None of the Above, by I.W. Gregorio

It's senior year for Kristen Lattimer.  She's just been crowned Homecoming Queen and is looking at a track scholarship to college next year.  The night after the Homecoming dance, Kristen decides it's time to lose her virginity to her boyfriend Sam.  What should be a romantic night is ruined when she experiences terrible, agonizing pain.  This leads her to seek a gynecological exam.  The news is shocking: Kristen is intersex.

Although outwardly she looks like a girl, she has no uterus, and blood tests show that her chromosomes read XY.  Thus begins Kristen's painful journey of discovery: not only to learn more about her diagnosis, but to learn just what defines one's gender.

At first Kristen tells no one - not even Sam - about her diagnosis.  However, one drunken night, she spills the beans to her two best friends, Vee and Faith.  Soon the news is spread all over school, and the bullying begins, both at school and online.  Even her track coach says Kristen cannot participate with the track team because other schools have filed complaints about cheating.

The author of None of the Above, I.W. Gregorio, is herself a surgeon, and her medical knowledge comes through in the scenes with Kristen and her doctors.  I felt that these scenes, although factual, were a little too dry in their exposition.  It's quite obvious that Gregorio is trying to educate the reader by dispelling many rumors and myths about those who are intersex.  There are other plot points that seem a bit too pat, as if she was going through a check sheet of YA tropes: Homecoming queen? Check.  Happens to be reading Merchant of Venice is English class with its themes of gender identity?  Check.  Parent who is supportive but distant?  Check.

I like that this book explores an issue so rarely discussed in YA lit.  Gregorio is one of the founding members of the We Need Diverse Books campaign, so I applaud her efforts.  But I think it's obvious that Gregorio has a medical background and very few YA titles to her name.  Point more mature teen readers to Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides for additional reading on this theme.

Things We Know By Heart, by Jessi Kirby

In the opening moments of Things We Know By Heart, teenager Quinn wakes up to the distant sounds of sirens, and somehow she just knows they are for her boyfriend, Trent.  Skip ahead to over a year later, where Quinn is still deep in grief, not only over Trent's death, but over the future they will never have together.  A year later, and Quinn refuses to let herself move on or let go of Trent.  However, she writes donor letters to those people who received his organs, and she's heard back from all but one - the one who got Trent's heart.

Relentless and a bit obsessive, Quinn uses her best Internet sleuthing skills and figures out the recipient is a boy named Colton, about her age and living nearby.  Crossing all lines of acceptable behavior, Quinn goes to see him, intending to confront him, but she chickens out.  Instead, she befriends Colton and soon the two start spending more and more time together.  All the while, Quinn can't bring herself to tell Colton the truth.  Obviously, we as readers know everything will come out eventually, and it won't be pretty.

As YA romances go, I felt that Things We Know By Heart was pretty lightweight.  Colton is too much the Perfect Teenage Boyfriend.  He's cute, sensitive, outdoorsy... other than the fact that he still has to stop and take medication for his heart, Colton has few flaws.

There are many four star reviews for this book over on Goodreads, which completely baffles me.  It's hard for me to review books like this not from a grown-up point of view.  The adult in me just Really.Disliked.Quinn.  I know her boyfriend died tragically, and that's a sad thing.  But they weren't married.  They didn't have kids or a family together.  They were juniors in high school.  And although I'm sorry Quinn won't get to go to her prom with Trent or celebrate graduation with him, I just didn't feel very sympathetic toward her decision to just shut down and refuse to move on.  I think part of the problem is that we, as readers, don't get to know Trent as a character.  We just know a few fleeting details: he was an athlete, he once brought Quinn a huge sunflower.  I think if we had been invested more in their relationship, I would have cared about Quinn more. 

Colton, on the other hand, is the more interesting character, but Kirby makes this Quinn's story.  As Quinn begins to fall for Colton, she begins to heal emotionally and starts to move on with her life.

I'm sure there are plenty of teenage girls out there who will eat this up.  I think it would be an additional purchase for libraries, but not a necessary one.

Review given in exchange for an ARC from Edelweiss.  Book will be published in April.

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

I started reading Challenger Deep with little idea of what the book was about.  As soon as I saw that an ARC was available of the newest Neal Shusterman title, I was all GIMMEGIMMEGIMME *makes grabby hand motions*

And then I plunged right in.  That being said, I was then thoroughly confused for the first part of the book.  We begin by following two storylines involving a boy named Caden.  In one, he is a normal high school boy who likes art and drawing.  In the other story, he is a crew member on board a pirate ship with a captain, a navigator, and a talking parrot.

What is happening?  I'm so lost!  But of course I stuck with it, and very slowly the pieces began to fall into place. You realize that it's Shusterman's intentions to throw you into this confusing narrative, because that's how jumbled it feels in Caden's head.  He begins to struggle in school and starts slipping away from his friends and family.  His parents finally realize he needs help that they cannot give him and Caden is checked into a psychiatric institution for teens.  It is heartbreaking.

However, through the fog of Caden's mind, the reader realizes the pirate ship scenario is Caden's way of trying to make sense of his illness and the people around him at the institution.  How far into the abyss will he go?

An author's note at the end tells us that Challenger Deep was inspired by the similar journey of his son, Brendan, who supplies the illustrations in the novel.  Such personal insight makes Caden's story feel authentic and we are pulled in tightly to his struggle.  I found this book to be a surprising change of pace for Shusterman, who mostly traffics in sci-fi and fantasy, but I loved it.  Shusterman never disappoints.

Review given in exchange for a digital ARC from Edelweiss.  Book will be published in April 2015.

Jackaby by William Ritter

I feel the need to state off the bat that I came into this book highly biased.  Jackaby has been touted by booksellers as "A cross between Sherlock and Doctor Who."  Now, anyone who's met me knows that I'm a freak for these shows.  My office is filled with Doctor Who things.  I have a sonic screwdriver.  (A student once asked me, "What is that?  A lightsaber?")  I have this cover from Entertainment Weekly up on my office wall.  I wore this t-shirt to school on Halloween. 
So, a book that's called a mash up of these two shows?  Um, yeah.  I'm all over it.

Jackaby is a paranormal mystery set in New England, 1892.  Abigail Rook arrives in town with no money, no job, and no husband, but with a healthy sense of adventure.  She answers an ad for "Investigated Services: Assistant Wanted."  The man who placed the ad is R.F. Jackaby, a private investigator who happens to be able to see spirits and inhuman creatures, and also wears a long, expensive coat and scarf.  Soon The Doctor and Clara Sherlock and Watson Jackaby and Abigail are investigating a string of grisly murders. 

For all the hype surrounding this book, I ultimately found Jackaby to be... fine.  I brought it home over Christmas break, and it sat on my coffee table for close to 2 weeks before I forced myself to finish it.  The "who done it" part of the mystery was not so hard to guess, although the paranormal aspect of it came out of slightly-left field.  Jackaby himself is certainly very Sherlock-ish.  He's an odd duck with a keen sense of observation that endears him few friends.  Abigail is given little to do other than to follow Jackaby around, although she has some skill at paying attention to details that eventually earns Jackaby's trust.

This book would be fine for middle school or high school, and at only 300 pages, is relatively short compared to many books coming out these days.  There's a good bit of odd humor (Jackaby's former assistant has been magically turned into a duck, for instance, thanks to a spell gone wrong), but I just wish it was more suspenseful.

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

Where do I begin with this book?  It's so hard to describe in a way that doesn't sound drab.  It's about high school boys.  Okay...  They go on a road trip.  Sure.  There's a girl.  Naturally.

See what I mean?  100 Sideways Miles is a realistic, coming-of-age story filled with raunchy humor and sweet emotions all at the same time.  I've found this to be a hard sell in my library just because it's not really "about" anything specific.  But students who are willing to give it a shot will surely be rewarded.

High schooler Finn Easton has spent most of his life defined by two things:
1.  When he was a little boy, Finn and Mother were involved in a freak accident when a truck headed for the knackery overturned and a dead horse fell off the overpass onto them below.  It killed Finn's mother and left him with a broken back.  He still bears a scar from the accident and is epileptic.  He occasionally has seizures where he blanks out for minutes or hours at a time.
2.  His father wrote a science-fiction novel that amassed a cult following.  The main character is a boy named Finn.

Finn has few acquaintances other than his best friend, Cade, a beer-drinking, tobacco-chewing, profanity-spewing star of the baseball team.  He largely keeps to himself because people inevitably want to talk about his dad's book.  When he meets new student Julia, Finn finds himself falling in love for the first time.

There is much to like about this book.  I loved how funny Cade is and how good a friend he is to Finn.  For instance, one year before the state academic test, Cade convinces the entire sophomore class to just bubble in C-A-D-E over and over onto the answer sheet.  They perform so highly, the governor himself comes to the school to congratulate them on their outstanding academic achievement and gives them all an ice cream party.

I also like how real Finn seems as a character.  He's not particularly outgoing and often answers "Um," whenever asked a question he can't/doesn't want to answer.  As indicated by the title, the book is all about journeys - figurative and literal.  And no one takes a journey without coming out changed on the other side.

Dream a Little Dream, by Kerstin Gier

At last!  Another book from the delightful Kerstin Gier, whose Ruby Red series was a fun, romantic, comical time-traveling adventure.  I've been eager to see what Gier would produce next, and now it's almost here.  Dream a Little Dream will be released in April, 2015.

This is book 1 in The Silver Trilogy.  Teenager Liv Silver and her sister, Mia, have lived all over the world with their parents.  The book begins with Liv and Mia arriving in England to join their mother, who is supposed to be lecturing at Oxford.  They cannot wait to live in a quaint English cottage filled with the possibility of charm and mystery.  However, upon arriving in London, they find their mother has met a man and plans for them all to move into his house along with his twin children.  Although there are the usual hiccups and disagreements when this new plan is announced, everyone in the household begins to genuinely gets along.

One night, Liv has a dream that feels incredibly real.  She follows her future stepbrother, Grayson, into a cemetery where he meets up with three other boys from school.  They perform a ritual, asking the "Lord of Shadows and Darkness" to show them who will be part of their circle.  Naturally, Liv falls out of the tree she's been hiding in right at this moment.  Only later will she learn out what she's been "chosen" for.

The book is part Inception, part Raven Boys (by Maggie Stiefvater), with Gier's knack for humor and a taste of Gossip Girl thrown into the mix.  As we previously saw in Ruby Red, she writes wonderfully real teenage girls, who are sarcastic, flawed, and spunky all at once.  As Liv gets pulled farther into this mysterious dream world, she begins to fall for one of the boys, Henry.  Their budding romance is genuine and sweet.

My only complaint about this book is that Gier spends a lot of time exploring dream worlds, but never really gets around to Liv's part in the secret circle.  When the moment finally arrives, it feels too rushed.  However, because we have 2 more books yet to come, the ending is only the beginning.

Review given in exchange for an advance reader's copy from Net Galley.

One additional comment: I really hate the cover.  The purple door, bubbles, butterflies, and pink curly script are all misleading.  The book was really a bit dark and sinister in some places, and I think could appeal to boys and girls if the bookseller or librarian talks it up enough.  However, NO TEENAGE BOY that I've met would touch this book with a ten-foot pole based on this cover.  maybe they'll change it before publication?

1/16/15 UPDATE  Yay!  They did change the cover after all.  The new one is still kinda' girly, but at least it better reflects the darker aspects of the book.

Vanishing Girls, by Lauren Oliver

Review given in exchange for a digital review copy from Edelweiss.

Vanishing Girl, the newest (to be released March 2015) from Lauren Oliver, switches POV between two sisters, Nick and Dara.  Both are close in age and look similar to each other, but their actions are far different.  Nick, the older sister, is more responsible, follows the rules, and looks out for Dara.  The younger sister, on the other hand, is sneaky, impulsive, and hiding secrets.  But perhaps, so is Nick?

The book revolves around a car crash: Nick was driving, Dara was badly hurt.  What happened, exactly, isn't revealed until the end.  Nick can't remember and Dara doesn't want to think about it.  The timeline jumps around ("Before" and "After") and also switches between both girls, which can sometimes make the plot fuzzy and hard to follow.  Of course, by the end of the book I realized this was probably Oliver's intention.

This is a story about sisters: how they love each other and resent each other all at the same time.  They're always competing, even if they don't realize it.  When Dara goes missing on her birthday, Nick begins a frantic chase to figure out where Dara disappeared to, leading to a surprising reveal.

After finishing this book, I thought, "Dang it.  Now I have to go back and read it again to see how I missed those clues."  I liked this one much better than Oliver's previous novel, Panic (see earlier blog post), although I think comparisons will be made to E. Lockhart's We Were Liars, which is similar.