Under the Light (Light, #2)
Author: Lauta Whitcomb
Publication Date: 5/14/2013
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: Helen needed a body to be with her beloved and Jenny needed to escape from hers before her spirit was broken. It was wicked, borrowing it, but love drives even the gentlest soul to desperate acts.

When Jenny returns to her body, she finds that someone has been living her life while she was away. She doesn’t remember being Billy’s lover or defying her family. But now she is faced with the consequences. And Helen, who has returned to warn Jenny—to help her—finds herself trapped, haunting the girl she wished to save.

In this captivating companion novel to A Certain Slant of Light, the love story between Jenny and Billy begins out-of-body—where they can fly and move the stars--and continues into the tumultuous realm of the living, where they are torn away from each other even as they slowly remember their spirits falling in love.

Review:

How much recapping do you like in your sequels/companion novels? It appears that even I, a reader with a very short memory for details, have my limits. If a sequel verges on being 50% recap of its preceding story, then what's the point of its existence, really?

I remember A Certain Slant of Light to be a lovely, elegant, sensual and gently unsettling ghost story. (It's been years since I read it though, in fact, it was one of my first YA reads after, naturally, Twilight, so I can't be held fully accountable for my memories of it until I reread it, ok?) Under the Light is equally elegantly written. Laura Whitcomb published books on writing and indeed she knows what she is talking about, her prose is lovely, in my opinion. The last chapter is just gorgeous. But the plot, the plot! Where art thou?

The premise of Under the Light is that we follow up on Jenny and Billy once their bodies, previously possessed by Helen and James, are returned to them. A Certain Slant of Light left Jenny and Billy in quite a bind (possibly a pregnancy? ooh-la-la!), so I see how it would be interesting to see how they deal with their difficulties and with the realization that their bodies were inhabited and used by ghostly lovers. But so much of this new novel is taken up by Helen, who in this book returns to see Jenny through her ordeal, and Helen's recapping of what she and James did in the previous book, that there is hardly any space in this rather slight tome left to develop Jenny and Billy's story. This book thoroughly lacks in new material and good conflict. There are almost no new revelations or new developments. Jenny and Billy finding out what happened to their bodies? But WE already know! Any new stories with Jenny's parents? Hardly! Getting to know Billy a bit better? Eh, a bit. It seems, everything exciting happened in the first book, and this follow-up just ties some loose ends, and barely offers anything more. We do learn about Billy's reasons for abandoning his body, however this plot line is fairly insignificant and short. The way I see it, the novel would have been better if Helen weren't in it at all. She is fairly useless as a helper anyway.

In the end, the only thing that Under the Light achieves is make you want to reread A Certain Slant of Light. I recommend you all do the same and don't bother with this companion. I feel that A Certain Slant of Light is a better book if it is experienced as a standalone.

3/5 stars

The Lucy Variations
Author: Sara Zarr
Publication Date: 5/7/2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it's over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a new piano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano -- on her own terms. But when you're used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr takes readers inside the exclusive world of privileged San Francisco families, top junior music competitions, and intense mentorships. The Lucy Variations is a story of one girl's struggle to reclaim her love of music and herself. It's about finding joy again, even when things don't go according to plan. Because life isn't a performance, and everyone deserves the chance to make a few mistakes along the way.

Reviews:

I love Sara Zarr's writing and I always will.  At my very first book club meeting with the fabulous ladies of Fairfax Forever YA, I listed her as one of my favorite YA authors (this after being told that I would be judged based on my answers).  I even got my club to go rogue one month and read Sara Zarr's How To Save A Life instead of the Forever YA selection.  I love that Sara Zarr’s novels will always find a way to reach right under my rib cage and rip out my heart, no matter how little I initially relate to any of her characters.  Her characters always, always find a way to get under my skin.  Sigh.  So why didn’t that happen with The Lucy Variations?  When I wanted to feel connected, I felt unconcerned.  When I wanted to feel the massive gut punch of Sara Zarr, I felt a fluttery twinge.  When I wanted to swoon, I cringed.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of the reason for my lackluster feelings lies in her use of the third person point of view, something that’s new for her.  Some authors are able to use third person to great effect, in a way that still feels very personal (Stacia Kane, I am looking at you).  The third person narration in The Lucy Variations feels distanced and impersonal.  Worse, it sometimes feels overly summarized in that way that says there isn’t enough action and dialogue.

Then they went over here.

Then she talked about this.

Then he left.

Know what I mean?  I want to know how they’re getting from place to place.  I want to see the movement.  I want to hear the conversation.  I need more description, dialogue, and action and less simple narration of events.

However, does this mean I will be abandoning Sara Zarr and striking her from my judgment-worthy list of favorite YA authors?  Hell no.  I can only speculate, but maybe this is Sara Zarr’s attempt at a new creative direction, something that I can only support.  Maybe this is the equivalent of her going up on stage and playing Philip Glass when we all expected to hear Bach.  It wasn’t a perfect, error-free rendition, but I appreciate her effort.  And I will keep reading and supporting whatever she decides to put out there.

3/5 stars

The Lucy Variations was, for me, a parade of unlikable characters. I do not necessarily need likable characters in a novel but I do need something to keep me going if I am not enjoying the characters, and that is usually a compelling story. What could have been a literary Searching for Bobby Fischer-esque rise and (at least quasi-) fall of a child prodigy ended up falling flat for me. Without Zarr's typical first-person narration, I missed hearing the main character's perspective throughout and from the outsider's view, I never truly understood how Lucy could not see her own situation for what it was. Instead, she was pretty insufferable to her friends and family and refused to problem solve so I was unable to sympathize with her character. Several families in Zarr's prior works have similar communication problems to the Beck-Moreaus of The Lucy Variations, but as I get farther and farther away from this book, the characters who resonated most for me were Lucy's younger brother and Lucy's best friend--the only two straight shooters in the novel. The rest of the characters had me turning page after page waiting, waiting, waiting for people to tell others what they were thinking or how they had hurt each other. 

In terms of the story, I was disappointed in the lack of resolution. The ending felt hurried and there were several loose ends--not "oh, I guess it could go either way and it's left up to interpretation" types of loose ends, more "why was this subplot even introduced if it was going nowhere?" types of loose ends. For example, the relationship between Lucy and her prior teacher felt like a speed bump in the story and I was not sure why it was included. And arguably the largest conflict in the book, that between Lucy and her grandfather, goes out with a fizzle. When it comes down to it, as a reader I felt that this novel was missing its emotional core, something Zarr is typically fantastic at cultivating, so I never really connected to the story, the characters, or the style. I'll still be first in line to read Zarr's next book, and in all likelihood, her next ten. 

**SPOILER**
How great would it have been if Lucy had sat down at the concert and played the song from her grandfather's record collection that reminded him of his late wife? That would've been a kick in the pants for him.
**END SPOILER**


3/5 stars

It appears the three of us are pretty much on the same page as to why this new Sara Zarr novel didn't work for us. Pardon me for repeating what has already been said.

Generally, it's a good thing when authors try to experiment and explore new points of view and styles of writing. But sometimes when they try something new, it just doesn't work as well as the old. This is the case with The Lucy Variations I think. The thing I disliked the most about this novel is its POV, specifically its 3rd person POV instead of Zarr's signature 1st. It was a challenge for the author herself (she talked about this in her blog post), and the challenge, in my opinion, not well met in this case. I am still scratching my head in an effort to understand why Zarr chose to write this new novel this way. 3rd person POV added nothing to the narrative (it is a very close 3rd person, with only Lucy's perspective used, we never get insight into any other character's mind) and added unnecessary feeling of detachment to the story.

As for everything else, while the book was still enjoyable to a degree, the plot felt a bit  stale. I never finished Virtuosity, but these two novels sound fairly similar - artistic girls in creative and personal crisis and all that . Whatever new and interesting Zarr had in her version - mainly Lucy's inappropriate relationships with older men - never materialized into anything tangible and punchy. Lucy's friends were a waste and underutilized in the plot, and so were many other plot lines which started out promising but ended wit.

All in all, The Lucy Variations is just an average read and by far Zarr's weakest. Fingers crossed, her next effort is better.

3/5 stars

City of a Thousand Dolls
Author: Miriam Forster
Publication Date: 2/5/2013
Publisher: Harper Teen
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: The girl with no past, and no future, may be the only one who can save their lives.

Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a little girl. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. She makes her way as Matron's errand girl, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city's handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die.

Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls' deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls—but also her life.

Review:

My first read of 2013 and, well, my advice is - skip it. I finished it so you don't have to. It is sad mostly because City of a Thousand Dolls is written so earnestly and with such good intentions. You can tell that the author meant this novel to be about diverse characters and diverse cultures. Too bad it's just not that great of a novel. It is simply lacking in sophistication and maturity.

City of a Thousand Dolls is another Asian-inspired fantasy which I would advise fans of good, clever, inventive fantasy not to bother with and read Alison Goodman's Eon duology instead. On the other hand, if you are not picky or experienced with fantasy, or don't mind your YA very young, sure, go for it. The world-building here is interesting enough, at the very least exotic. Its roots are hard to pin-point (unlike, let's say in the case of obviously Japanese-inspired Stormdancer). There are touches of Japanese culture here, with fans and tea ceremonies, dark skin, castes and names of India, demographic politics of China. All in all these pieces create if not a unique and new imaginary world, but it least different from the "normal" Western ones.

At the center of this story is the City of a Thousand Dolls, a shelter and a place of study for unwanted girls. This city is necessary because of the Bhinian Empire's rigidly enforced two-child limit, which, as it usually does, means that its citizens are more invested in keeping sons and getting rid of girl children. The City has several schools (Houses) that teach the abandoned girls music, medicine, and seduction (basically, your common high class prostitution) and assassination skills. When the girls reach adulthood, they are practically sold to the highest bidder.

The main character of the novel, Nisha, is an assistant to the City's Matron and, as often in such novels, a special kind of girl, or so we are told. The main plot of the book is Nisha's investigation of sudden deaths of several City's girls.

Not to go into any great detail, the reasons why City of a Thousand Dolls didn't work for me are the ones that I keep writing about over and over again. The quality of writing is more of MG level, which makes the whole attempt to write romance into this story with passionate kissing and such quite a failure. The romance is juvenile and void of complexity, there is no other way to describe it. The hierarchy of the City is shaky. Sometimes it's hard to understand why certain people have the audacity to be disrespectful to their superiors and of course there is the usual "special snowflake" cliche that makes our heroine special without her doing and being anything special, but having a special position in this world nevertheless. The reasonings and motivations are unclear too sometimes. Why such angst and surprise at the news of arranged marriages or employments when the main purpose of the City is just that - to find unwanted girls places to live or work once they are of age? Plus, circling back to the issue of arranged marriages and such, isn't this too tired of a trope to base a story on, the only reason for angst and conflict? It's pretty much the most worn-out trope in speculative YA right now.

And the last thing that makes the book so... young is the talking cats. I'm sorry, but I believe that talking animals belong mainly in children's lit, unless it's Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Basically, I found this novel very simplistic and immature, albeit well-meaning and generally decently written. It just doesn't match the level of quality I prefer in my books. But sure, give it to your 12-year old. Wait, but how would you explain it to be appropriate to have schools that educate mistresses and prostitutes and assassins in an MG book? A lot of strange disconnect in this novel...

2/5 stars

Just One Day (Just One Day, #1)
Author: Gayle Forman
Publication Date: 1/8/2013
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: A breathtaking journey toward self-discovery and true love, from the author of If I Stay

When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

Just One Day is the first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story--Just One Year—is coming soon!

Review:

Just One Day is a story of self-discovery sandwiched between the romance-heavy beginning and end, two stories in one if you will. High school graduate Allyson meets an amateur Dutch actor Willem during her post-HS culture tour of Europe and with a spontaneity unnatural to her throws away all her caution and embarks on a day trip to Paris with him. They spend a day (and night) together, and then it's over, abruptly. Allyson goes back home then, starts college and succumbs to ennui. Her already depressed state is made even more severe by hardships in college, intense helicopter parenting and lack of friends. But her experiences during that one day in Paris eventually encourage her to change her life in a major way and go back to Paris...

Melancholy. Sad. Depressing. These are the words that were constantly on my mind while reading Just One Day. I am not sure a tone like this can work for me for an entire romance story. I obviously like some drama, if I enjoyed Forman's very tragic previous novels (If I Stay and Where She Went), but even those books were based on a love story that started out as charming, happy, romantic, swoony. In Just One Day, on the other hand, it's all doom and gloom and sadness, from the beginning till the very end. I am sure I would have liked Just One Day more if the romance were more uplifting, interesting. I found it hard to care for Allyson and Willem. Allyson is a dull, passive narrator. Willem lacks charisma, charm, sexiness, humor even. Their one day in Paris is not romantic or fun in any way. I attribute my negative impression of this day trip to the flashbacks of Taken running through my mind and my concern for Allyson's safety, and to the general grimness of the whole European adventure. (While I do not doubt the accuracy of Forman's depiction of Europe, this depiction is just depressing, to exactly match the novel's overall dark mood. How can one be so miserable in a midst of so much diversity, culture, excitement and freedom? I don't get it.) If I had the experiences in Paris Allyson had in this novel, I would have considered such extended date a complete failure and a waste of time, and nobody would have gotten laid by the end of it. But this one day has a great effect on Allyson, and this part of the novel I never quite accepted or understood.

Because I mostly felt indifferent towards the romance frame of this self-discovery story, the middle portion of the book felt more compelling to me. It is especially compelling if you are looking for books with those notorious "new adult" experiences - exploration of life after high school, learning how to be independent from your parents, choosing an educational path that suits you and not people around you, finding new friends, getting your first job. I liked most of this middle, except maybe the part where Allyson handles her schooling - I don't believe that taking pottery classes instead of pre-med classes while your parents are paying $40K a year for your school is a responsible and mature thing to do, even if it makes you happy. (My philosophy is - don't trifle with other people's money, you can get your pottery classes for $80 at your local community college.) But Allyson's struggles with her parents and her diving into new friendships were the highlights for me.

It is hard to give this book a fair assessment, because so much of my dissatisfaction with this novel rests on my personal taste in YA romance. On a technical level, Just One Day is well written. For me as an opinionated reader, however, this story felt lackluster, with its unjustified main character's ennui, realistic, but grim portrayal of various European countries and unconvincing romance. I would pick Anna and the French Kiss over this novel any day. It's just much, much more fun. There HAS to be some fun in any romance, am I right?

3/5 stars

Ask the Passengers
Author: A.S. King
Publication Date: 10/23/12
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Blurb (GR): Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions... like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better.

In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love.

Review:

If you've read as much YA as I have, I am sure this story will sound VERY familiar to you. I myself have read it once, twice or three times, in one form or another, and each version was of a different quality. I want to repeat the blurb and say that Ask the Passengers  is a "truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions," but it just isn't.

Astrid's is a story that's been told before. A teen who lives in a small town full of close-minded people, possibly falls in love with a girl and questions her sexuality. She keeps her questions to herself for the time being, not sure of her own feelings and fearing reactions from her superficially accepting family and openly intolerant community. But one day Astrid's cover is blown and she is forced to face the fallout...

Although the book is an assemblage of popular tropes, especially the second part, abundant with acts of homophobia and fake gay-supportiveness, King's writing abilities and her unique touches of magical realism and quirk elevate this story from the been-there-done-that level. The novel shines because of its memorable, vivid characters and interesting family dynamics (you can't be bored by Astrid's high-strung NYC-nurtured mother and her laid-back, pot-smoking dad). The elements of magical realism brighten up the story as well. (If you are into that sort of thing; in my relationship with A.S. King's books, it's a hit or miss, sometimes the quirky and weird is too much for me to handle.) In Ask the Passengers imaginary Socrates follows Astrid through her troubles and infuses the book with old time philosophical musings, and Astrid's habit of sending her love to the passengers of flying-by planes adds another layer to the narrative, when these anonymous passengers return the favor by sharing their love and life stories with us, readers. These bits are refreshing and entertaining.

Besides the familiarity  of the story I think my most acute concern is the one that Flannery talked about in her recent Something Like Normal review, easy and unearned forgiveness. There are many harsh things Astrid has to go through in this novel, thanks to people closest to her, things she doesn't deserve. But all is forgiven and forgotten in the end. This is not what a realistic resolution entails, at least not for cold-hearted me.

In her last three novels A.S. King has already undertaken the subjects well-used in YA - death and grief (Please Ignore Vera Dietz), bullying (Everybody Sees the Ants) and struggles of gay teens (Ask the Passengers). While I enjoy King's spin on all of these subjects (and she herself is a one cool lady and an author whose approach to her craft I respect immensely, based on this podcast), I wish she would stretch her wings of creativity and write about something... fresher.

3.5/5 stars

We're doing something a little bit different for this review today.  And admittedly, it's quite long.  Last week we all read this book at the same time. We planned to collaborate on one review, but then we all ended up having completely different reactions! The discussion threads were long and wordy and even though we had different points of view, we loved discussing this book. So we thought we'd give all of you the opportunity to read three perspectives on this new release from Laura Buzo.  Flannery brought some amazing and creative pictures, Tatiana brought her always-spot-on critical eye, and Catie brought a few tunes.  Let the three-way commence!

Holier Than Thou
Author: Laura Buzo
Publication Date: 5/1/12
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
[Goodreads | Fishpond]

Blurb(GR):   Holly Yarkov has a boyfriend who is a gift from the universe. She has a job that fulfills her even as it wears her down. She has a core group of friends from high school. And she has a layer of steel around her heart that is beginning to tarnish. Just as she is reaching for a future she can't quite see, Holly is borne back into the past by memories of her beloved father, and of the boy-who-might-have-been...

Grief and longing run like veins of quicksilver through this beautiful novel, at once gloriously funny and achingly sad.

Laura's confident, astute and witty voice has already been recognised with the success of Good Oil, with North American English rights sold to Knopf and German language rights sold to Arena. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Her second novel is extraordinary and bittersweet – and shows us exactly what it is like to be a young person today – navigating the complexities of work, love, family and how to pay the rent.

For the record, I'd just like to say that I chuckle every time we talk about doing a three-way...review. Sure, it's immature, but I never said I was mature, did I?  Take this art project, for example:

I spent a huge amount of time in high school and occasionally in college playing The Sims. My younger sister and I have discussions about where are Sims meters are at any given time and it makes total sense to us. In the chart on the left, you can see where I'd like my meters to be at any given time. If you approach me when my meters are at those levels, I will be chipper like no one's business. In Holier Than Thou, Holly's meters are, well, a total crapfest. She's in a draining job where she receives little recognition for the work she does, she and her live-in boyfriend don't talk about anything, and she's lost touch with all of her friends. The only thing Holly looks forward to is spending time with her co-worker Nick, who trains in circus acts during his free time. The two of them develop a smooth friendship where they can toss movie quotes back and forth and she maintains a relationship with him and talks to him about all the things she isn't talking to her boyfriend about. 

I think a lot of my connection to Holly had to do with her relationship with her friends. I love my friends to death, all of them, so when I spent two years doing service work, mostly gutting and rebuilding after Katrina, and then I'd go visit friends and they'd say things like, "Oh, is that stuff still going on down there?" and "I thought everything was better now," it would make my blood absolutely boil. At the same time, everyone is doing their own thing so I'm sure they probably wanted to tell me about their jobs and I'd like to think that I didn't trivialize their experiences. But I'm sure I probably did, so I could totally identify with Holly's holier-than-thou persona. It's hard to take it down a notch to socialize when you have a huge emotional attachment to your job.

This is one of those books that readers will either totally connect to or not so much, as totally evidenced by the reviews on Goodreads (and in this three-way! heh), and it is understandable. There isn't a ton of plot movement, but I thought the book flew by because I was enthralled with the characters, what choices they would make, and whether Holly's Sims meters would get the upturn that I kept hoping they would. Holly compartmentalized grief from the death of her father, she's mourning the loss of several friendships, and she's wondering about her relationship. This book is just about the buildup, buildup, buildup, and release. I love it all the more for the fact that many questions are never answered. That's life. 

5/5 stars

If I am being honest, the most fun I had while reading Holier Than Thou was when I was contemplating if this new emerging genre of "New Adult" fiction would be for me. If you are not familiar with the idea of "New Adult" (as opposed to "Young Adult" or "Adult")  fiction, this term seems to have been coined by the St. Martin's Press' publishing team back in 2009 when they announced a writing contest seeking fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult - a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult” with protagonists 18 or older, but 20s are preferred. Editing assistant at St. Martin's Press S. Jae-Jones clarified that "New Adult is about young adulthood, when you are an adult but have not established your life as one (career, family, what-have-you)." And Sarah LaPolla clarifies it even further, saying that such books would be about "the college experience, figuring out grad school, jobs, not living off your parents, etc."

I don't know if St. Martin's actually found and published any projects following this contest, but "New Adult" term appears to have stuck. There have been a few titles that could be categorized as "New Adult" that I adored - Melina Marchetta's The Piper's Son, Gayle Forman's Where She Went and Buzo's own Good Oil. I can't say I felt the same way about Holier Than Thou, which is positively a "New Adult" title.

23-year old Holly is fresh out of college, with a new job, a new serious boyfriend and a new very own apartment. She is happy and liberated, that is until she isn't anymore. The job is exhausting psychologically, the boyfriend is not as shiny any more and old school friends are distant and busy. Suddenly this adulthood seems too difficult to Holly...

In spite of my high hopes (after all, Good Oil was one of my top favorite books of last year), reading Holier Than Thou wasn't a riveting or even pleasant experience for me.

For one, my general attitude towards "New Adult" set of issues is pretty dismissive. Sarah LaPolla put a great name to what bothers me the most about "New Adult" lit - it is its emphasis on and exploration of "extended adolescence." Funny that watching HBO's new show Girls was what cemented my thoughts on "New Adult" themes - "New Adult" experiences, to me, are more often than not colored by pretentiousness, immaturity, self-entitlement and moochery. I am not quite sure why I am so negative towards these issues, being barely out of "New Adult" years myself. Maybe because my own "New Adult" experience was never as depressing as Holly's seems to be. I finished school, I didn't have neither opportunity nor desire to live off my parents' monetary support any longer, I started my adult life in a different country, with a different set of acquaintances and a new culture, and it was exciting, difficult too, with crappy jobs and financial strain, but it was exciting most of all. It is not interesting or compelling to me to observe people who make big deals out of issues that are not crucial, like Holly. If you don't like your job - get another one, if you are attracted to a man other than the one you are committed to - sit for a minute and examine which relationship you want to pursue, if your former friends are now distant and have new interests - that's just natural, people grow up and grow apart. None of Holly's experiences struck me as life-altering or worthy of the amount of ennui presented in this novel.

But mainly I think I just didn't connect with Holly and her friends on a personal level. With vibrant characters I can get into pretty much any story, but as told in Holly's words, it was pretty dull, colorless, sad and uninteresting to me. Holier Than Thou reminded me of a few pretentious books about college students - Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot or Donna Tartt's The Secret History which center on students obsessed with finding meaning of life, but not finding it most likely because of the life of privilege they've led, and a couple of sad, full of adult angst novels like Anna Quindlen's One True Thing or Jennifer Weiner's In Her Shoes. Essentially, Holier Than Thou turned out to be for me nothing more than another piece of depressing women's fiction, made even more unsatisfying by the completely open, ambiguous ending. Maybe I simply don't have that college years' nostalgia that would have helped me connect with Holly's issues? Or maybe I didn't have the luxury of time to lament, at length, my disappearing careless (did I have it?) youth and the decline of parting and loss of friends? Either way, Holier Than Thou made very little impact on me.

2.5/5 stars

It’s only rarely that I’ve encountered a writer like this, who so skillfully encourages the reader to participate. Laura Buzo’s writing in this book may appear simple and straightforward, but it’s deceptively so. Not only does she seamlessly weave together three different timelines, she achieves the perfect balance between what is stated and what isn’t. She gives us just enough. Instead of spelling out exactly how Holly feels, she leads us directly to our own emotions and memories. As a result, this book will be a very personal experience for a lot of readers. I know that it was for me.  And the most impressive thing is that even as she’s pulling off these rather complicated feats in the background, she’s achieving a heartbreakingly simple and straightforward tone for Holly in the foreground. Holly, who will joke and seem almost bland as she tells us about her father’s slow death, or the boy she loved but never got to have, or how her friends are slowly slipping away, or how she constantly wonders about what might have been. She’s been labeled a survivor, a success, a do-gooder. She has a rigid set of rules that she feels accountable to all the time, but which are completely unrealistic. She’s a woman of steel.  As a card-carrying member of that tribe, I can utterly relate to how hollow that label really is. In fact I related to this book in so many ways; the prospect of discussing them all is overwhelming. This book just fits right inside my skin.
This book made me remember:

Having my own place for the first time: it was tiny and dingy but it was mine. Quoting The Simpsons to anyone and everyone. Listening to hours of Tori Amos. How I used to feel about having kids. All the friends that flowed into and out of my life.  How impossible it was hold on to any of them, no matter how much I might have wanted to. That one person who I’ll never be able to forget, even though I probably should. Working in public service: facing the gruesome side of humanity every day and finding not always appropriate ways to cope with that. Watching my friends work in the private sector. Believing I could make a difference. Realizing that I probably never would. Breaking rules I thought were set in stone. Meeting the one, several times. Never knowing for sure if I made the right decision about anything. Regretting. 

This is one case where I actually feel like I got much much more out of this book because I read it as an older adult.  I can look back at my early twenties now and realize that losing friends happens all the time, to everyone (and really, it never stops sucking). I can see how pointless it was to second guess decisions that could never be re-made.  I can see that I’m a public servant through and through and it was fulfilling to me, even if I didn’t make a difference. I can see that all of those rules that I held so dear were really just holding me back. And I can see that the real steel isn’t earned by holding it together indefinitely. The real steel is earned by falling apart and then putting yourself back together again.

Reading this as an older adult had another effect on me too – it made the ending about one hundred times more devastating, because I could feel everything that was ahead for Holly. I love ambiguous endings - so much so that a few of my friends refer to them as “Catie endings.” This ending is without a doubt a Catie ending. Holy moly but did she give it right to me. With a side of chips. She gives us Holly’s deceptively strong outer walls, her rapidly rising tide of grief and regret, and just as the first cracks are starting to show, just as we get a glimpse of how deep that pool goes; it’s over. This is a beautiful, poignant, devastating snapshot of the early twenties experience and it is one of my favorite reads of the year.

Perfect Musical Pairing
The Jezabels - Easy To Love

(Random aside the first: I want her hair so badly. Random aside the second: their drummer is SO TALENTED.) My friend Reynje made an amazing playlist for this book, which is how I got introduced to The Jezabels. I could have picked so many of their songs (and indeed, their latest albums have become like my soundtrack for this book), but I chose this one because I’m pretty sure it’s just longing distilled. This song all about running into that person you can’t have and trying to do anything not to regret, even though you can’t stop. When the lead singer says “please, just let me be easy to love” and I think about Holly it just about guts me.

4.5/5 Stars

Holier Than Thou is only $12.06 with free shipping from Fishpond. Do it! You know you want to.

The House of the Scorpion
Author: Nancy Farmer
Publication Date: 9/1/02
Publisher: Atheneum

Blurb: Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested.
His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster--except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.

As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect.

Review:

Flannery made me do it and I am pleased that she did. I have no idea why I've been avoiding The House of the Scorpion for so long. Just look at its accolades - National Book Award Winner, Printz Honoree, Newbery Honoree. It practically has my name written on it.

But, is The House of the Scorpion worth such an overwhelming acclaim though?

I'd say, its first 215 pages and the last 20 are (ebook edition).

The first two thirds of the book are riveting. This story is not just a clone story. (For some reason, the majority of stories about clones focus on exactly the same things.) Yes, it is horrifying in how it examines the (familiar) debate about a clone's humanity and soulless(ful)ness. Matt is a clone and is defined by people around him as livestock, a source of body parts, and not a human being. (How can he be human if he was grown in and harvested from a cow?) Nancy Farmer takes Matt's character on a journey of self-discovery and self-awareness that allows him to accept that he is not what he is told he is, that he is as much of a human being as any person around him. It is a compelling journey, even though its sentiment isn't particularly new to me - I've read Never Let Me Go and watched The Island.

But, thankfully, there is more to distinguish The House of the Scorpion from similar stories.

First, the novel is set in Mexico (well, a future version of it). This country's life is written richly and authentically and never feels like just an exotic backdrop. I am no expert on Mexican culture though, so I might have felt that in awe of it as portrayed in The House of the Scorpion because of the narrator of the audio, who infused Mexican flavor into the story most organically.

Second, this is a story of a drug lord and his enslaved family. El Patrón feels he is owed a few generations worth of life, and he will stop at nothing to get what he thinks he is entitled to. Cloning is a part of his plan for immortality. It's in Matt's relationship with his master and owner where the story shines the most. How would a clone feel about the person who is identical to him, the source of his life? Would he be able to hate him, essentially hating himself? If a clone's genetic make-up is similar to that of a ruthless criminal, does it mean that this clone is destined to follow the same path and become the same vicious person? Or is there a way to break away from the prototype? And how would a master feel about his own clone? Would it be possible for him to treat this younger version of himself as an organ bank, or there exists a connection that is closer than even that between a father and a child? These questions had my brain working, and this part of the book was 5-star material for me.

But then came the escape part, in the last third of the book, and I found myself struggling with it. I was bored, I didn't feel like those pages (3-months of Matt's life worth) connected well thematically with the overreaching story arc, I didn't think they were necessary, I didn't think that a whole set of new characters (including villains) needed to be introduced so late in the story, and I surely didn't think that anti-socialist rants needed to come into play. (How did they relate to Matt's journey?) I thought, those pages only occupied time with no real bearing on the rest of the novel. To me, those 80 pages could have been completely cut out.

Thankfully, the ending did save The House of the Scorpion. It happens so infrequently in books, but it did bring the story full circle to El Patrón, and it was satisfying. But that big chunk of the novel, unfortunately, made me much less willing to recommend it, even though during the first part of the book I kept thinking this novel would be a great fit for fans of Unwind. I might reread The House of the Scorpion in future, but I'll be sure to skip over a big part of it.

4/5 stars

Losers in Space
Author: John Barnes
Publication Date: 4/12/12
Publisher: Viking Juvenile

Blurb: It is the year 2129 . . . and fame is all that matters

Susan and her friends are celebutantes. Their lives are powered by media awareness, fed by engineered meals, and underscored by cynicism. Everyone has a rating; the more viewers who ID you, the better. So Susan and her almost-boyfriend Derlock cook up a surefire plan: the nine of them will visit a Mars-bound spaceship and stow away. Their survival will be a media sensation, boosting their ratings across the globe. There's only one problem: Derlock is a sociopath. Breakneck narrative, pointed cultural commentary, warm heart, accurate science, a kickass heroine, and a ticking clock . . . who could ask for more?

Review:

Losers in Space is essentially a one long test of how much of a SF nerd you are and how "hard" you prefer your SF. Evidently, I am far less nerdy than I had always thought, judging by how little of this book's SF-ness I enjoyed.

Now, I don't want to be unfair to John Barnes, he warns upfront about the nature of his novel. In a Note for the Interested, #0, at the beginning of Losers in Space, he says straight, in a funny and clever way, that his novel is "hard SF" and, being that,"it uses one form or another of what we called infodumps: lectures about the science, the imaginary world, and so on, either directly or by having characters explain things to each other. (How many characters does it take to change a lightbulb in a hard SF story? One to do it, and one to say, 'As you know, Bob, a lightbulb consists of a tungsten filament in an inert-gas-filled glass inclosure...')" According to Barnes, "people who geek on just knowing stuff, either about the real science or the fictional future, love infodumps, but infodumps are boring obstacles for readers who just want to get on with the story." (p. 2) So, to solve this problem, to compromise, Barnes separated all infodumps into sections called Notes for the Interested, that can be skipped if you are not into science.

Unfortunately, this trick doesn't manage to save Losers in Space from the over-infodumpness problem. Even if you do skip all Notes (I did, almost all of them, except those that pertained to the worldbuilding and social issues. Can you blame me for not wanting to know about reaction masses, frequencies, recalculations of spaceship courses, etc?),  still, ALL CHARACTERS  in the novel talk to each other in a form infodumpy tuitorials. Every conversation starts in a way as to encourage that "As you know, Bob..." long-winded and boring lecture:

Pretend like I don't know anything, because I don't. What were the "couple little things"? (to lead to a lecture on how to hook up an antenna)

Okay, you'd better explain it to me (to lead to a 2-page lecture on universal encryption), etc., etc.

I am not sure if Barnes was trying to be funny here, adhering to this hard SF canon and making a joke out of it and ended up taking it too far, or if he genuinely thought that it was impossible to write a novel that was both entertaining and scientifically solid. But I know this - Losers in Space could have been a much better book without all of that excessive, awkwardly and bluntly introduced science. Because the story itself is good.

In 2129, the world reaches a basically utopian state. Poverty, hunger, wars, diseases are all eradicated. Robotic labor supports and allows for a striving human population that has literally EVERYTHING, every person is entitled to and receives a social minimum (the 2010 equivalent of 10 million dollars a year), for which they don't have to work at all. Only a very small percentage of population can earn more than the social minimum, by performing work that can't be done by robots - art, competitive athletics, science, teaching, or entertaining. This last field is the most attractive and the easiest to enter, or so it seems. The main characters of the novel, losers, who don't show any particular skills, want to become celebrities, and, encouraged by their sociopathic leader, decide to graduate from recording nudity, sex, drugs and partying (of course, those are the most popular ways to earn fame, don't you know?) by getting on a spaceship and tricking its crew into getting them on Mars. This way, these kids can get extensive news coverage and come back to Earth as celebrities. Of course, not everything goes according to the plan, which is no surprise, considering losers have a psycho in their midst.

Again, I will repeat, this novel could have been such a riot, if Barnes didn't choose to force the infodumps down the readers' throats. They simply suffocate the social commentary (what does happen to people in a world of uniform prosperity and leisure? how far will media go in an age of such a rampant entertainment demand?) and the characters. While they were lecturing each other, I almost forgot that Glisters is an amateur pornographer, that Fleeta is a drug user who fried her brains by taking happistuff, an illegal substance that keeps you in a state of constant euphoria, that Derlock is a high-level psycho. There is such a wealth of awesomeness to explore here, hypothetically. Instead, I spent most of my reading time skimming the boring and searching for entertainment. What a pity.

2.5/5 stars

The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Publication Date: 5/1/12
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Blurb: In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man--a bioengineered war beast named Tool--who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.

This thrilling companion to Paolo Bacigalupi's highly acclaimed Ship Breaker is a haunting and powerful story of loyalty, survival, and heart-pounding adventure.

Review:

The Drowned Cities' predecessor (and loose companion) Ship Breaker has already won Printz and was short-listed for National Book Award, and rightfully so. But I am wondering right now - was it not a tad premature to give Paolo Bacigalupi all these accolades? Because, frankly, The Drowned Cities is a far superior novel in comparison and, I guess, it is hard to expect similar acknowledgment of it, even if it is deserved? It appears, most of these awards are given once and the awarded authors are then promptly ignored? I wouldn't want this novel to be overlooked.

The Drowned Cities is a completely different story from Ship Breaker. Paolo's intent for Ship Breaker was to write a boy book, with action, adventure and explosions, and with a little bit of a moral lesson about bravery and loyalty. But I doubt The Drowned Cities was written with the same agenda in mind. Or if it was, the final novel far exceeded its original intent. The Drowned Cities is a heavy, brutal, unequivocally message-driven story that no one will dismiss as a simple entertainment.

This is a story of war. The kind of war that is playing out in many parts of our world right now. The setting of The Drowned Cities is futuristic/dystopian (slightly post-apocalyptic?) - natural resources are scarce, global warming has caused a climate change and extensive flooding of many parts of the planet, US is torn by civil war the reasons for which no one can any longer remember, China is a mega power that attempts to act as a peacekeeper, there are genetically augmented "people" who do rich men's bidding in all spheres of life from war combat to sexual services (this later "sphere" is not actually written into this YA novel, but a part of the larger The Windup Girl universe). But there is nothing in this fictional world that, on a human level, is not already happening in reality. And what is happening is that people are murdering each other for no good reason, children are being recruited to advance various war lords' convoluted political and financial agendas, livelihoods are being destroyed and citizens killed and exploited by the same soldiers who claim to protect and serve them.

Bacigalupi writes about many war-related things in this novel - the futility of peacekeeping efforts, the pointlessness of civil wars. It raises questions of what should one do in a time of war - fight and spread violence? endure and survive at any cost, even by sacrificing one's humanity? or try to simply escape? But the major theme of The Drowned Cities, in my mind, is the place of children in war. They are its victims, they are its bloody players, they are its survivors. The part of the story that struck me the most is the portrayal of the evolution (or birth) of a child soldier. This novel is awfully reminiscent of Ishmael Beah's personal account of becoming a boy soldier. It is astonishing how easy it is to dehumanize a child and make him (or her) a senseless torturer and killer.

Reading The Drowned Cities was an immensely intense experience for me. Every time I put the book down and came back to it later, it only took me a few pages to put me again and again into a high level of anxiety and fear for its characters. Not many YA books can keep me in suspense these days, but The Drowned Cities did. With that said, I want to assure you, the book never becomes a tearjerker or tragedy porn or shocking for the shock's sake. It is an honest, real and raw portrayal of what happens every day in the countries we don't care and don't want to think about.

If Mockingjay or Chaos Walking Trilogy are your favorite reads, The Drowned Cities is your next natural reading choice.

5/5 stars

Many of you (and I’m guessing possibly even the author himself) will laugh me off this small stage when I confess that I find Paolo Bacigalupi’s novels to be incredibly hopeful.  Seriously. Now, admittedly, this is an author who writes all about the end of the world as we know it and what we’ve done to bring ourselves here.  The Drowned Cities is about the irrevocable loss of childhood innocence, the harsh realities of survival, and the grasping, selfish nature of humankind. His novels are not for everyone, and trust me when I say that they are dark.

And yet, somehow these dark, twisted, eerily prophetic tales make me feel lifted. Maybe it’s because, set against such bleak settings, the hope stands out even more acutely. In the very harsh world of The Drowned Cities, it stands out in moments of sacrifice and resistance: in all the moments when these characters fight to rise out of the grim world they were born into. It’s in the reckless bravery of one damaged child to save another. It’s in the momentary resistance of one hardened teenage soldier to years of violence and trauma. It’s in the deceptively foolish actions of a peaceful man.  It’s the strength within one born and bred killer to choose another path. These moments are brief and often fruitless, but they're powerful within the scope of a single life.

But that’s not the entirety of it. It’s hard for me to articulate this properly, but there’s a certain much broader, more ambiguous hope that I think Paolo Bacigalupi paints so incredibly well. It’s a hope that stems from our complete and utter insignificance. We crawl around this Earth, warring with each other and consuming every resource, leaving waste and pollution behind. And yet, the Earth goes on. The Earth finds ways to thrive despite us, because of us. It adapts. Even as we are molding this world into an incompatible home for ourselves, we are remaking it for something, someone else. We are so arrogant; we feel so separate, but the truth is that we aren’t above nature. We are a part of it. We are a small piece of this powerful, wild system that can’t ever be controlled. Even when we try to control it, it slips right out of our hands.  We are such a miniscule, temporary part of this Earth’s history. All we have is this one brief moment to live the best we can and to try our hardest not to be a part of the violence and destruction. And even if we fail, this world will go on without us, just as it has for millennia. For some reason, I find a lot of hope in that.

What do all of my ramblings about hope have to do with this book? Everything, says my addled brain.  Or maybe nothing.  Maybe you’ll have an entirely different feeling, but I can almost guarantee that you’ll feel something for this intense book and its characters.  Just read it. If you don’t trust me (understandable – this review is completely unhelpful), scroll back up and let Tatiana’s much more lucid words convince you.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Nine Inch Nails - The Good Soldier
 

This is a very chilling song, told from the point of view of a soldier as he walks through his destroyed home, stepping over bodies and trying to convince himself that what he's doing is the right thing.

"I am trying to see
I am trying to believe
This is not where I should be 
I am trying to believe

Blood hardens in the sand
Cold metal in my hand
Hope you understand the way that things are gonna be
There's nowhere left to hide, 'cause God is on our side
I keep telling myself."

4.5/5 Stars