Tag Archives: YA

If He Had Been With Me – Laura Nowlin

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Several of the female students in my Young Adult Lit class have read and raved about Laura Nowlin’s debut novel If He Had Been With Me. They all told me that they bawled their eyes out and I do love a good tear-jerker, so I decided to give it a go.

Autumn and Finny have been best friends forever. Partly it has to do with the fact that their mothers are best friends, practically sisters. (In fact, the kids call each other’s mother aunt.) Partly it has to do with proximity; they live next door to each other.

Then, at the end of middle school the two, for reasons that are not really clear – but probably make sense to 12 years olds – the two stop speaking. In high school, Finny morphs into the most popular and beautiful guy in school and Autumn, ousted by the cheerleaders, finds herself sitting on the steps to nowhere with a group of outliers, one of whom, Jamie, ” a dark-haired Adonis, a Gothic prince” becomes her boyfriend.

The novel follows this cast of characters for all four years of high school, which seems like a bit much since they don’t really do anything. Jamie tries to convince Autumn to do the deed, but she puts him off. Her parents’ marriage falls apart. She and her mom continue to spend time with Finny and his mom even though it is AWKWARD. Finny starts dating Sylvie, a super popular girl. It’s all pretty melodramatic – kind of just like high school is.

We know from the very beginning that there is some sort of catastrophic accident and so we are hurtling (well, not really hurtling because this book is L-O-N-G) towards this event. I guess I can see how teenagers would find this story and this relationship between Finny and Autumn romantic and heart-breaking.

Sadly, it didn’t work for me. The book needed a really good editor, someone to tell Nowlin to strip away all the repetition. The main characters are tropey to the max: the manic pixie dream girl and the hot soccer star who shouldn’t love each other, but do love each other, but despite the fact that they have known each other their whole lives, can’t find the words to have a meaningful conversation. I didn’t particularly like Autumn, if I am being honest. Finny was a non-entity. Other characters were interchangeable and one-dimensional.

Apparently there’s a sequel where we see this whole story play out from other points of view. Why?

No tears were shed.

The Safest Lies – Megan Miranda

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Seventeen-year-old Kelsey and her mother live in a fortress of a house; it even has a safe room in the basement. Kelsey has always felt safe there and, in fact, “The black iron gates used to be [her] favorite thing about the house.” She acknowledges that her life isn’t like the lives of her classmates. For starters, her mother hasn’t left the house in 17 years. For another, she has to meet with Jan.

Seeing Jan was part of my mother’s deal to keep me. Jan was assigned by the state. I’ve come to rely on her, but I also don’t totally trust her, because she reports to someone else, who decides my fate. My mother relies on her even more, and trusts her even less.

Although previously homeschooled, Kelsey now attends high school and on her way home one day she has a car accident. Ryan, classmate and local volunteer firefighter, is first on the scene and “saves” her from certain death. His heroism lands the pair in the paper and that’s when Kelsey’s life starts to unravel.

She does something she shouldn’t and sneaks out of the house one night to see Ryan receive a medal for saving her life. When she returns home, she discovers the gate at the front unlocked, and when she makes her way inside, her mother is missing. It’s a big deal because, remember, mom hasn’t been outside in 17 years.

Megan Miranda’s YA thriller The Safest Lies is pretty much what you’d expect from a book of this type. A plucky heroine, a solid love interest, a couple red herrings, a mystery and enough action to propel the plot forward. I was pretty invested when there seemed to be stakes (who are the shadowy figures lurking around and I guess that safe room will come in handy after all, eh?) It doesn’t necessarily wrap up as satisfactorily or as believably as I might have hoped, but as a seasoned thriller reader, that’s to be expected.

Teens probably won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough.

Shattering Glass – Gail Giles

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Although Gail Giles is now a well-known name in the world of YA, she had to start somewhere and that somewhere was with her 2002 debut Shattering Glass.

Young Steward, so named due to a complicated family tree, narrates the story of what happens when his best friend, Rob, decides to elevate class doofus, Simon Glass, from zero to hero.

Simon was textbook geek. Skin like the underside of a toad and mushy fat. His pants were too short and his zipper gaped about an inch from the top. And his Fruit of the Looms rode up over his pants in back because he tucked his shirt into his tightey-whiteys. He had a plastic pocket protector, no joke, crammed with about a dozen pens and a calculator.

Rob is the most popular guy in their Texas high school. “He wore confidence like the rest of us wore favorite sweatshirts.” When he decides to make a bit of a project out of Simon, none of the members of their group including the handsome Bobster and star football player Coop raise an objection. Coop, in particular, seems to form an authentic relationship with Simon, but Young has a different view because “Simon Glass was easy to hate.” Young can’t say no to Rob though, although he does wonder why Rob is so eager to change Simon’s social standing.

The novel follows Simon’s gradual metamorphosis from nobody to somebody and how this act also changes the dynamic between the friends. It is clear from the beginning that something awful has happened. Each chapter begins with a short comment from some other secondary character, which allows readers to anticipate an event that the main narrative builds towards. Let’s just say that the book’s title is not merely figurative.

The book examines bro culture to a degree. Why do people follow others even when their conscience tells them they shouldn’t? Young is sympathetic, but also frustrating as he makes one bad choice after another. Even his decision at the novel’s expected but startling climax does nothing to redeem him.

Shattering Glass is a solid book. It’s well written and there’s lots to talk about.

Out of the Easy – Ruta Sepetys

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I have yet to meet a book by Ruta Sepetys (Salt to the Sea, The Fountains of Silence, Between Shades of Gray) that I haven’t liked.

Out of the Easy is the story of Josie Moraine, a just-turned-eighteen-year-old who lives in a little room over the book shop where she works with her BFF, Patrick, whose father owns the store. Josie has lives there since she was twelve. Josie’s mother, Louise, is a prostitute in the employ of Willie Woodley, a madam who owns a brothel on Conti Street. The story is set in the 1950s.

I saw her hand first, veiny and pale, draped over the arm of an upholstered wingback. […] The voice was thick and had mileage on it. Her platinum blond hair was pulled tight in a clasp engraved with the initials WW. The woman’s eyes, lined in charcoal, had wrinkles fringing out from the corners. Her lips were scarlet, but not bloody. She was pretty once.

Willie, gruff as she is, is more of a mother to Josie than Louise has ever been and although Josie loves her mother, she also recognizes that she is bad news and mostly they stay out of each other’s way.

More than anything, Josie wants to attend college. When she befriends right-side-of-the-tracks, Charlotte, it looks like realizing her dream and getting out of New Orleans might be in the cards for her. But nothing is ever as easy as it seems, especially when Josie finds herself in the crosshairs of Charlotte’s icky Uncle John and a local mob boss.

Out of the Easy is jam-packed with plot, but sacrifices nothing because of it. I was wholly invested in Josie’s story and I loved all the secondary characters, including Cokie, Willie’s driver; Jesse, a local mechanic; and Sweety, Dora, and Sadie, some of the women who work at Willie’s.

Josie is constantly reminded of the kindness of others and that sometimes our true family has less to do with biology than we think.

I very much enjoyed this book.

Coming Up For Air – Nicole B. Tyndall

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Nicole B. Tyndall’s 2020 YA debut Coming Up For Air was a pleasant surprise. In her acknowledgments, Tyndall said that the story had a piece of her heart.

It started as pages from my high school journal, and now, somehow, it’s a real book. And I want to say that I’m grateful for that sixteen-year-old girl who was brave enough to write down all the ways she hurt…

The story definitely has the ring of truth.

High school junior Hadley Butler lives with her parents and older twin siblings. Her besties, Becca and Ty, and her passion for photography keep her grounded and busy.

Then she meets superstar swimmer Braden Roberts. If the rumours are to be believed, Braden is a player and the advice Hadley’s sister offers is to stay away because “he’s friends with Wyatt [her ex], and from what [she’s] heard, he’s even worse than him.”

Turns out, though, the rumours are far from the truth. When Hadley is tasked to attend a swim meet, circumstances put Hadley and Braden in each other’s orbit and the rest is history.

The first part of the book, which takes place during junior year, allows us a window into the teens as their feelings for each other grow deeper. These are two nuanced and intelligent people and you can’t help but root for them as they navigate “first love.” And it’s all sweet and romantic until it’s not.

Braden is an elite swimmer hoping for a scholarship to college. Then he gets an injury. Hadley’s life is pretty perfect too, until her mother’s cancer makes a return visit. How will these obstacles impact Braden and Hadley? Well, that’s the path this book travels.

I really enjoyed this book. The first part was swoon-worthy, really, and the banter between Hadley and Braden was terrific. The second half of the book is definitely more serious, but it wasn’t over-wrought. I think Tyndall handled all of the drama with a great deal of care for her characters. What happens when you love someone, but can’t help them?

I don’t know if this author has written anything else, but I would definitely read it based on this book.

The Secret Year – Jennifer R. Hubbard

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Colten Morrissey has a secret and it’s a big one. For the past year, he and Julia Vernon have been hooking up, but no one knows about it because 1. Julia has a boyfriend and 2. “she lived up on Black Mountain Road, in a house that was five times as big” as Colt’s. Yeah, Colt’s not in Julia’s snack bracket at all. So at school, the two don’t even speak to each other or even acknowledge that they know each other. But outside of school

We’d meet on the banks of the river, clutch at each other in the backseat of her car, steam up her windows and write messages and jokes to each other in the fog on the glass, and argue about whether to turn on the A/C. Sometimes we swam in the river late at night when the water was black and no one could see us.

When Jennifer R. Hubbard’s YA novel The Secret Year opens, we learn that Julia is dead. Colt is trying to process this devastating loss and he has to do it privately. After her death, Julia’s brother, Michael, approaches him in the school cafeteria and as it turns out, he knew about his sister and Colt. Well, he found Julia’s journal and put the clues together. Now he wants Colt to have Julia’s notebook. It is both a blessing and a curse.

The Secret Year is sort of Romeo & Juliet, but without the angst (or the poetry) of the play. Sure, Colt and Julia have vastly different lives but that doesn’t seem to matter when they’re making out. And of course, because Julia is dead when the book opens we only ever see her through the eyes of other people and what she reveals about herself in the journal – which isn’t anything very deep, to be honest. Mostly it’s that she has to break up with her boyfriend and she has to do it soon, no, she’s going to do it this minute, but she never does. Truthfully, it’s hard to see what drew these two together other than hormones.

The Cemetery Boys – Heather Brewer

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Seventeen-year-old Stephen and his father have packed up their lives in Denver and moved to Spencer to live with Stephen’s taciturn grandmother. It’s the summer before Stephen’s senior year and Stephen isn’t happy about – well – anything. First of all, Spencer is a weird backwater, population 813. Secondly, they’ve left Stephen’s mother behind. Well, she’s been institutionalized. Stephen’s father is unemployed. Stephen’s grandmother is expecting a little help around the house in exchange for their room and board.

At the start of Heather Brewer’s YA novel The Cemetery Boys I was sure I was in for a fast-paced thrill ride.

My fingers were going numb, my bound wrists worn raw by the ropes, but I twisted again, hard this time. I pulled until my skin must have split, because I felt my palms grow wet, then sticky, with what I was pretty sure was my blood. The knots were tight, but I had to get loose. Those things were coming for me, I just knew it.

Those things, it turns out, are The Winged Ones, some supernatural entity that demand a human blood sacrifice every so often for the sake of the town’s prosperity. At first it just seems like some made up bull designed to scare newcomers, but when Stephen meets Devon and the other boys who hang out in “The Playground” aka the local cemetery, he discovers that Devon actually believes in The Winged Ones.

Then there’s Cara, Devon’s beautiful twin sister with whom Stephen experiences an insta-love connection. Not entirely believable.

Despite starting with a bang, The Cemetery Boys ends with a whimper. There is certainly something sort of Stepford-esque about the town and its inhabitants, but nothing really goes anywhere and the book is mostly about a bunch of teenaged boys getting together and drinking their asses off. Until it’s late in the day denouement that is relatively anticlimactic.

Just okay for me.

Wildman – J.C. Geiger

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Eighteen-year-old Lance Hendricks is on his way home after auditioning for a spot at a prestigious music school when his ’93 Buick breaks down. Lance is really anxious to get home to a party where he and his long-time girlfriend, Miriam, are finally going to do the deed, but his car is towed off and it looks like he’s going to be stranded in the middle of nowhere because he is not leaving his car behind. Not the car his father left for him.

J.C. Geiger’s YA novel Wildman is essentially the story of what happens when a person whose life is all figured out discovers that maybe that buttoned-up life isn’t the one he wants after all.

Lance takes a room at the Trainsong – a dumpy roadside motel – and heads over to The Float, the only spot for miles where someone can get something to eat (and drink, even if you are underage). There he meets Mason, Rocco, and Meebs. And Dakota.

She was watching him.

A girl in the darkness. In possession of perfect stillness. Her stillness made him stop, and because he stopped, it came. The feeling he’d been aching for. Toes in ice water. feathers up his calves. A hair-prickling, teeth rattling rush of a shiver so good it made his eyes sting.

As Lance waits for his car, he gets caught up in a world vastly different from his own. Lance was on the fast track to success: valedictorian of his graduating class, a full-ride scholarship, a summer internship at the bank. The future is all mapped out. Until he loses his way or, maybe, finds a different more appealing way.

I enjoyed my time with Lance and the people he meets on this journey. The book is well-written, often laugh-out-loud funny and asks some big questions at a pivotal time in a young person’s life.

In the Wild Light – Jeff Zentner

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Well, that’s three 5 star books for Jeff Zentner. There’s just something about the way he writes characters that breaks my heart and Cash Pruitt, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of In the Wild Light now joins the ranks of Dill (The Serpent King) and Carver (Goodbye Days) as one of my all-time favourites.

Cash lives with his Papaw and Mamaw in Sawyer, Tennessee. It’s a backwater town and Cash doesn’t imagine much of a future for himself even though it is a place he loves. His mother died of a drug overdose; he never knew his father, but his grandparents are just salt of the earth people.

Cash’s best friend is Delaney Doyle. They met at a support group for people with family members who are addicts. Delaney is a genius, and that’s not an overstatement. For Cash, tying to understand how her mind works “is like trying to form a coherent thought in a dream.”

When Delaney makes an important scientific discovery, it earns her a full ride at Middleford Academy, a fancy private school in Connecticut. Delaney has no reason to stay in Sawyer – and every reason to go – but she isn’t going without Cash. Cash isn’t sure he wants to leave his grandfather who has end stage emphysema.

Cash agrees to go with Delaney and it is a decision that changes his life. First of all, he makes friends with a Alex, a boy he meets on the rowing team. He develops a crush on Delaney’s roommate, Vi, and he takes a poetry class, and this experience (and the teacher, Dr. Adkins) blow his world wide open. She tells him:

“I have two intuitions about you. The first is that you’ve got in your hear that poetry has to be elaborate, and that’s what’s fueling your hesitancy.

[…]

Number two: that you’re someone who pays attention to the world around him.”

Dr. Adkins is not wrong. Cash notices everything: the way people smell, the way Delaney worries the skin on her thumbs, the way water looks. “Ever since I first became aware that the world contains mysteries and incomprehensible wonders, I’ve tried to live as a witness to them.”

In the Wild Light is a coming-of-age story about a kid who has had to grow up way too fast, who feels out of his depth, but who learns to trust himself. Like every Zentner book I’ve read, this one made me cry on more than one occasion.

Highly recommended.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth – Andrew Joseph White

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Andrew Joseph White (Hell Followed With Us) has written another amazing YA novel that feels especially timely given what is currently happening in the USA.

Sixteen-year-old Silas Bell, the protagonist in The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, wants to escape his future. In this version of 1883 London, the Speakers take what they want and what they want is to be married to violet-eyed girls. Except Silas isn’t a girl. That’s just biology. What he wants is to find a way to trick the system into giving him a spirit-work seal and then he hopes to slink off, and find a way to study medicine and become a doctor like his older brother, George.

But it all goes horribly wrong, and Silas is taken to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium, where the Headmaster and his wife turn young girls with “veil sickness” into women men will want to marry. Think conversion therapy, with ghosts. Because Braxton is haunted and as girls born with violet eyes have the ability to reach through the veil, it isn’t long before Silas realizes that something really horrible has been happening at the school.

Silas doesn’t have anyone to trust at Braxton’s, until she gets to know Edward Luckenbill, the young man to whom she is engaged. Is it just possible that Edward is not like the other men Silas has encountered?

You really only come to understand yourself by comparing other’s stories to yours; you find where things are the same, and where they’re not. … Its difficult when the story isn’t one the world wants to hear.

Silas is determined to find out what happened to some of the students that have gone missing, but it isn’t going to be easy and it’s definitely going to get bloody.

White has a remarkable imagination, but this book feels especially timely given the way the rights of marginalized people are being eroded. As Silas seeks to learn the truth about Braxton, he also comes into his own power and it is impossible not to root for him. If you haven’t yet discovered this author, I can highly recommend. You won’t read anything else like it.