Tag Archives: YA

House of Hollow – Krystal Sutherland

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I can’t say that fantasy is one of the genres I gravitate towards. I’m not sure what it is about other-worldly fiction; I guess I just like my stories to be rooted in reality. But that doesn’t mean I never read them nor haven’t enjoyed some of the fantasies that I have read. I very much liked Empire of the Vampire; Starling House was slightly less successful for me. Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel House of Hollow lands squarely on the winner side for me.

Sisters Iris, Vivi and Grey are special.  Not only did something remarkable happen to them when they were children (all three disappeared from an Edinburgh street, only to reappear one month later with absolutely no memory of where they’d been), but now the two oldest sisters have fabulous careers in fashion and music, while the youngest, the narrator Iris, is just hoping to get through her last year of high school.

Everyone knew who we were. Everyone had heard our story. Everyone had their own theory about what had happened to us. My sisters used this to their advantage. They were very good at cultivating their own mystery like gardeners, coaxing the heady intrigue that ripened around them into the shape of their choosing. I simply followed in their wake, quiet and studious, always embarrassed by their attention.

Then, strange things start happening in the sisters’ lives. Iris sees a strange man “wearing a horned skull over his head” during her morning run. Then her eldest sister, Grey, disappears without a trace. When she and Vivi go to investigate, they discover a dead body in Grey’s apartment. And that’s not all.

House of Hollow is a breathless romp through a malevolent fairy tale world, but it is also a mystery (just what happened to these girls when they were younger) and a timeless tale of what sacrifices siblings might be willing to make for each other. The language is lush, the body horror just squicky enough and I had a great time reading it.

Seventeenth Summer – Maureen Daly

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Published in 1942, Seventeenth Summer was written while Maureen Daly was still in college. Although S.E. Hinton’s debut The Outsiders is often considered to be the first work of Young Adult fiction, a case can be made for Daly’s book as it has all the hallmarks of the genre.

Angie Morrow lives with her parents and sisters in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. As the summer begins, she locks eyes with Jack Duluth at McKnight’s, a drug store/soda bar, and thus begins a romantic summer.

I remember just how it was. I was standing by the drug counter waiting for the clerk. The sides of the booths in McKnight’s are rather high and in one, near the back, I could just see the top of someone’s head with a short crew cut sticking up. He must have been having a Coke, for he tore the wrapping off the end of his straws and blew in them so that the paper covering shot over the side of the booth. Then he stood up to see where it had landed. It was Jack. He looked over at me, smiled, and then sat down again.

Although Seventeenth Summer is tame by today’s standards, the young people in this book drink and smoke (pipes!) and make out, but there is something blissfully innocent about Angie’s account as she navigates her feelings for Jack, a handsome basketball player. Angie doesn’t think that’s she’s pretty enough or clever enough for Jack, but despite his initial swagger, Jack proves himself to be sweet and sincere.

Daly’s book is a sweet look at a time past, but it will surely resonate with anyone who has ever been young and in love.

Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things – Margie Fuston

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I was pretty sure Margie Fuston’s YA novel Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things would be right down my dark alley. First of all, she quotes Buffy the Vampire Slayer right out of the gate (crypt?) and anyone who knows me knows that Buffy and I are tight. I like vampires in general; they are my favourite fantasy creature (except for the sparkly ones).

Eighteen-year-old Victoria, the novel’s first person narrator, and her father have long-shared a love of vampires and have been planning a trip to New Orleans to try to find a real one because apparently they are real. About a decade ago a vampire proved his existence on national television for all the world to see, but then disappeared, and people have been looking for proof ever since.

Victoria’s dad won’t be going to New Orleans or anywhere for that matter because he has cancer and when the novel opens Victoria and her mother and sister learn that there is nothing more science can do for him. That’s when Victoria gets the crazy idea that she will travel to NOLA to find a vampire, convince him to turn her so that she can go home and turn her father so that he will live forever. As far as plans go it’s nuts, but we’ll park that.

Victoria doesn’t go alone. Her former best friend (and maybe something more if they hadn’t both freaked out a little) Henry tags along. Victoria has all the research done, so she at least has a plan and sooner than you can say Count Dracula, they have met Nicholas, who promises her eternal life if she completes a series of tasks designed to test whether she really wants to live forever.

Nicholas is enigmatic – and also hot – and Victoria risks her friendship (and maybe something more with Henry) by playing Nicholas’s game, but she is desperate to save her father. He’s her person.

There’s lots to like about this book. I loved the setting. New Orleans, famous haunt of vampires thanks, in part, to Anne Rice, is a place I have always wanted to visit. Vampires? Win win. For the me the problem is with Victoria herself. I get that she is trying to hold in all of her emotions; I understand the lengths she will go to to potentially save her father. I even forgive the wild emotional outbursts. But I often found her selfish and shrill and by the end she was really getting on my nerves. That said, I think anyone who has ever lost a loved one will totally feel the emotional punch in the gut this book offers.

Ultimately, Victoria learns Buffy’s most important lesson: “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live.” 

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.

The Darkest Corners – Kara Thomas

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Eighteen-year-old Tessa is returning to her childhood hometown of Fayette, Pennsylvania to visit her incarcerated father who is dying of cancer. This isn’t the only reunion she’s facing. When she moved to Florida to live with her grandmother, she left behind her best friend Callie and the trauma of having to testify in a murder trial. She and Callie are estranged now, which makes the fact that she is going to be staying with Callie and her parents slightly uncomfortable.

Home is both different and the same. There’s a reminder around every corner of the summer when she was nine and Callie’s cousin Lori was murdered. She and Callie were material witnesses in the trial that put Wyatt Stokes behind bars, not only for Lori’s murder but for a string of other homicides. Not long after she lands back in Fayette, another girl is killed and it’s impossible not to see the similarities between this girl and all those who came before. But how is it possible, when Wyatt Stokes is behind bars? Things just don’t add up and so Tessa (and eventually Callie) start to dig into their memories of what happened that long ago summer.

The Darkest Corners is a fun read, but it’s definitely better if you read it in one or two sittings because there is a lot going on and a lot of character names to keep track of. Some of these characters have very little to do and are not much more than names on a page. They drive a certain part of the plot and are dropped like hot potatoes. Other characters, like Tessa and Callie, are more rounded. The last fifty pages – although perhaps not all that believable – flew by.

Mostly though, it was a good time.

In the Path of Falling Objects -Andrew Smith

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Jonah, 16, and Simon, 14, have left their home and are heading to Arizona to find their older brother, Matt, whom they hope will have returned from the Vietnam War and will be waiting for them. They’ve got nothing but the clothes on their backs, a crumpled ten dollar bill, Matt’s letters to Jonah, Jonah’s notebook, and a loaded pistol.

The brothers are at odds with each other, but that’s because Jonah is trying to honour Matt’s wishes that he look after Simon and Simon clearly doesn’t want to be looked after. They have a brother’s code though and it turns out, they’re going to need it.

When the1940 black Lincoln Cabriolet passes them, Jonah knew “It was as out of place in the dessert as a sailboat would have been, and it was the kind of car you knew had to carry stories with it, but I had no intention of finding out what those stories told.”

The driver, Mitch, and his passenger, Lilly, stop for the boys and thus begins their nightmare.

I felt like I was being swept along by something that had already gone too far. I knew I didn’t like Mitch from the moment I saw him, but there was something about that girl…

From the moment the boys get in the car, it is clear that Mitch is nuts. (Well, readers will know that from the book’s very first page.) The novel is almost unbearably suspenseful as we are swept along across the desert. Is Lilly Mitch’s girlfriend? Prisoner? Is she manipulating Mitch or the boys? I was so concerned for their safety.

Interspersed with their “adventure”, we read Matt’s letters to Jonah, which are filled with the horrors he is experiencing in Vietnam, a notoriously brutal and unforgiving conflict.

Andrew Smith has written a compelling, brutal, nail-biting story about survival, brothers and the horrors to be found at war and right here at home. I loved it.

The History of Jane Doe – Michael Belanger

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Raymond Green and his best friend Simon Blackburn aren’t really part of the in crowd at their Connecticut high school. In fact, they’re not really part of any crowd at all. Ray is a history nerd and Simon’s “not really a nerd at all. […] His nerdiest attribute would have to be his love of vampire fiction.” Ray and Simon have been best friends since middle school and their lives have been pretty closed off from the rest of the world that is until Jane Doe moves to their hometown from Brooklyn.

Michael Belanger’s debut YA novel The History of Jane Doe is Ray’s story of his junior year and how Jane’s arrival changes his life forever.

…I should tell you that everything I am about to write is true. It’s not one of those made-up stories that has morals and plot devices and well-crafted metaphors. History doesn’t have room for all that. Facts are facts, whether you like them or not. I’m only changing one name: hers. It just didn’t feel right to use her real name, so I’m calling her Jane, as in Jane Doe.

Ray’s story focuses on the “Before” and “After” and it won’t be difficult for readers to figure out the event to which the “After” is referring. The joy in this story comes from the characters themselves. Watching Ray try to connect with Jane because he’d “always operated under the assumption that the less [he] spoke, the better” when it came to talking to girls is a delight. In fact, across the board the dialogue in this book is terrific. I often laughed out loud or snickered. The book is reminiscent of John Green’s Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska – and I mean that as a compliment.

This is also a book that tackles some pretty weighty subjects including mental health issues and depression, the breakdown of a family (Ray’s father has buggered off to Florida) and social isolation. Anyone who has ever experienced life’s trials would certainly recognize themselves in these pages.

I loved spending time with these characters and highly recommend this book.

The Realm of Possibility – David Levithan

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It won’t really be possible to review the “story” found in David Levithan’s (Every Day) novel-in-verse The Realm of Possibility because this isn’t really a straightforward, linear narrative. Instead it captures the voices of twenty different students who attend the same high school. Some of the poems tell stories which overlap, some recount the same incident from different perspectives. These are stories of friendship, unrequited love, isolation and family, eating disorders and sex. You know – the sorts of things that occupy high school students and will likely be relatable.

Personally, I had a hard time trying to connect the dots until I figured out that it didn’t really matter if I knew who was who and how or even if they were connected to the other narratives. Some of the poems definitely worked a little bit better for me. I really enjoyed “Tinder Hearts” which is the story of one girl’s relationship with food and her boyfriend.

at the mall
elizabeth says
is that all
you’re eating?
and i tell her
i’m having dinner
later and she says,
mary, it’s nine,
and i tell her
i’m okay and
she says that
wasn’t my
question and
i say you know
it was and she
says that’s true.
i just wanted
to see if you
knew it,
too.

I was also pretty invested in Jed and Daniel’s relationship, which bookend all the other poems and where Jed admits that “You think you know your possibilities,/ Then other people come into your life/ and suddenly there are so many more.”

I do think that thoughtful young adults will recognize many of these characters and care a lot less about trying to put these poems into some sort of coherent order. I don’t think it matters all that much to understand who is who and how or even if they are connected. Adolescence is a messy, fraught and occasionally magnificent period on our lives and Levithan’s book captures that beautifully.

You’d Be Mine – Erin Hahn

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Eighteen-year-old Clay Coolidge is country music’s biggest star. He’s also country music’s biggest asshole. Annie Mathers’ parents were country music royalty and she’s pretty talented in her own right. When Clay gets himself into another mess, his record label insists that he convince Annie and her band (cousin Kacey and best friend Jason) to join Clay on his tour. The record label wants Annie bad and they figure Clay is their best chance to get her. Not 100% sure why.

Anyway, that’s the set up of Erin Hahn’s YA (or is it New Adult – nah, not spicy enough for that) novel You’d Be Mine. Annie knows who Clay is, of course. There’s not a teenage girl in America who doesn’t know who he is and Annie herself had seen him in concert when she was fifteen and his “honey accent and swooping hair” had left its mark not just on her but “on every teenage girl in the audience.”

In real life, though, Clay is a bit of a jerk. Not always, of course because we’re supposed to root for these two crazy kids to get together. The thing is, they both have tragic backstories: Clay lost his older brother and grandfather and he hasn’t really had the time or inclination to process the loss and Annie’s parents have left her with a legacy she hasn’t quite figured out how to live with. She asks Clay

“Did you know the Late Night duet with my mom was the most-viewed episode of all time? I was six. I thought Willie Nelson was my grandpa until I was ten. I knew the words to “Coal Miner’s Daughter” before I learned my alphabet. My freaking birth announcement was on the cover of People magazine’s country music issue.”

These two talented young adults are damaged, for sure. They also have crazy chemistry which their fans see and they can’t really ignore, try as they might. Clay does things to Annie’s “lady parts” that are hard for her to ignore even though she has zero real experience in this department. I know, eh? Likewise, Clay is smitten with Annie’s undeniable talent and kindness and beauty.

They’re a match made in heaven, but first they have to navigate the troubled waters of their pasts and figure out how to be happy in their own skins. Sounds like a great country song.

Keep This To Yourself – Tom Ryan

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Mac Bell and his friends are marking the occasion of their high school graduation and the anniversary of the death of their best friend, Connor, by digging up the time capsule they’d buried as kids when Tom Ryan’s YA mystery Keep This To Yourself opens. Although they’ve tried to move on with their lives, it hasn’t been easy. Connor was the last victim in a series of killings that have remained unsolved and Mac, in particular, is having a hard time letting go.

Connor.

Seventeen. Tall and good-looking. Always smiling. Loved by everyone. The kind of guy that adults liked to say had “a bright future ahead of him.”

One of my very best friends since childhood. One of my only friends, if I’m being honest.

Mac wonders if he might not have been a little bit in love with Connor, too. Maybe that’s why, when he discovers a note tucked into a comic book (the two had been swapping comic books forever), he knows that Connor is reaching out to him from beyond the grave, asking for Mac’s help in bringing the killer to justice.

Ryan’s book is set in the tiny coastal town of Camera Cove, a place where everyone knows everyone– which means that everyone is a suspect. As Mac begins following the cold case, he meets Quinn, cousin of one of the other victims. There’s an immediate attraction between the two young men, and Quinn is as anxious as Mac to crack this cold case open once and for all, so they band together to try and find a connection between the victims or anything else the authorities might have missed.

Keep This To Yourself is a straightforward YA mystery with a smart and likeable narrator and some clever twists. This is not my first book by this author (I Hope You’re Listening), and it certainly won’t be my last.