it.

Dicey is just a young teen (maybe 14 or so?) when her totally unstable mother up and leaves Dicey and her three younger siblings at a shopping mall.  She just goes in, leaves the kids in the car and never comes back.  When they realize what has happened and that they are solo now, Dicey totally steps up and starts taking care of her younger siblings.  She gets into her head that they need to head north, where they have some relatives, so she leads these kids on this journey.  They have 10 or 15 bucks and they just do what they need to do.  They sleep and camp in random places, eat random food and just make it day-to-day.

What I remember mostly was that Dicey was in-freaking-credible.  Seriously, one of the best young adult heroines that I’ve come across even to this day.  I just remember being totally struck on how strong and good that she was.  She just got up every day and cheered up her siblings.  She didn’t know where their next meal was going to come from, but she didn’t let anything slow her down or make her second guess.  Even when she got to her relative’s house and they, um, were not what she expected, she didn’t crumble.  She was just awesome.

After thinking about this book and looking at the covers I’ve gotten myself all excited.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I pick this one up soon for a re-read.  It’s that good.

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The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton

So, I loved this book when I was growing up.  I read it when I was pretty young and saw the movie and thought that it was all pretty great.  Then, in maybe 6th or 7th grade (I really have no idea) we read it as a class and I learned that not only was S.E. Hinton a woman (I had just assumed that a man wrote this book), but she wrote this when she was 16 years old.  At the time, I really wanted to become an author and this was more encouragement to me than I can even tell you.  It made me love it even more.

I loved their names: Ponyboy, Soda Pop, Dallas, Two-Bit… how can you get any cooler than that?

Seriously though, the issues touched on here: life, death, classes, friendship… it’s all deep stuff that’s just done in this really great way.  It’s all about teenagers and written by a teenager, so I think that it touches on how these issues are perceived by teens in a real way.  I think that that is why a book with, let’s be honest, not a whole lot of literary-merit has had such staying power.  Seriously, great stuff.  The “nothing gold can stay” bit? Classic.

And I know I’m supposed to be talking about the book, but the movie? Awesome.  Rob Lowe, Emilo Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane…. how can you beat that?  I’m of the opinion that not a whole lot of good came out of the 80’s, but this is everything that is great about the 80’s.  Awesome.

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The Book: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

The Story: Nick sees his ex-girlfriend (who he is still pretty much in love with) in a bar with another guy and impulsively asks the girl closest to him to be his girlfriend for five minutes to show his ex-girlfriend that he’s over her (even though e’s clearly not). That girl is Norah.  She is a bit impulsive herself and reaches up and gives Nick a fireworks-kiss.  From there, this kind of crazy night ensues.  They connect at first, then kind of fall apart… then connect again… and fall apart again. All of this happens quite a few times before dawn. They live in NYC, so we’re also watching them kind of wonder to all these different places: a club, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, a couple taxis, a hotel (just the little room with the ice machine… hmmm…), and Times Square.  As they progress through this date, they are really  just feeling each other out and letting go of the exes that they have both been toting around for some time.

What I Thought: I had never heard of this before I saw the movie preview. I’m pretty serious about reading the book before I see the movie and I wanted to see this movie eventually so when I saw this book at the library, I grabbed it for a quick read.  I have to admit, though, that I couldn’t picture Nick & Norah as anyone other than the kids that play them in the movie. Dang. I hate when that happens.

Anyway. I think I read this book in just a couple of hours. Maybe not even that. It is super short and written in a way that is just easy to fly through.  I think that, for me, that added to the enjoyment of the book. They are kind of carrying on at this frantic pace during the whole night and I felt like I was reading it just as frantically.  I wasn’t totally sold on the characters- they just seemed totally contrived- but for me, they took a background to a fun teenage love story. I liked the idea of them just meeting accidentally and taking a chance on each other.  I liked how they kind of hopped from spot to spot and in their first night together got to see a dozen sides of each other.

I even thought that the back-and-forth narration was great, and a lot of times I feel like that is a totally ineffective way to tell a story. I think that what made it work in this case was David writing Nick’s parts and Rachel writing Norah’s.  They both brought the big guns and I can just imagine how much fun they had bouncing ideas off of each other. Fun, fun, fun.

I also like the idea that there is YA out there now that is a little more relevant than when I was in high school.  These kids drink and cuss and mess around and I feel like it’s pretty important that that’s out there for teens to read.  There was nothing over-the-top here, just normal teenage stuff. I can see some teachers or parents getting kind of bent out of shape about this, but I think that it is a place for teens to kind of “live this out” in a safe way, if that makes sense.

Conclusion: All in all, a cute, fun read.  I don’t think that my world was changed and I don’t think that I’ll read it again, but I will surely rent the movie and keep an eye out for other books by these authors.  I was on a mini-vacation when I read this and it was just perfect for that.  Give it a go.

The Book: Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher

The Story: The narrator of this book is a teenage boy named Clay.  He gets home from school one day to find a package.  Turns out, it’s full of tapes from a girl named Hannah who had killed herself just last week.  As the tapes begin, she says that anyone who has received them in some way contributed to her killing herself.  The tapes are her chance to tell why she did it and how they are all involved.

She provides a map of places around their town that are influential in her life and in the story she’s telling, so Clay gets a walkman and starts traveling to these different places, all the while listening to the tapes.

The reasons that Hannah spell out are kind of this snowball effect.  There was an initial wrong when she moved to town and it just kind of spiraled, in her eyes, until it was unfixable.  Clay is intrigued and horrified.  Throughout the book, as Hannah’s “voice” tells her story, Clay’s thoughts are also spelled out for the reader.

The reader knows going into the story that in the end, Hannah kills herself.  Somehow there is still quite a bit of suspense here, finding out how each person was involved and how it all ties together in the end.

What I Thought: This book was absolutely gut wrenching.  Just last summer, my teenage cousin committed suicide.  She wasn’t this outwardly depressed kid.  While she probably exhibited warning signs, they were mostly noticed in retrospect.  While she had searched for help, no one had any idea that the situation was as extreme as it obviously was.  I thought a lot about teen suicide in the following months and about how teenager’s brain just doesn’t react the way that an adult’s brain does.  I thought a lot about how no one had any idea what that “final straw” was for Kristi or what could have led her down such a horrible path.  At the funeral, I heard a lot of grieving people talk about how “I had no idea.” “If I had only….”

I knew about this book then but I’m glad that I waited for my brain to clear to read this.  As an adult reading this book, I was blown away that the series of events that she described was enough to make her not want to live.  But then I started thinking about that “snowball” and how all of these things grouped together, and then viewed through a teenager’s lens may just be enough to do it.  It makes my stomach turn over.

The heart behind this book really was that every little wrong that we do can be taken as something huge to the person we are wronging.  Kids are mean.  Teenagers are worse.  It makes me blush to think of the downright horrible things that I said or did to people as a kid and as a teen.  I think that the motive that Jay Asher had while writing this was to make his teenage readers think all of this through.

What a powerful book.  I think that in high schools, this book should be stacked in the guidance office and handed to every kid that walks through the door.  It is that important.

I think that  this is an important book for adults as well.  In the end, all Hannah wanted was someone to listen, for an adult to tell her how to deal with all of these issues that she was dealing with.  Not to give away part of the ending, but she gives one adult just that chance… and he kind of makes jokes and offers up cliche advice that meant absolutely nothing.  It was at this point that Hannah made the decision to end her own life.  That is a weighty thought, but it’s true and real and something that we need to be aware of.

Conclusion: If you are a teen, were a teen, or know teens I think that this book and the ideas it presents should be read and taken to heart.  Heavy, hard stuff to read but so, so important.

The Book: Liar, by Justine Larbalestier

The Story: This book opens with Micah confessing that she is a pathological liar, but that she promises not to lie to us.

In the past, she has told outrageous lies to everyone in her life.  She told her classmates that she was a boy… then that her dad was a small arms dealer.  Her lies to her parents are numerous.  She is just a flat out liar and it’s gotten her into quite a bit of trouble in the past.

Now, her pseudo-boyfriend is murdered and all eyes are looking at her.  She swears up and down that she had nothing to do with it and that she didn’t even see him that night, but because of her history, no one is buying it.

Meanwhile, Micah is letting more and more of her story and her family history to seep in and we are getting a better look at just who we are dealing with here.

Because this book took a turn that I would have never in my life expected, I’m going to cut this short. I don’t want to ruin this for anyone who is planning on reading it.

What I Thought: First things first: I picked up this book solely because I saw it at the library and remembered hearing all the cover controversy that went along with this book’s release late last year.  I had no real familiarity with the author and no real idea what the book was about.

I don’t really know what to say about this one.  When I finished it, I felt kind of confused and caught up in this whirlwind that was the last few chapters of this book.  Now, I’ve had a little bit of time to sit on it and I like it quite a bit less than I did when I first finished.

I came to terms quickly with the fact that the narrator is unlikeable and quite possibly unreliable. I don’t mind this writing technique if it is done well, and I would say that the author did a fairly decent job at making Micah unlikeable but still readable.

I think what got me (and this may be a tiny spoiler) was how the book took such an unexpected turn toward science fiction.  I remember watching the movie The Forgotten with a friend (Hi Jason!) and him leaning over mid-movie and saying “this is going to be about aliens,” and I was just like, “no way, it’s a kidnapping movie! I saw the preview!”… it was an alien movie.  Grr. I am not a big sci-fi fan, but I can deal with it if I go in knowing what I’m getting.  The “Surprise! This is sci-fi!” thing really annoys me, and that is really what happened here.  We’re looking at a (fairly) normal high school girl with some issues… then all of a sudden.. Bam! Sci-Fi!  What a turn off.

Again, I don’t want to give away what happened in the last 20 pages or so, but suffice to say that I felt kind of cheated out of the few hours that I’d spent with this book.

Conclusion: Eh. I don’t know.  The writing wasn’t awful and the characters were readable, but as far as having a compelling plot or keeping me caught up in the book… not so much.  It really isn’t too too long, so if you are intrigued by the mystery and controversy surrounding this book, I say go for it, but don’t expect too much…

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Brashares

This book came out when I was a sophomore, maybe a junior in high school.  I can remember being at the bookstore with my best friend and us both getting a copy.  We totally fell in love with it and read it over and over.  As the rest of the series came out, we lived across the country from each other and we would both faithfully go to the bookstore and get our copy and read it then talk about it.  We even went and saw the movie together, but… ugh.  Don’t want to talk about that.

I loved this book just for its focus on teenage friendship and all the little quirks and emotions that are involved.  They are pretty light and fluffy and fun, but they also go into real issues and have real heart. I think this was a pretty great book and series anyway, but I know that that fact that I still tie it to memories of my best friend make it all the more memorable to me.

And besides, what is better than a perfect pair of jeans?

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The Book: Mister Monday: The Keys to the Kingdom #1, by Garth Nix

The Story: The main character of this book, Arthur, suffers a should-be fatal asthma attack and is visited by some creepy dudes who babble off some crazy stuff and then give him a book and a “key” that looks like the minute hand to a clock.  He ends up in the hospital and recovers quickly.

On his way home, he sees this new “house” in his development that is huge and crazy and no one else can see it.  Of course, the book that he was given by the creepy dudes shows him how to get in. When he gets “visited” at school by some more creepy guys who start a fire and plague in his town, Arthur figures that he should head to that new crazy house and try to figure out what is going on.

So, he goes and it turns out to be this whole wild city. He finds out that by having that minute hand, he has a lot of power within the city.  To stop all the bad stuff that is happening, he’s told that he has to get the hour hand that matches the minute hand he has.  A fun little quest begins.

What I Thought: Let me preface this by saying that I was buying some Hunger Games/Catching Fire goodies at the bookstore and the guy who was checking me out asked me if I liked that “type” of book, by which I kind of took to mean dystopian books- which I love.  Of course I said yes.  He said that the best series being written like this right now was the Keys to the Kingdom series. I immediately went home and requested it from the library, knowing almost nothing about it.

Maybe it was that I was expecting something like Hunger Games/Catching Fire, which I thought was incredible.   I cannot even comprehend where the comparison came from.  I’m not entirely sure, now, what he meant by “that type of book.” Maybe just YA fantasy? Which I’m not into at all. So maybe it was just that my expectations were just off.

This was not great.  I would be struggling to call it good. I guess that the premise has promise, but the follow through was cringe-worthy.  The writing was clunky and the dialogue was all the way unbelievable. I realize that it was science fiction, but the world just seemed so… fake. Even the “real” part of the world.  All of it.  The “rules” that existed seemed arbitrary and I never found myself in suspense at all. It was just silly.

I kind of kept thinking that it was going to come to life at some point and that something amazing was going to happen. No such luck.

Conclusion: Meh.  There are so many better YA books out there right now.  I wouldn’t waste my time on this.  I will not be continuing on with this series. And if you’re a bookstore worker or librarian, don’t compare mediocre books to great ones.  It’s not fair to the mediocre ones.

The Book: The Sweet Far Thing, by Libba Bray

The Story: This is the last book of a trilogy.  If you haven’t read the first two, but plan to, you may want to skip this part.

This starts pretty soon after the last book left off.  Gemma and Co. are returning to Spence Academy after all that crazy stuff went down at the end of Rebel Angels.  They get back together and try to get back into the Realms.  They can’t.  They’re freaking out.

When they do finally find their way back in, Pippa seems creepy and she has a band of girls with her that Gemma and Co. befriend.  Gemma has all of the magic from the Realms and the girls use it for various things, none of them particularly useful.  Everyone in the Realms wants a piece of this cake, but Gemma isn’t ready to let go yet.

Gemma is having crazy visions of a lady in a purple dress.  The girls run around tricking people and doing crazy things.  The Realms are kind of going crazy and Gemma and Co. try to figure out how to fix it without destroying everything that they’ve done so far.

What I thought: I was seriously disappointed in this book. I really liked the first two but found this one almost unreadable.  It drug every thing out so far that I just lost interest.  ”We went into the realms. Then we came back. Then we went back in. Then we came back,” over and over and over.

By the second half of the book, when the action picked up, I didn’t even hardly care anymore. I just wanted it to be over.

To be fair to Libba Bray, I do enjoy her writing style and I liked the characters and how they were changing and growing. It tied up all the loose ends and had some good surprises. But these didn’t make up for all of the flaws.  This was my least favorite book of hers that I have read.

Conclusion: While I didn’t love this book, I did enjoy the series as a whole, so I still recommend it.

The Book: Rumors, by Anna Godbersen

The Story: This is the sequel to The Luxe .  If you haven’t read The Luxe and think that you might, skip this part, because I don’t want to ruin the first book for you.

Rumors picks up just a couple of months after the first book ended.  The year is 1899, the setting is New York City.  Everyone is still kind of in a tizzy over Elizabeth dying.  Diana & Elizabeth’s mom has made her self sick with grief over her daughter and worry about money and is putting all that on Diana.  Penelope and Lina are manipulative and crazy.  Henry actually displays human emotion.  And Elizabeth and Will are just about has happy as can be.  Diana and Penelope are sort of fighting over Henry and more than one person gets involved in selling secrets.  Newspapers are getting word that maybe something is amiss in the Holland household.

What I Thought: Honestly? I kind of thought this book was a piece of crap.  It took me three days to read, and only because I couldn’t get into it at all.  Nothing happened.  I can deal with a lack of action if there is a reason. Say, character development.  Nope. It was just a boring book with a “shocking” ending that was still pretty boring.  I realize that this is a series, so some of the stuff is setup, but if you can’t keep me reading the second, why on earth would I read the third? I know that this series gets rave reviews, but I think I’m done.

The Book: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

The Story: This is the second book in a three part series.  The first book was called The Hunger Games and is pretty awesome.  If you haven’t read it, read it.  If you haven’t read The Hunger Games and plan to possibly read it, don’t go any further in my synopsis.  You’ll be mad at yourself later.

This book picks up right where The Hunger Games left off.  Katniss and Peeta are headed back to District 12.  Her family (and Gale) are ecstatic that she is coming home and that they get to live the good life now.  However, (there’s always a “however”) the Capitol is mad.  Mad that they’ve been tricked and that it was by kids and that they got away with it.  They start cracking down and people start getting frustrated.  Little by little, through the first part of the book, little bits, little “clues” start popping up through different sources that under the surface, something larger is happening.

In one really heart-stopping scene, Katniss is hunting outside of the District’s fence and meets some women in Peacekeepers uniforms.  Through these women, we learn that in other districts the sounds of rebellion are even louder and that Katniss is kind of the poster girl for the rebellion.  The Capitol knows this and kind of gets after her.  And, also, The Capitol is crazier than ever.  So, typical dystopian madness ensues.

Also, going on during all of this is the Gale vs. Peeta love triangle story, and another guy is thrown into the pot, just for good measure.  During the second half of the book, Gale is not around to hold up his end of the tug-of-war, but Katniss is still feeling that pull and the readers are reminded of him every so often.  I’m not going to tell you who I’m rooting for, but I will say I was glad that she was with Peeta for what happened in the second half of this book.

I don’t want to give away any more than that, but I do want to say that the last chapter blew my little brain to pieces.  I had to re-read.  Then I had to come home and read some teenager’s blog to make sure that I knew what actually happened.  I didn’t. But thanks to some 16 year old who is clearly smarter than me, now I do.  It’s wild.  It’s a cliffhanger.  I can’t wait to read the third one.

What I Thought: A few of things: First, I always feel kinda silly reading YA books.  I know that a lot has changed in the world of YA books since I was in prime YA years, and that these books are actually well written and thoughtful, but I still can’t shake the fact that I’m reading kid books.  If only this would have started 10 or 12 years earlier.  I would have been all over that crap.  Now I sneak them, all embarrassed, every once in a while. Second, I didn’t want to buy this so I read it over about a month of bookstore trips, with interludes of listening to the audiobook in the car.  So it was all stretched out for me and I found myself confused more than once, just because I had forgotten what had happened when I read a couple weeks ago.  I think that this probably changed how I felt about the book.  Third: I am a sucker for any dystopian book. I eat them up.

How did I feel about the book?  I think it was worth the read.  I did not, however, think that it was better than The Hunger Games.  I guess part of me felt like, even though stuff was happening, that it was just slow. The middle of the book really drug for me.  I think that part of this was that a lot of time was spent setting up the rebellion, and for awhile there was just very little action.

I did love the characters.  I especially love Katniss.  I love that she’s a little trouper and a little thinker and that she just generally kicks butt.  She is kind of naive and flighty and lovestruck (over and over again), but she’s a teenage girl.  I have to admit that I was a little upset to see that Katniss, as a person and as a character has not really developed too terribly much.  I feel like she showed in the second games just how little she had learned in the first games.  Even at the end, she was just marching around without knowing what was going on, ready to kill people.  I just want to see her become a thinker, a decision maker, a leader.

I think that Suzanne Collin’s writing style is kind of incredible.  Her voice is just refreshing to me.  Although I feel stupid parading around with YA books, it is great to know that this is the type of book that are available to kids. She writes about tough issues in this really smart way.  The book makes you think and puts you in these moral situations and leaves you wondering what would you do, how would you respond.  I like this, and I especially like that it has kids in the same place.

Conclusion: Read this series.  I think that this one was weaker, but there is still one more coming and I will read it without a doubt.  And, if you want, I’ve found that swapping dust jackets takes away a lot of the embarrassment of reading kid’s books in public!