Oh Rachel Cohn, I really enjoy you sometimes, but this time you let me down. Spoiled teen dramedy suites you better, not suicide problem novel. I got about 3/4 of the way through and finally just gave up. I wasn't surprised to see that my friends that had read this book had felt the same. I just couldn't get into these characters or DC statehood or anything else in this book. ]]>
bookshelves: punk-ya-fic, ya-fiction
After recently reading Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn, I'd say that "Brutal"'s Poe Holly is the po' man's Cyd Charisse. Poe's a self-proclaimed punk rock rebel with combat boots and a mohawk and a spitfire personality, but she often comes off as judgmental and overly-aggressive and inconsiderate. But not nearly as witty or memorable as Cyd.
Poe digs her life in LA, pissing off her prissy doctor mom and doing vocals for a punk band and sticking it to the man and such. But when Poe's mother takes off to South America, Poe is sent to live with her long-lost father in the Pleasantville-esque town of Bender's Hollow. Beneath the Norman Rockwell facade lies a dark truth: the high school is rife with harsh bullying. The perpetrators are your common YA Lit villains: malicious jocks and the school administrators that protect them. Poe befriends an awkward boy nicknamed Velveeta and witnesses firsthand the frightening and dangerous bullying that he experiences on a daily basis. So what's Poe Holly to do but turn the brutal system on its head and expose the injustice?
What's really brutal in this book is the way Poe deals with other people and her own problems. Her intentions are good, but she is tactless and rash and rude. I refuse to blame it on punk rock. While Poe takes on the anti-bullying crusade, the real underlying problem is her relationship with her estranged father (conveniently also the school counselor). She also laments constantly about her judgmental mother, but she eventually realizes that her angry diatribes don't fall far from the tree.
All in all, a cliche story about bullying and understanding your parents, but OK enough. ]]>
bookshelves: horror, post-apocalypse, ya-fiction
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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bookshelves: currently-reading, post-apocalypse
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bookshelves: realistic-fiction, ya-fiction
What really happened that day in the back of the school bus? This story is tragically realistic, and it is written well for its intended age group. It can be hard to find something for junior high and early high school students on a tough topic like inappropriate touching or sexual assault without being a full-on troubling teen novel about rape, incest, or other disturbing sexual violence. While its important to hear the voices of female victims of any type of assault, "Touch" tells a more subtle story that unfortunately may be much more common and easily-dismissed than we might think.
Maisie has always been best friends with Shakes, Chris, and Kevin. It never seemed to matter before that she was the only girl. They did everything together, up until Maisie left for a year to spend 8th grade with her mother out-of-state. She returns for 9th grade to find that her old friends can't seem to see past her newly-developed chest, and she now feels painfully alone and alienated by her own body. What initially begins as consensual cuddling with one of her old friends on the morning bus ride transforms into an ugly incident of unwanted chest-groping from all three of her so-called best friends, with subsequent spreading of dirty rumors about her around school. Maisie feels confused and hurt and unable to distinguish between truth and lie as she recounts her story. After a witness tells the principal, Maisie's overzealous stepmother quickly jumps in, ever so eager to sue the school and anyone else she can blame. Between Maisie's stepmother, her therapist, the taunting kids at school, and Maisie's underlying feelings of betrayal yet lingering loyalty to her old friends, Maisie tries to piece together the events that led to what really happened on the bus. I was impressed with how Prose was able to take a really complicated and multi-layered issue and present it as an authentic-sounding yet simple narrative of a young freshman. Maisie's realizations about herself as a victim and the people around her ring true as life lessons learned the tragic way by someone still coming of age, but she pulls through with a realistic yet admirable amount of strength. ]]>
bookshelves: ya-fiction
Another John Green novel about a nerdy-to-average teen boy who pines for an unobtainable wander-lusting free-spirited drama queen...Or for the romantic and enigmatic idea of her, at least, since he realizes along the way that he doesn't even really know the real her. He hunts for clues to find her, but in doing so, he takes risks, hits the road, and finds himself. Quirky dialogue, literary and musical inspiration, and soul-searching ensue. Yes, this is third time that John Green has done this story in some form, but I am glad that there are witty and thoughtful YA books like this that speak to teens in an accessible way. Teens actually chose this as their top pick in YALSA's Teens' Top Ten for 2009, which is satisfying to me as a YA librarian swimming in a paper sea of corny Twilight and Gossip Girl read-alikes.
Despite my frequent internal eye-rolling at Margo Roth Spiegelman's attention-seeking shenanigans and selfishness, protagonist Quentin is a likable "nice guy". Just as I was supposed to, I was rooting more for his pursuit as a self-realized person than for his obsessive pursuit of Margo. His buddies Radar and Ben add the right dash of goofy boy humor while still proving that they are good friends, and who can resist a memorable teen road trip thrown in for good measure? And references to the Mountain Goats? I've convinced myself...I originally clicked three, but heck, let's make it four stars.
P.S. I can't wait to read "Will Grayson, Will Grayson", John Green and David Levithan's new novel to be released in 2010. ]]>
I've been in geek denial lately when it comes to my reading habits but I'll go ahead and say it...I like YA sci-fi! Ok?! Not high-fantasy space and other worlds stuff, but near-future dystopian sci-fi. "The Adoration of Jenna Fox", "Unwind", "The Hunger Games"...all stuff that I've read lately and enjoyed. So naturally I figured it was time to finally read the popular Uglies trilogy. A lot of the teen readers in my library are into it, so I gave it a try. Ok, so this is totally nerdy, but I'd compare my feelings while reading this to my feelings when I watched the Matrix trilogy years ago. The first one was corny yet offered a fascinating-enough underlying concept, and it compelled me enough to seek out the next one. The second one started to show the tell-tale signs of trainwreck, but the action rose just enough for me to wonder how it would all end. And then the third one just crashed and burned. Ugh.
After getting through the first two books, I was invested enough to slog through the "Specials" audiobook while driving to work, but I found myself royally disappointed. Tally proved herself to be unlikeable to me through and through, and I didn't find anything redeeming or gratifying about her in the end. If anything, she proves how a person can lose themselves completely and become a maleable ball of clay, physically and emotionally manipulated by others, but was that really what we were supposed to get out of this? Wasn't she supposed to be some kinda heroine or something? Bleh. I know this trilogy took on a lot...Not only was it a futuristic world where all of the parameters had to be defined throughout the story, but then Westerfeld goes and changes it all up. But I felt like there were so many other potentially-interesting avenues that were left unexplored in the end.
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bookshelves: sci-fi, ya-fiction
A very thought-provoking yet accessible sci-fi tale. Three teens are running for their lives and encountering various terrifying obstacles in a not-so-distant dystopian society that has outlawed abortion but enforces "unwinding" of unwanted, troublesome, or religiously-tithed teenagers. In the wake of the civil Heartland War, the law claims to value all human life from the moment of conception while also stating that an Unwind is not technically dead, just in a "divided human state". As a result, abundant replacement organs and body parts are now readily available for all in need of transplant, both life-threatening and cosmetic. Gross, right? The story is told primarily from the perspective of the the AWOL-unwinds Connor, Risa, and Lev, with a few other perspectives thrown in there, too. Overall, it's a creepy, fast-moving thriller, and yikes...The description of an unwinding at the end is SUPER creepy and not easily forgotten.
The concept of "unwinding" (harvesting unwanted teens against their will for their body parts) seems so ridiculous, but this gruesome tale does make you think about the pro-choice/pro-life movement and how each side sees the other. Thankfully, I tried but found it hard to decipher any particular agenda from the author. A bit of sleuthing revealed that a sequel appears to be in the works, which is great because there is definitely more of this story to tell and hopefully resolve. ]]>
Kat
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 3 |
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| skipped: | 0 |
| best streak: | 2 |
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bookshelves: currently-reading
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