Tag Archives: favourite books

Goodbye Days – Jeff Zentner

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Oh, Jeff, what are you doing to me?

The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner’s YA debut, was one of my favourite books of 2024. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with reading his follow-up, Goodbye Days. Geesh. Who is this Jeff Zentner guy and why does he insist on breaking my heart?

Carver Briggs, aka Blade, would have been pretty excited about his final year at Nashville Arts Academy if he hadn’t just buried his three best friends: Blake Lloyd, Eli Bauer and Mars Edwards. Now, though, he has to navigate this last year of high school without the rest of the Sauce Crew and deal with the overwhelming guilt that he is, in fact, responsible for their deaths.

He doesn’t think he killed them on purpose. And he knows that no one thinks he “slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines.” But he did text Mars, who was driving, and the authorities did find Mars’s phone at the crash scene with a “half-composed text” to Carver. That was right before his friends slammed into the semi.

Now Carver is having panic attacks and debilitating feelings of guilt which are compounded by the fact that he is growing closer to Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend. It’s all too much. And he knows that he is not the only one who is suffering.

When Blake’s grandmother suggests that the two of them share a “goodbye day” for Blake, Carver is initially reluctant. She proposes that they spend a day together, doing the things that Blake used to love to do, and sharing their stories about him. A ‘goodbye day’ of sorts.

“Funny how people move through this word leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all these people put their puzzle pieces together.”

Goodbye Days is my first five star read of 2025. In all the ways I loved The Serpent King, I loved this one just as much. Zentner is so gifted at writing teenagers who are thoughtful and funny and broken and hopeful. This book was profoundly moving and yep, I cried.

For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.

I will read anything this guy writes.

Talking at Night – Claire Daverley

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If I had read Claire Daverley’s debut Talking at Night a little bit earlier, it would have most certainly made my list of the top twenty books I read this year because I LOVED it! I am always talking about how straight-up romances just don’t float my boat, how I need a little pain with my pleasure. This book delivered and then some.

Rosie and Will meet at a bonfire when she is seventeen and he a little older. Although they go to the same school and share some friends, and Will tutors Rosie’s twin, Josh, in further maths (advanced A level math), these two don’t really know each other until Will suddenly finds himself telling Rosie things he’s never said to anyone.

Will and Rosie could not be more different. Will is “detached and standoffish, despite his popularity and a long list of girlfriends.” Rosie is “a virgin, and she is vanilla.” She also suffers from OCD and is far less outgoing than Josh. It is clear, though, that these two are drawn to each other in ways that neither of them quite understand.

When Rosie tries to pre-emptively end things (because things haven’t really even begun, although they both understand that there is something between them), Will tells her that he thinks about her “On my bike. And in the garage. And when I’m cooking, and running, and trying to sleep.” This is new territory for Will.

Watching these two navigate these feelings over the years – because the novel does span decades – is truly a thing of beauty. There are lots of obstacles preventing them from having the HEA that I wanted for them, but that’s the bit I like best. Where’s the story if they meet, fall in love and suddenly have everything they didn’t even know they wanted?

Will has demons and a past. Rosie has a complicated relationship with her mother and subverts her own desires to make others happy. Tragedy looms around the corner which further complicates things. Rosie goes off to university, but Will stays home in Norfolk. And through it all – Will and Rosie pine and hell yes! so did I.

I loved these two characters. I loved the secondary characters. I loved the unexpected bonds that are forged. I loved the way this book is written. I read it in two sittings, turning the last page way past my bedtime.

If I had my Top Twenty list to do over again, this one would definitely be in the Top 3! Although perhaps not objectively the best book ever…it hit all my sweet spots and so it’s 100% a winner in my book, and that’s the beautiful thing about reading – my opinion is the only one that counts.

The Serpent King – Jeff Zentner

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The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner has been in my classroom library for ages, but a friend on Litsy recommended I read it based on some other recent books I have read and enjoyed (Shiner, Midnight is the Darkest Hour).

No question – The Serpent King will be in my Top Ten books of the year. It’s a five-star read.

Dill, Travis and Lydia live in Forrestville, Tennessee – a backwater, Bible belt town near Nashville. In their senior year of high school, the three are each other’s besties. Actually, they are each other’s only friends.

Dill Early is the son of a disgraced preacher, currently serving time for possessing child pornography. He and his mother live in abject poverty, buried under the weight of the debts which have piled up due to the senior Early’s incarceration and a car accident which has left Dill’s mother suffering from chronic pain. Dill worries constantly about his faith, his future, and his unrequited feelings for Lydia.

Travis Bohannon is a 6’6″ dork. He “wore a necklace with a chintzy pewter dragon gripping a purple crystal ball” and often carried a staff and a battered copy of a book from the Bloodfall series. He belonged to the same church as Dill – back before Early sr. was arrested – and that’s where the two became friends. Travis’s older brother Matthew had been killed in the Middle East and the loss of his older brother had soured Travis’s father even more towards Travis. He is a truly odious human.

Lydia Blankenship runs a successful fashion blog called Dollywould, named after one of her sheroes, Dolly Parton. She takes crap from no one, but she is often the target of the school bullies, who poke at her for everything from her appearance to her Internet success. Every time she claps back against the asshats in her school, I just wanted to high-five her. Lydia is different from Dill and Travis though in that she lives in a nice house (her father is the town dentist) and her parents support her dreams. Her parents are also two of the only adults in this novel I actually didn’t want to run over with my car. Lydia speaks her mind and she wants more for her friends, particularly Dill.

So, it’s their last year of high school. Time to start thinking about the future. Lydia’s life is planned. She has a list of schools she’s gunning for; NYU at the top of the list. Travis intends to stay in Forrestville and work at the family lumber yard. Dill’s mother wants him to work full time at the grocery store and help pay off the family debt. In fact, she’d be just as happy if he quit school now and went straight to work.

I cannot tell you how much I loved these three teenagers. Their dreams (or lack thereof), their insecurities, their successes, their complicated family dynamics and, most of all, their love for each other. These characters are so heartbreakingly human that when tragedy strikes, it rips your heart out.

When I think about the qualities of a five star book, I am looking for a great story, great writing, realistic characters. Icing on the cake is a book that makes me laugh – which I did. Sometimes these characters, particularly Lydia, say amusing, quippy things. The needle goes up a notch – don’t ask me why – if a book makes me cry. The Serpent King definitely made me cry.

Growing up is hard enough without having all the cards stacked against you. I have never hoped for the wellbeing of characters, particularly Dill and Travis, more than I did in this book. That this is Zentner’s debut is astounding. It’s a knockout.

Highly times a thousand recommended.

Distant Sons – Tim Johnston

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It was on page 32 of Tim Johnston’s latest novel Distant Sons when I realized that I recognized his main character, Sean Courtland. It wasn’t his name; it was a passing reference to “the high pines of the Rockies, the summer she was eighteen, a track star floating up the mountain on pink Nikes while he, age fifteen, fell increasingly behind on the bike.” Wait a minute! I know that scenario. I raced for my copy of Descent and sure enough there he was. Cool, I thought. I LOVED Descent and I loved Sean, so I was happy to spend more time with him. Then, a while later, when we are introduced to Dan Young, I had the same niggle in the back of my head. Again, it wasn’t the name, it was the fact that he had a twin brother named Marky. Wait a minute! I ran for my copy of The Current. Yep. Tim Johnston is cannibalizing his previous novels and, oh, what a feast it is.

First of all, you don’t need to know anything about Descent or The Current to understand the plot of Distant Sons. This is not the sort of novel where the reader loses out if they are not familiar with the backstories. That said, I highly recommend both of those novels. Descent, in particular, blew me away and made Johnston an auto buy author for me. Nevertheless, you will not suffer for not having read these books before reading this one because Distant Sons isn’t really a sequel.

It’s ten years past the events of Descent (not totally sure what that means for the timeline of The Current.) Sean Courtland, now 26, has landed in small town Wisconsin and isn’t able to go much farther because his car has broken down. He finds a job doing some carpentry work for Marion Deveraux, an elderly reclusive oddball. The townspeople have long been suspicious of Devereaux because of three boys who’d gone missing thirty-odd years ago.

Not long after he arrives in town, he finds himself in trouble with the local police for getting into a bar fight, where he was defending the honour of local waitress Denise Givens against jack off Blaine Mattis. Then, he crosses paths with Dan Young, who has also run into some of his own bad luck with a vehicle. Sean offers him some work because, as luck would have it, Dan has plumbing experience and the job at Devereaux’s needs plumbing work done.

These are the main characters in Johnston’s story. Their intertwining lives, the stuff of chance, has a profound impact on each of them. As much as I loved Sean when I first met him, I love him just as much – or more – in this book. I feel as though he has been punishing himself for a decade and I wanted him to be able to let the past go and find something good to hold on to. His new relationships with Dan, Denise and Denise’s father are thoughtful and it is refreshing to see male relationships in particular that are not merely posturing. Sean’s interactions with other people errs on the side of kindness always. Although Dan and Sean are reluctant to reveal too much about themselves, I felt as though I was watching an authentic relationship unfold.

There is a mystery at the core of this novel, and Johnston certainly has a few surprises in store for the reader, but this is a novel about people – some of whom who are just trying to do the right thing. Slow burn, for sure, but 100% worth the effort. I gasped. I teared up. I loved every second of this book.

If you haven’t ever read this author, I beg you to give him a try. He’s fantastic.

Go As A River – Shelley Read

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While perhaps not as flashy as its set-in-the-natural-world predecessor Where the Crawdads Sing, Shelley Read’s debut Go As A River is start to finish even more satisfying. (I hated the ending of Owens’s book.)

Victoria ‘Torie’ Nash is just seventeen when her story begins. She lives with her mostly silent father, mean-spirited and trouble-making 15-year-old brother, Seth, and Uncle Og, a wheel-chair bound war veteran, on a peach farm in Colorado . Yes, you heard that right: a peach farm in Colorado.

Our farm was nothing special, nor was it very big, just forty-seven acres including the barns and the house and a gravel driveway as long as a wolf’s howl. But from the barn to the back fence line our land produced the only peach grove in all Gunnison County, where the fruit grew fat and rosy and sweet.

Torie has already experienced tragedy and her life is relatively sheltered – consisting of tending to the house and garden, preparing meals for her family and farmhands, and working in the orchard. Then, one day, she meets Wilson Moon and that “was a fateful moment.” Anyone who has ever fallen in love at that age will recognize the signs.

…I knew nothing, especially not of love’s beginnings, of that inexplicable draw to another, why some boys could pass you by without notice but the next has a pull on you as undeniable as gravity, and from that moment forward, longing is all you know.

Soon Torie and Wil are meeting every chance they get and for the first time in her life, Torie feels seen and understood. But, of course, their relationship is not without its difficulties. For one thing – it’s 1948. For another, Wil is Indian and a drifter. But with Wil, Torie feels “beautiful and desirable and even a little dangerous […] a woman making choices and taking risks rather than an obedient and timid girl.”

Torie becomes Victoria through a variety of heartbreaking trials. The novel spans 20 years, but it never feels rushed or over-stuffed. For a quiet novel, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. I was so invested in Victoria’s story and her tenacity. She is a fully realized character whose journey is so beautifully rendered -well, I won’t be forgetting her any time soon.

Read captures the landscape, small-town life, first love, and what it is to be misunderstood and ‘other’ with a deft hand. It is clear she has a deep and abiding love for the natural world: I could smell and taste those peaches. The story was inspired, in part, by a true event – the flooding of a town in the 1960s to facilitate the building of a dam. (Another great book – and one that takes place in my neck of the woods – that turns on an event like this is The Town That Drowned by Riel Nason).

I highly recommend this book; it’s definitely in my Top 5 reads of the year.

Sweet Sorrow – David Nicholls

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Because I have such a backlog of books on my tbr shelf, I rarely make impulse purchases these days. If I buy a new book, it’s usually because I’ve heard of it somehow and even if I do buy it, that doesn’t necessarily mean I will read it straight away. David Nicholls’ (One Day) new book, Sweet Sorrow, was irresistible, though. I bought it and read it immediately.

Charlie Lewis, our narrator, is recounting his post GCSE summer. His life is kind of a mess. His parents have recently split; his mother and younger sister, Billie, have gone off to live with his mom’s new man and Charlie has been left to look after his father, who spends his days in the gloom, listening to jazz albums and drinking or sleeping on the sofa. Of his three best mates from school, Harper, Fox and Lloyd, only Harper seems to understand what a grim time this is for Charlie. When he’s not working his part-time job at a local petrol station, Charlie spends most of his time riding his bike around. That’s how he comes across Fran Fisher.

Fran is part of the theatre troupe Full Fathom Five. They’re rehearsing Romeo and Juliet at Fawley Manor, a country estate owned by senior thespians, Polly and Bernard. The troupe is in desperate need of more males, and so Fran agrees to have coffee with Charlie if he comes back on Monday and participates.

I did go back, because it was inconceivable that I would not see that face again, and if doing so meant a half day of Theatre Sports, then that was the price I’d pay.

Thus begins a summer of Shakespeare and first love for Charlie. “When these stories – love stories – are told, it’s hard not to ascribe meaning and inevitability to entirely innocuous chance events,” Charlie says. But the truth is that Charlie thinks Fran is “lovely” and despite their differences (Fran attended the much posher Chatsborne Academy and is clearly destined for great things; Charlie lives on a council estate with streets named after famous writers and is pretty sure flunked his GCSEs so won’t be going on to college), they fall in love.

The ache of that love – and, trust me, it aches – is heightened because the pair are rehearsing literature’s most famous tragedy, a play Charlie comes to understand and appreciate because he and Fran spend endless lunch hours talking about it, and because Charlie is telling this story twenty years in the future. C’mon – who doesn’t look back at their first love with a certain degree of nostalgia? Y’know, “misty water-coloured memories” and all that.

Not gonna lie, I love Romeo and Juliet. I know what you’re going to say, but I don’t care. I love the language and the heightened emotions and when I first encountered the play, 40 odd years ago, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Do I believe in love at first sight? Kinda.

Nicholls has written a book that is both laugh-out-loud funny and also deeply moving. How we ever survive those fraught teen years, I’ll never know, but somehow we do. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the book to mature teens in my class, but this is not a YA novel. The tears I shed at the end of the book came from understanding something I could never really know at sixteen: that first love doesn’t last, but it stays with you forever anyway.

Highly recommended.

Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

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I feel like I am probably the last person on the planet to succumb to Daisy Jones & The Six‘s considerable charms, but fall I did. And hard. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel about the rise and fall of Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, two uber-talented musicians in the 1970s, is the PERFECT book for a summer afternoon. I read it straight through, start to finish; I couldn’t have put it down, even if I wanted to.

Told in the style of an oral history, (so basically there’s no real exposition, it’s just people talking, as if they were being recorded and their words then transcribed,) the story follows Jones and Dunne’s separate journeys up until they meet and their musical fortunes become entwined.

This novel is so nostalgic – especially if you were around in the 70s, which I was. I graduated from high school in 1979 and while Billy and Daisy’s experiences certainly bear no resemblance to mine, I nevertheless appreciated some of the allusions. For instance, Daisy is introduced to the hedonistic and drug-fuelled club scene when she is just fourteen by flirting with a roadie at Whiskey a Go Go. The concierge of the Continental Hyatt House (preferred hotel of touring rock bands) remembers that some of the girls who hung around hoping to meet band members were young “but they tried to seem older. Daisy just was, though. Didn’t seem like she was trying to be anything. Except herself.”

Then there’s Billy Dunne. Gifted with a guitar for his fifteenth birthday, Billy and his younger brother Graham start a band while they are still in their teens. Billy is everything a lead singer should be: charismatic, sexy, beautiful and talented. The band’s manager says “Billy Dunne was a rock star. You could just see it. He was very cocksure, knew who to play to in the crowd. There was an emotion that he brought to his stuff.”

Both Billy and Daisy have their demons. In many ways, they are loners and they depend on a variety of substances to get them through the days and nights. Billy, though, has a wife, Camila, and a vested interest in getting his shit together. When Daisy and Billy meet, it catapults the two of them to super-fame. Their chemistry is off-the-charts. They record a song together that leads to a more permanent collaboration.

This novel is the bomb. I don’t claim to be an aficionado, but I do love music. Billy and Daisy start writing songs together and their creative partnership is both a blessing and a curse. Every song is fraught (Jenkins Reid has written all these songs and they are found at the back of the novel) and reminds us how incredibly powerful music (and art in general) can be in tapping into our souls.

…what we all want from art…When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? It’s like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.

The creative partnership between Daisy and Billy cannot be sustained, for reasons that will be readily apparent. The push-pull between these two damaged, yet wholly likeable characters is so full of longing and angst, I just couldn’t bear it. (Truthfully, the angst is off the charts and I loved every wretched minute of it.)

Daisy Jones & The Six is pure entertainment. It’s beautiful, funny, human, nostalgic, heart-breaking awesomeness. I can’t WAIT for Reese Witherspoon’s adaptation.

Highly recommended.

Hello Goodbye – Emily Chenoweth

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helloEmily Chenoweth’s debut novel Hello Goodbye was inspired by the author’s life. Her mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour when Chenoweth was in her first year of college. Instead of writing a memoir, though, the author decided to use her experiences as fodder for a work of fiction because she could “explore the feelings and experiences that I did remember, but I could also craft a story that had a different arc than my own.”

And what a story it is.

The novel begins with Helen Hansen returning from a run and collapsing on the kitchen floor. Fast forward a few months and Elliott has arranged a holiday armed with the knowledge that Helen, due to the “astrocytoma in her frontal lobe”  hasn’t much time left.  Eighteen-year-old Abby has accompanied her parents to The Presidential Hotel (think Dirty Dancing‘s Kellerman’s, complete with dance lessons and liveried staff) in New Hampshire.  Elliott wants to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary, but also invites the couples’ dearest friends as a farewell of sorts.

He’s made the decision not to tell Helen because he wants her to keep fighting but has also decided that this holiday will be his opportunity to break the news to his daughter and their oldest friends.

Abby is mildly annoyed by the whole affair, but she is also hoping that this change of scenery will do them all some good.

In a grand place like this, it seemed possible that everything might get a little bit better. She could imagine her father relaxing, her mother feeling stronger, and herself becoming kinder and more attentive,

She is also hoping that she might meet someone…anyone, really and when someone slips a note under her door Abby feels like “there might be something to look forward to.” She does meet two someones: Alex and Vic. Vic, by a strange twist of fate, is from her hometown back in Ohio. He was a student at the school where her father is headmaster, a delinquent plucked from the system by her mother, a counsellor. He also happens to be the first person Abby ever kissed, and it is a moment she remembers vividly.

Elliott is watching his daughter almost as closely as he is watching his wife. Abby is “unfamiliar to him in a new way.” He acknowledges that Abby has always been closer to her mother than she has been to him; “She looked just like her mother — everyone said so.”

Over the course of the week, each of the members of the family grapple with the future and Chenoweth manages to make every single moment ache with …well, life, really. Here are the Hansens remembering all the good times they had with their friends. Here is Helen regarding the body that is now failing her.

Why hadn’t she celebrated those big strong thighs instead of trying all the time to shrink them? Why hadn’t she found her feet beautiful, or her sturdy ankles. Why hadn’t she loved her coarse, graying hair? Why had she not praised every perfect square inch of herself? She feels an almost unbearable ache of longing for all that doesn’t belong to her anymore.

Here is Abby filled with a combination of dread and embarrassment and unarticulated love.  Here is Elliott traveling back and forth over the twenty  years he’s shared with Helen.

I can’t begin to express how moving this novel is. I don’t think it’s necessary to have lost someone in your life to appreciate the journey these characters are on. This is a glorious, beautifully written testament to family, friendship and the inherent joys and sorrows to be found in the minutia of a life. Just glorious.

Highly times a thousand recommended.

 

Books to distract you…

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When it comes to reading these days,  I am looking for books that are total page turners. I want to be entertained and distracted without it being too labour intensive…so I thought I would offer up a few titles that might fit the bill.

First off, I HIGHLY recommend everyone check out Thomas H. Cook. If you tend to read via kobo or kindle you can probably get a hold of his stuff and he’s definitely on Audible. Cook is mystery writer I discovered probably 20 years ago. Since that first book, Breakheart Hill, I have been a massive fan.

I recommend Master of the Delta, which is the story of young teacher who gets in way over his head with a student whose father is a serial killer.

Another great book by Cook is Instruments of the Night which is the story of a writer who is asked to imagine what might have happened to a young girl who disappeared 50 years ago. Paul is not without some demons of his own and it makes for white-knuckle reading.

But, really, no matter what you pick, it will be worth reading.

Another total page-turner is Peter Swanson’s book The Kind Worth Killing. It’s the storykindworth of a man and woman who meet by chance at Heathrow airport. Over a drink, the man reveals that he thinks that his wife is having an affair and he wants to kill her – which may be a bit of an extreme reaction, but there you go. The woman offers to help the man’s fantasy become a reality and the novel does not let up from there.

Lots of readers will be familiar with Gillian Flynn because of the massive success of Gone Girl, but I actually liked Dark Places better. It’s the story of Libby Day, an angry, damaged woman who survived the murders of her mother and two older sisters. Her older brother, Ben, has been in jail for the crime for the past 24 years. But did he actually do it?

Other writers who consistently deliver books with a pulse include Lisa Jewell  (I recently read The Family Upstairs and I couldn’t put it down) and Tim Johnston (Descent is one of the best books I’ve ever read.)

My-Sunshine-AwayOne last book you should add to your tbr pile is M.O. Walsh’s debut My Sunshine Away. This is a coming-of-age novel about a boy obsessed with a neighborhood girl who is raped. Readers will not be able to turn the pages of this book fast enough.

Moving away from the thrillers a little bit, but still talking about books that will immerse you in a world that is not this one, I may as well include a book about people who are trapped together in one place. In Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto, a group of people are at a gala in South America when terrorists storm the building and take everyone hostage. That’s the plot in a nutshell – but this book is SO much more than that. Riveting and heartbreaking and life affirming.

Another book that will drop you into another world is John Connolly’s masterful novel The Book of Lost Things which follows young David as he journeys  through a twisted fairy tale world in search of a way to rescue his mother from death’s clutches.

Finally, if you haven’t yet read Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng now would be the perfect time. This story about a family growing up in Ohio in the 1980s has it all: characters you want to hug, complicated relationships between parents and their children, siblings and spouses and a mystery. The book’s opening line is “Lydia is dead.” and it really doesn’t let up from there.

Let’s not forget young adult readers. As a teacher I would really be thrilled if my students would just spend 30 minutes a day reading. I know it’s not possible to visit the book store these days, but Bookoutlet.ca and Indigo both deliver. 🙂

Here are some awesome titles for your teen.

We Are Still Tornadoes  by Susan Mullen and Michael Kun The story follows besties Cath and Scott during the first year after high school. It’s 1982 and so way before technology, so the pair write letters back and forth. This is a feel-good novel that made me laugh out loud.

For fans of Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Grey and Salt to the Sea)  check out her latest novel The Fountains of Silence, which takes a look at Spain under Franco’s dictatorship. Sepetys is fantastic at making history and people come alive and this is a great step up for older teens.

If your teen hasn’t yet discovered Canadian YA writer Courtney Summers, now would be the perfect time. She’s written a terrific, page-turning zombie novel This Is Not a Test and her latest novel, Sadie, is a wonderful hybrid novel that follows a young woman on the hunt for her sister’s killer. There’s a podcast you can listen to, as well. I haven’t yet met a Courtney Summers novel I haven’t loved.

Finally,A Short History of the Girl Next Door  by Jared Reck is a beautiful coming -of-age story about a boy in love with the girl who lives across the cul de sac from him. They’ve been besties, nothing more, since they were little kids…and things are about to get complicated. This is a terrific book for anyone.

I know these are trying times…but a good book really can help pass the time, and I hope you’ve seen something here that makes you want to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Roanoke Girls – Amy Engel

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Sometimes I can’t resist the three for $10 bargains at Indigo. Just because a book finds its way onto the bargain shelves doesn’t mean it’s a dud. Case in point: My Sunshine Away  I managed to snag a handful of bargain copies for my classroom library and I was thrilled to be able to offer it as a choice for my grade 12 students this year. That is an amazing book.

RoanokeAnd then there’s The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel. Can’t remember when I bought it or how long it’s been languishing on my tbr shelf, but I started reading it and finished reading it in just a few hours because it has ALL THE THINGS I love in a book.  (Lots of other reviewers loved all the things, too, because this book received lots of well-deserved praise.)

Lane Roanoke is fifteen when a terrible tragedy brings her to small-town Kansas to live with her grandparents, Yates and Lillian, and her cousin, Allegra, who is also fifteen.  She knows very little about these people. Her mother left the family home as a teenager and never returned because her life there was a “nightmare.”

Lane is mesmerized by the family home

Roanoke had clearly started out as something resembling a traditional farmhouse – white clapboard, wraparound porch, peaked dormers. But someone had tacked on crazy additions over the years, a brick turret on one side, what looked like an entirely new stone house extending from the back, more white clapboard, newer and higher on the other side. It was like a handful of giant houses all smashed together with no regard for aesthetics or conformity. It was equal parts horrifying and mesmerizing.

The house is symbolic of the labyrinthine Roanoke secrets.

Her cousin Allegra is alternately  moody and loving, and Lane is never quite sure which version she’s going to get. Her grandmother is mostly distant. Her grandfather “was fiercely handsome. …If charisma was power, my grandfather was king.”

The Roanoke family has a long history of loss. Yates’s two sisters are gone, so are his daughters. Until Lane returns to Kansas, Allegra has been the only Roanoke girl. It is a special designation, Lane comes to discover.

The novel toggles back and forth between ‘Then’ (Lane’s fifteenth summer) and ‘Now’, which happens eleven years later when Lane gets the call that Allegra is missing. Yates begs Lane to return to Roanoke. Despite her reservations, the pull of family is strong and Lane finds herself back in Kansas. Her return puts her back in contact with Tommy, Allegra’s on again – off again teenage boyfriend, now a cop, and Cooper, “still the most beautiful person” Lane has ever seen. It’s a toxic mix and makes for absolutely riveting reading.

What happened to Allegra? What happened to all the Roanoke girls? That’s the central mystery in the book. Actually, you’ll learn  the what pretty early on and it’s an explosive family secret.

This book had all the things I loved: great writing, a compelling main character who is damaged, but fierce and smart, a never-ending air of menace and unease, a hot, broken guy and a lot of twists.

LOVED it.