contemporary fiction

The Nest by Kenneth Oppel

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the-nest-9781481432320_hrWhaaaat a weird book.  Now that I’m done with it, I guess it’s about a pre-teen with some severe mental disorders – anxiety for sure, but also possibly schizophrenia.  It is utterly disorienting to be in his brain, especially for me, because my reading habits predisposed me to think that this was fantastical.  I’m still not entirely sure it wasn’t.

Steve, the aforementioned pre-teen, has a history of anxiety and OCD-like symptoms.  They have taken a turn for the worse ever since his parents had an unhealthy baby that may or may not survive.  He’s always had nightmares, but now his dreams include a seemingly benevolent wasp who promises to replace his baby sibling….if only Steve will help them by opening the window and letting them in so they can do their work.

If that sounds ominous, IT REALLY IS.  Now, I have a negative tolerance for scary stuff, so perhaps I am overreacting.  But his dreams and the subtly shifts in the wasp’s tone from understanding to demanding really creeped me out.  Oppel does a phenomenal job allowing for Just Enough reality to make sense of Steve’s hallucinations…but then there are times it really does seem the wasps are relaying information to him while he’s asleep!

It’s super weird.  But it’s also super short, so I highly recommend you set aside a couple hours to read it and let me know how you made sense of it all.   Continue reading →

The Edge by Roland Smith

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More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

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I can’t say I liked this book, but I’m so glad I read it and I want everyone in the world to read More Happy Than Not.  I read the entire thing in one night: it was wholly engrossing, and then the plot kicked me upside the head and I learned a new kind of desperation for MUST READ.  This is not a feel-good book, but it might leave you feeling….no I can’t do the cheesy “more happy than not” line.  Because honestly, I closed the book feeling more UNhappy than not.  I tend to expect my YA books to have happily ever after endings, and this one was serious is a wonderful but disconcerting way.   Continue reading →

Butter by Erin Jade Lange

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It’s been way too long since I’ve read a book of fiction, so when I got Butter, I devoured it (hah) in one evening.  This was not just because of my fiction-fast, but because the book is really good.  I loved the themes of popularity desperation, the nuanced portrayal of bullying, and the dissection of eating disorders and obesity.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a YA book from the perspective of an obese teenager.  I liked that Butter was a typical teenage boy in a lot of ways – crushing on the cute girl, making friends at summer camp, desperate for attention.  I also liked that he’s a saxophone player (like I was!), and that his musical talent is central to the plot.  Butter’s relationship with the kids at school is where the big drama is, but we also get to see the way his obesity affects his family, his teachers, and his doctors.  Lange doesn’t blame Butter for his weight, but she also doesn’t hold back from showing the consequences of being young and overweight.

I can see this book being hugely influential for those who read it.  There has been an uptick in discussion on fat shaming culturally, and I hope books like Butter encourage readers to be empathetic toward overweight people.  And I hope it encourages readers who are overweight, that they will feel understood, validated, and inspired.   Continue reading →

Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

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I have mixed feelings about this book.  On the one hand, I really liked the juxtaposition between physical and mental disorders.  I liked that both were treated with respect and acknowledged the unfair stigmas attached to each.  And I liked that the romance felt genuine and earned–it’s tricky to have a relationship develop between an able-bodied person and a disabled person and never once think there is a power imbalance.

On the other hand, the pace of the book felt very strange.  Sometimes we got to see all day, every day.  Other times we skipped months at a time.  Sometimes the scenes evenly alternated between Amy and Matthew, and sometimes they skewed toward one more than the other.  The plot seemed to be following a particular route, but then there was a twist.  Which is cool!  But the last third of the book felt uneven and disjointed.  Subplots were tacked on without the development they might have been given earlier in the book.

Still, I’m glad this book exists.  It’s always good to read about the stories of people that, sad to say, I often ignore.  It’s a good reminder that people have so much more going on inside of them than we can ever know from the outside.  And–this is so basic, but so important–it’s great to have books that loudly and confidently remind readers that nonverbal men and women in wheelchairs are people too.  I mean, of course they are.  But how often do we get to read about their story?   Continue reading →

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

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I loved this book!  I would have been content to read about the little backwoods town of Tupelo Landing and all its delightfully odd characters from Mo’s pitch-perfect sixth-grade Southern perspective.  But Turnage included hurricanes, murders, crushes, and car crashes on top of an already excellent story.  The result is one of the best middle grade books I’ve ever read.

I think I was most impressed by how Turnage stepped into a very stereotyped situation (both the small-town Southern setting and the middle grade characters) and infused them with unique and surprising qualities.  Mo could quite easily overpower her best friend Dale–she is bold where he is scared–but Dale turns out to be smarter and braver than expected when it matters.  Small town life could have been idolized, and while it’s certainly charming, there is also a genuinely distressing subplot about domestic violence.

I adored this book, and I can’t imagine anyone not feeling the same.  Read it!

91ckGqkZXFLBook Jacket

Meet Miss Moses Lobeau–rising sixth grader, natural born detective, borderline straight-A student, and goddess of free enterprise.  Mo washed ashore in Tupelo Landing, North Carolina eleven years ago during one of the meanest hurricanes in history, and she’s been making waves ever since.

Mo’s summer is looking good.  She’ll take karate with her best friend, Dale Earnhardt Johnson III (whose daddy believes in naming for the famous), and plot against her sworn enemy, Anna Celeste (aka Attila).  She’ll help out at the cafe run by the Colonel and Miss Lana, and continue her lifelong search for her Upstream Mother.

But when the cafe’s crankiest customer turns up dead and a city-slick lawman shows up asking questions, Mo’s summer takes an unexpected turn.  With another hurricane bearing down on Tupelo Landing, Mo and Dale set out to save those they loves and solve a mystery of epic proportion.

Release Date:  May 2012

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

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Wow.  I did not expect to be gutted by this story of a young Chinese girl and her mother.  Having moved to New York expecting a better life, they instead find poverty and hopelessness.  More than many books, Kwok did a phenomenal job portraying the shame built into poverty and the way it affects all aspects of life.  But at the same time, neither Kimberley nor her mother allow their dire situations to stop them from loving each other and ambitiously pursuing a better future.  The sad thing is…Kimberley is extremely gifted.  Not all immigrants manage to get perfect SAT scores.  So while she found a way out of crushing poverty, most do not have the same privilege.

Then there’s the relationship between Kimberley and Matt.  While she struggles to survive the foreign world of private schools, Matt is the one who knows her secret life illegally working at a factory in order to pay for a roach-infested, freezing apartment.  Their friendship is slow and sweet, and the turns they take had my heart in knots.  I appreciated the realistic feel of their choices and emotions, but I never stopped wanting to shake them and say, “Stop living real life!  Just be happy together in a fantasy world!  Why won’t this book just give me what I want!?”

But life doesn’t give you want you want, even when scholarships fall in your lap.  So while Kimberley is blessed with an enormous advantage, she never quite escapes the fact that life is a struggle.

51goRLj97GL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Book Jacket

When young Kimberley Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to America, they speak no English and own nothing but debt.  They arrive in New York hopeful for a better life, but find instead a squalid Brooklyn apartment and backbreaking labor in a Chinatown sweatshop.  Unable to accept this as her future, Kim decides to use her “talent for school” to earn a place for herself and her mother in their adopted country.  Disguising the most difficult truths of her meager existence, Kim embarks on a double life: an exceptional student by day, and a sweatshop worker by evening.  In time, Kim learns to translate not just her language but herself, back and forth between two worlds, between hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

Release Date:  April 2010

Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

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I haven’t read Kinsella’s Shopaholic series, but after Finding Audrey, I think I need to!  I loved Kinsella’s humor, inclusion of pop culture, and honest portrayal of mental disorders.

Audrey suffers from a host of anxiety disorders after a (presumably) horrendous bullying experience.  Although I understand the right of a person to not have to share why they struggle, it’s a book!  I want to know why!  This was the one thing I didn’t like about the story.  I can only assume Kinsella thought that no matter her description of bullying, some reader would scoff that it wasn’t that bad.  As it is, our imaginations are free to run wild.

While Kinsella doesn’t tell us exactly what caused Audrey’s panic attacks and anxiety, she does a phenomenal job showing how these disorders play out in her life.  Kinsella doesn’t glamorize her anxiety, nor does she make Audrey into a caricature of a human being.  Instead, she honestly describes the fear, growth, and healing that comes in a person working through their issues with the help of a loving family and a knowledgeable counselor.  And a cute boy.  Because it is a YA novel, and cute boys never hurt.  Continue reading →

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway

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Emmy & Oliver manages to combine the contentment of best-friends-falling-in-love with the passion of strangers-falling-in-love.  How?  By having Oliver kidnapped by his dad at age seven and returned to Emmy’s life ten years later.  It’s a little ridiculous, their lifelong love enduring through such chaos, but I loved it!

Although this is an unapologetically romantic book, I loved the psychological details revolving around Oliver’s conflicted feelings toward his dad and the overprotective reactions of Emmy’s parents.  In fact, I really liked her realistic relationship with her parents as they struggled to let her grow up.  I also loved her friendship with Caro and Drew, especially as they worked through the changes Oliver’s return makes in their relationships.

But mostly it’s a romance!  And a really good one.  Emmy and Oliver are so sweet with each other, weird and supportive and healthy in a way that YA novels often ignore.  More stories where romance begins with friendship…and continues to be a friendship, even when the kissing starts!  Continue reading →

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

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I picked this up simply to cross off another title from this year’s Caudill award nominated books, and I wouldn’t have made it past the first couple chapters if I hadn’t assumed people liked it for a reason.  The protagonist is a little wooden (although that’s definitely part of her genius personality), and I didn’t like the way paragraphs tended to be one sentence long.

BUT THEN.  But then, Counting By 7s became something really beautiful.  Middle grade books have the opportunity to delve into the darkest parts of life (grief, racism, poverty) and address them with simple optimism.  This story was all of that, and it was so refreshing.  It’s not that these issues are resolved easily, but every page is infused with hope.  Whereas an adult novel might veer into something maudlin, Counting By 7s is fierce in its assertion that all things can be endured and overcome.  I loved it.  Continue reading →