I put “review” in quotes above because I already knew what I thought of this book before I read it. Except that I hated it even more than that. Here is a representative excerpt:

An itchy wool peacoat of sadness hung over Massie’s entire body, weighing her down with despair. She’d ditched her parents, Paris, and Chanel shopping for this? Not even one compliment on her fetching outfit/chignon/makeup/charm bracelet/brooches/or ability to pull off mixed metals had come her way. Nawt one!

Yup, I read 175 pages of that. Sober. Who’s librarian of the year now?

Here’s the best part: in this book, the characters are in fourth grade. That means they’re 9 or 10, and spending all their time worrying about popularity, designer clothes, having “friends” who will make them look good, and their freaking weight. There is one scene in which a character meets some boys who teach her to burp words, but I think that’s the only time anybody acts authentically like a fourth grader. Most of their parents set them free at an adult New Year’s party, and the only set of parents who are upset about their daughter’s behavior “punish” her by sending her to boarding school (where she will meet the rest of the characters and become even more morally bankrupt).

I don’t want to sound like the sort of bunhead shusher who thinks that all books should have Redeeming Social Value. I do understand why girls think these books are fun: they’re wish fulfillment and escapist fluff. We all need that every so often, and most kids are smart enough to recognize, at least consciously, that there’s more to life than the way Massie lives it. But if you read a steady enough diet of anything, it can’t help but seep into your subconscious, especially for kids as young as 4th-6th grade. (I grew up on a pretty steady diet of stories about True Love, and that’s another whole post, at least.) And that worries me for my impressionable young ladies, particularly the ones for whom this sort of life is possible and they have to actively choose otherwise.

This has sort of been done before, of course. But unlike in, say, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Mavis is actually a thoroughly terrible human being. She manipulates everyone around her, has zero compassion, is basically the high school queen of popularity who never figured out that in order to be successful in the adult world you have to at some point give a crap about someone other than yourself. Because Charlize Theron is a fantastic actress, though, she was never a caricature. Awkward as hell to watch, yes. But believable. I appreciate a movie in which the protagonist is unlikeable in every way, but you still can’t help but feel compassion for her.

From a YA perspective (because let’s be honest, why do you think I saw this movie?): I loved that Mavis’s character, Kendall, is exactly as vapid and in love with herself as Mavis is, in a way that perfectly nails that genre of YA. Mavis hasn’t grown up much since high school, and the books she writes are the kind of YA that are in no way about personal growth. (Fortunately this genre seems to be on the wane.) My main objection is the covers, which look like Scholastic reprints of middle grade Boxcar Children novels or something. How about some headless photos of girls in stylish prep school uniforms? Come on, I could design you some covers for this shiz in about 20 minutes.

This was a third-life crisis movie, which is my current favorite topic. I am, in particular, working on a theory that if I read more books written for grown-ups about grown-up lives, I might be able to make a more coherent, mature story of my own life. This movie possibly supports that theory, but I can’t quite decide whether it made me feel better or worse about my life.

I’m leading a book club at school this trimester (focusing mainly on making book trailers or some other project), and two of the girls chose this book to read. So I had to read it, too. (The 6th graders chose the Clique prequel, which is sitting on my nightstand now. Pity me.) This review has spoilers, because frankly there’s nothing surprising enough (except the identity of the texter, maybe) to warrant the maintenance of suspense.

I will admit that it was more interesting than I anticipated. The “mysterious texter directing her every move” bit was a new angle to the generic high school tale of popularity’s rise and fall. The moral is more or less the same as usual — “Old, true friends are the best; be true to yourself” — but things are a bit more complicated for Cammy. Her life was too safe; she did need to shake things up, and it was fun to watch her do so. I also liked that she did not end up with the boy in the end. She did some crappy things, and it would have been unrealistic for Luke to still want her after all that. (It reminded me of Vintage Veronica in that way.)

Interestingly, this book was written by vote — the author posted the first four chapters on her publisher’s site, and then readers voted on each successive plot twist. I’m sorry I didn’t get to watch that process unfold. There’s some sloppiness (at one point Cammy walks away from Luke’s house without her bike, but is riding it shortly thereafter; the school is described as having 156 people total and she’s lived there her whole life, yet there are kids she doesn’t know at all in her English class) but also an unusual number of fun quirks and memorable scenes. I’m curious how much the process contributed to these oddities.

Overall, a slightly above-average representative of a boring but popular genre.

Also reviewed by: Class Bookworm

I can’t talk about this without comparing it to Parrotfish, because that was the groundbreaker and is still one of the few YA novels with a transgendered protagonist. The biggest difference between the two is setting, and in this story, setting is everything.

Parrotfish‘s Grady is suburban, with middle-class white parents. J is biracial and lives in Manhattan, with parents who just scrape by financially. In some ways, J’s situation is easier than Grady’s — there’s a clinic and an entire public school for queer kids, and all of it accessible without a car. But the layer of financial woes and cultural pressure on top of J’s gender are so much harder than anything Grady faces.

Parrotfish is a problem novel. It’s a very good one, but there are limitations to that genre. “White and suburban” is the default, and so it’s the blank canvas on which Grady’s gender transition is painted, the star of the show. Whereas I Am J is a novel about a transgendered boy who is also urban, biracial, poor, an artist, a little homophobic, has a best friend who cuts… It’s much more complex (though therefore also for older teens, and less of a good Intro to the Concept of Transgender). Intersectionality fun times!

Another thing I loved about this book is how frank it is that gender dysphoria is hard to understand and takes some explaining, even for the most understanding and supportive loved ones. It’s all very well and good to instruct everyone to be “tolerant” and judge anyone who isn’t, but it isn’t realistic not to acknowledge that it can take awhile to come to that place. There are real issues of “losing a daughter” for the parents to go through here, and Beam does a very good (if painful) job with those.

Also reviewed by: Rebecca Rabinowitz, Wandering Librarians, and The Happy Nappy Bookseller.

This is a weird, amazing, amazingly weird book. The clearest analog I have is Lost. If you loved Lost (never mind the ending), you will probably love this. It’ll probably get classified as middle grade, but there’s a body count, and we aren’t distanced from it (though it’s certainly not on the level of, say, Hunger Games). But mostly it’s just plain creepy, in that way that things can get when kids who don’t have enough context or understanding end up in charge of making very serious decisions for a society.

The ending (while better than Lost’s) doesn’t entirely hold together, I think. Don’t try to fit it together too precisely. But it works well enough, with some wonderful “Ohhh, that’s what that was about!” moments. The world-building — from overall mood to inventive detail — are incredible enough to make up for any, “Wait, but why didn’t they-”s.

It’ll be a love it or hate it book for most kids (this one hated it, on Aaron Starmer’s blog), I think. I predict it’ll be a tough one to find a home for. This is definitely not a book for kids who look for the straightforward or linear, and that is most of them in the 10-14 range that I think is the target audience. But the kids who love Lord of the Flies, or the timeslip parts of When You Reach Me — get those kids to give it a try.

Also reviewed by: Charlotte’s Library, Librarian in the Middle, and Snarky and Sweet.

This is one of the 3 or 4 books I read a year that aren’t remotely YA. It’s dark, complex, and thought-provoking, although it has way too much rape and abuse and torment for me to really say I “enjoyed” it.

But mostly, I’m just confused. I love non-linear storytelling and unreliable narrators, but I do like things to come together in the end. This was not at all clear, and I think set up a few paradoxes to block my attempts at clarity. I know a number of you have read it, so:

SPOILERS (Help me figure this out!)

Which stories were fiction (within the world of the book) and which weren’t? Luisa’s story (70s CA) was a novel in Cavendish’s world (nursing home), which implies that Frobisher (WWI musician) and Ewing (South Pacific ship) were also fiction as they were nested in Luisa’s story. But maybe the two future stories were meant to be the “real” future? Or maybe everything was either in Cavendish’s book or in his mind?

And if some stories were fiction and some not, what’s up with the comet-shaped birthmark? Every story had one, except Cavendish (as I recall). Are people getting (re)incarnated from fiction into reality, or something?

Do you think the story was as dark about human nature as it appeared to me? Almost everyone who retained any integrity or innocence died a horrible death. The message of the farthest future story seemed to be, “civilization is a good goal and all, but ultimately it’s never a match for the inherent human lust for power.” And since that’s the furthest we see along the human path, and a recurring theme in every story, it’s hard not to take that as the point of the entire book — a big middle finger to Adam Ewing’s starry-eyed dreams for the future in the last paragraph.

Did you have a favorite story? Were there some you wanted to return to, or some you really never wanted to hear from again? I found Cavendish’s the least engaging, which is too bad since I think he was probably the linchpin of the book. Sonmi’s dragged on, I thought, and then her parting shot was that the whole thing was a shaggy dog story anyway — there’s no revolution, I just fed you a bunch of hooey so people would hear what I have to say… that’s the one that didn’t hold together so well for me. My favorites were Frobisher’s and Luisa’s.

This is a Jellicoe Road. That’s become my shorthand for a wonderful but difficult book that I want to put down early, but stick with because a reader I trust assures me, “Stick with it; it all comes together in the end.” And so I pass this on to you: You will probably be confused. If you, like me, have limited patience for protagonists whose defining characteristic is emo self-loathing, Briony will start off annoying the crap out of you. You will be suspicious of everyone, and not sure if there’s a single character worth hanging your hat on.

That’s just what they want you to think. Stick with it; it all comes together in the end.

I hesitate to say much else, because the pleasure of this book is so much in the unfolding of secrets. The setting is a small town in Victorian England that is just getting a train station, but has an earlier-century habit of hanging witches; the descriptions are appropriately creepy and claustrophobic. This is dark stuff, on occasion, but with trademark YA uplift at the end. Briony’s language is repetitive and quirky in a way that is trying to be poetic, and will feel that way to many readers, but often the poetry felt too “high school lit mag” to me:

We were to have new clothes.

We were to have new clothes because I tried to bargain with the Boggy Mun and he outwitted me. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Father shouldn’t feel guilty, but he does. We were to have new clothes because I made Rose sick.

This, to me, is Hell.

On and on ring the lunatic bells.

And the love story? It feels mature (such a relief). It’s not good enough to have a relationship that’s fun for awhile; oh no, in so much YA these days, he needs to be your One True Soulmate Schmoopypants, and I don’t buy it. Most of us are far too un-formed in high school to luck into our dream partner. This is one of the rare young literary relationships that I believe might actually work out.

(This is a conversation for another post, but it occurs to me that a lot of YA romances these days follow the conventions of adult romance, in that the couple needs to get married — or at least imply that they will. Paranormals, of course, often take that to the next level — they’ll get married for all eternity. Why is this? Teen romances used to have their own standards, in which a fun, healthy relationship was plenty — why isn’t that good enough anymore? Or am I wrong? While I read a lot of books with love stories (I read YA at a girls’ school library, after all), I admittedly don’t read a lot of romances. (Ever wonder why this blog is called Parenthetical? Uh-huh.))

Read-alikes: Graceling! In the way it drops you in the middle of the action, in the maturity of the love story, plus in one other way I won’t get into. It also plays with the self-hating unreliable narrator in similar ways to A Long Long Sleep.

Cover: It sucks. I hate to be that blunt, but it is exactly wrong in every way for this book. If the cover makes you go, “Ew, historical paranormal romance; over it,” you will probably like the book because it is in many ways the exact opposite of that.

Also reviewed by: Things Mean A Lot (who has some smart things to say about how this book handles gender), The Book Smugglers, The Spectacle, and Wandering Librarians.

I am a big Maureen Johnson fan — her books are my favorite book candy, with just enough nutritional value to keep the toothache at bay. This one’s a little different. It’s a genuinely scary paranormal mystery, though the high school scenes retain Johnson’s trademark realistic fiction style: a snarky, smart heroine with a good head on her shoulders, a believable romance that doesn’t consume the story (or the heroine), and an entertaining supporting cast of eccentrics.

It took a little while for me to get into it, I think because I couldn’t tell what sort of book it was. High school drama? Realistic mystery? Would there be a fantasy element? Once the mystery started rolling about a third of the way in, though, I got really into it. I think I read the last third in one sitting. I’m not sure the mystery 100% held together, but it was a fun read anyway. It is, of course, the first in a trilogy, even though it really doesn’t need to be. @)*#&@)*$&!

It’s a little bit Peeps (only less dark), a little bit Hourglass (with less emphasis on the romance and WAY less pseudo-scientific hand-waving), and a whole lot Buffy. The world is apparently not yet tired of “wise-cracking girl with special powers joins underground organization to fight paranormal evil.” Which is convenient, because I am totally not tired of it either.

Cover: I don’t love it. It implies that Rory is the lovely red-haired creature in the vaguely Victorian lace, when in fact that’s just one of the killer’s random victims. Looking at this cover makes one think “damsel in distress.” Rory is so much more active than that.

Also reviewed by: Wandering Librarians, PaperBlog Princess, and Fresh Ink.

ARC from Arianna of Wandering Librarians, from ALA.

I identified with Keri immediately because in the first chapter she explains that she likes to be prepared. She has plans for every possible disaster, keeps emergency supplies in her bedroom, that sort of thing. But of course, she does not have a plan for what to do when her beloved older brother kills himself. Unless it turns out to be murder, as her childhood friend Janna suspects. It turns out that Keri’s brother is part of a pattern of “suicides” that includes Janna’s brother, her friend Sione’s brother, and ten years’ worth of other oldest brothers, all from different parts of New Zealand, who have visited their idyllic resort town for the New Year’s festivities. The three only have a short time until New Year’s comes around again to identify this year’s victim and find the killers.

I loved Healey’s last book, Guardian of the Dead, and I loved this. For many of the same reasons: believable, flawed friendships between fully realized characters; sensitive handling of sex (and the lack thereof); a stunning sense of place. The magic felt a bit less organic here than in Guardian and required more suspension of disbelief for some reason; I kept waiting for a twist, that it wasn’t what the kids thought, but nope — it pretty much was, and was an idea we’ve all seen before, and therefore had something of a “Buffy monster-of-the-week” feel, like with established characters all of this could have happened in 50 minutes on TV.

So while this feels less original than Guardian (with the exception of the New Zealand setting, which is unusual enough to get a bunch of automatic originality points for an American audience), it was no less fun to read. I chewed through it in one day, home sick recovering from BEA. Healey is an outstanding writer with a gift for dialogue, characterization, and foreshadowing. She drops hints along the way that only seem sinister in retrospect, but doesn’t make us wait for the characters to catch up to what we’ve already figured out. And she weaves race, class, and sexuality (and, in this case, temporary disability) into the story in such a way that it feels like she’s creating real people rather than checking character traits off a PC list.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of fear in my own life, and how to avoid sacrificing long-term sanity for short-term peace of mind. I said at the beginning that I identified with Keri’s need to plan for every eventuality. At the end she says, “I still planned for possibilities, but it was easier to recognize the planning as part of the anxiety and not being about real things that might actually happen,” and it was eerily like reading words from my own head.
…

SPOILERS (which might be interesting if you’re not going to read the book, since (surprise!) I go off on a tangent)

One of my favorite things about Healey’s books is how the magic has lasting consequences — good and bad. At the end of Guardian the earthquakes had still happened and people needed to clean up afterwards. And at the end of this, people do start losing their jobs and leaving Summerton. That is the consequence of putting an end to the spell that demanded the boys as sacrifice. (It’s implied that the town is going to be okay anyway, which is maybe a cop-out considering how similar West Coast towns are described as “ghost towns.”) “Dystopia” is the big buzzword right now, but this is a dystopia in the truest sense — it aims for utopia and misses horribly, and we see that from the inside.

It made me think of Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” (If you’ve never read it, the text is behind that link. It’s very short and I think it’s pretty much required modern reading.) To what lengths are we willing to go to keep the places we love safe and prosperous? Is there any amount of sacrifice that’s worth it? We (and here I’m making some assumptions about my readership) are, of course, all citizens of Omelas or Summerton — enjoying our cheap and plentiful fuel and food and material goods at the expense of the impoverished people who create those things for us. There are ways to walk away from Omelas, to go off the grid, but almost no one does it because the pull of the comfort and safety and community is far too strong. (And because — and this is something not allowed for in the parameters of LeGuin’s story — maybe it’s better to stay and try to change things from the inside?)

I think that’s why it took people who had been damaged by the Summerton spell to finally see the rot at the core of the town. The pain of losing their brothers was enough to intrude on the cocoon. Everyone else chose to look away, and the coven members themselves — who, like the people of Omelas (and us), know and are making a fully conscious choice — find ways to justify it.

Also reviewed by: Pink Me, Wandering Librarians, and Bookshop

Shut Out, by Kody Keplinger

All These Things I’ve Done, by Gabrielle Zevin

Wisdom’s Kiss, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Tankborn, by Karen Sandler

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness