Tag Archives: YA

Together We Rot – Skyla Arndt

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Wil Greene is on the hunt for her mother and she’s not getting too much help from Pine Point’s sheriff. She is convinced that her mother’s disappearance has something to do with Garden of Adam, a strange church deep in the woods. Her mom’s disappearance has thrown her life into turmoil: her father spends his days drinking and Wil has lost her best friend Elwood Clarke, who just happens to be the son of Garden of Adam’s pastor.

Told in alternating first person narratives, Skyla Arndt ‘s debut YA novel Together We Rot, has a lot going for it. Wil is fierce and, ultimately, fiercely loyal, and Elwood is trying to figure out how he fits into a world that was chosen for him. The demons in this book are both real and figurative.

When Elwood discovers what his father (and the church) have planned for his future, he runs away and ends up forming an alliance with Wil. In some ways, this is a fairly straightforward story about rebellion. Except, you know, for all the fantasy elements. I am not really a fantasy reader (and I keep saying that and yet I keep reading fantasy), but I did enjoy some aspects of this story – although I have to admit that I thought I was getting a cult story. And yes, there is a cult story here, but it’s all wrapped up in some very imaginative mythology that requires blood sacrifices.

Together We Rot is filled with descriptive writing. Wil describes the run-down motel where she lives with her dad:

The place feels especially haunted tonight– there’s a quiet sputtering somewhere, a faucet dripping, pipes creaking. Walls grown tired of holding their weight, floors shifting and crying beneath my feet. Shadows find their way in from outside. Wind slams at the door in violent gusts. The parking lots lights tear through the darkness, but beyond them the world has grown pitch-black.

Sometimes the description gets in the way of the pacing because, ultimately, this is a story about friends banding together to fight evil. Anyone who loves fantasy would likely love this book, but I think I need to give fantasy a rest for a bit.

The Do-Over – Lynn Painter

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High school junior Emilie Hornby runs her life like a CEO. Her outfits are planned. Her days are planned. Her relationship with Josh is planned to the point that she decides exactly when and how she will first tell him that she loves him: Valentine’s Day. She concedes that VD is a commercialized, Hallmark holiday, but she also believes in true love. 

But Emilie’s perfect Valentine’s Day scenario doesn’t go quite as planned. First of all, on the way to school she gets into a fender bender with her Chemistry lab partner Nick Stark, who doesn’t seem to know who she is. Then, when she gets to school, she and Josh don’t seem able to connect. When she does track him down, she discovers his sitting in the front seat of his car with the beautiful Macy. At home, she gets more bad news from her father. The whole day is a disaster. And even stranger, when she wakes up the next morning, it’s Valentine’s Day all over again. And the day after that it was another “been here, done that.”

Lynn Painter’s YA romance The Do-Over is a frothy confection of a novel and although I tend to like my romances more tart than sweet, I couldn’t help but fall in love with Emilie as she tries to find a way out of the time loop she seems stuck in.

Emilie has got her life buttoned down, and maybe that’s because some aspects of her life are complicated. But things go seriously off the rails when she and Nick (who is totally my kind of love-interest) start spending more time with each other and the results are swoon-worthy.

A YA romance worth your time.

When We Were Infinite – Kelly Loy Gilbert

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I read a lot of YA – especially during the school year. I started Kelly Loy Gilbert’s novel When We Were Infinite some time in May, but didn’t get around to finishing it because of all the craziness that happens at the end of the school year. I brought it home and finally got around to reading the second half of the book and I am so glad that I did because this is a superior YA book.

Beth, a talented violinist, lives in the Bay area with her Chinese-American mother. Her white father has moved out and Beth blames her mother. Her besties – Grace, Brandon, Sunny and Jason – are all Asian-American and also musicians. The five of them are part of the Bay Area Youth Symphony and are making plans to attend the same college after graduation.

There was so much the five of us had lived through together, so much we’d seen each other through. But in the whole long span of our history together, this was the most important thing my friends had done for me: erased that silence in my life. In the music and outside it, too, we could take all our discordant parts and raise them into a greater whole so that together, and only together, we were transcendent.

Beth is secretly in love with Jason and has been “for nearly as long as [she’d] known him.” That’s why, when she and Brandon witness an act of violence at Jason’s house, which ultimately needs to an even more shocking act, it sends Beth into a tailspin of worry.

Beth is telling this story from some point in the future, and the care with which she treats her younger self and her friends is lovely. It’s easy to look back at our younger selves and view the mistakes and missteps harshly, but Beth doesn’t do that. This book is really a love story: friendship and family and even our ability to love ourselves as much as anything else.

As an only child, and as a child of mixed ethnicity, Beth struggles with feeling as though she doesn’t really belong. She’s not white enough and she’s not Asian enough. Musically, perhaps she’s not good enough. Her conductor thinks she is and encourages her to apply to Julliard. Jason is first chair and clearly talented and he applies too, and when they both get auditions, they sneak off to NYC together.

This book is so beautifully written and so heartfelt and would speak to anyone who has ever felt ‘other’. Beth has a hard time articulating her feelings. I think she constantly feels as though she has to work harder than anyone else to be accepted and loved and perfect because if she’s not – maybe her friends will leave her just like her father did.

When We Were Infinite tackles some tough topics with sensitivity and I highly recommend it.

Dreaming Darkly – Caitlin Kittredge

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After her mother dies, seventeen-year-old Ivy Bloodgood is sent to Darkhaven, a small island off the coast of Maine, to live with her mother’s brother Simon. Ivy and her mother haven’t had the most stable of lives, moving from place to place and existing on what they could make reading tarot cards and stealing. Ivy isn’t sure life is going to be much better at Darkhaven, a place made “from granite blocks the size of Volkswagens”.

Ivy doesn’t know much about her mother’s family and when she arrives at Darkhaven she realizes she might not have known very much about her mother, either.

Why would my mother have left this behind? She was ruthless, and she loved money. I couldn’t believe poor-little-rich-girl syndrome have driven her out of this spectacular house and away from the credit cards and clothes and cars that came with a family like this. Never mind the inheritance.

Darkhaven isn’t a safe haven, though. Almost as soon as she arrives, Ivy begins having horrifying dreams of blood and violence. Then there’s the Ramseys, the only other family who lives on the island. There’s bad blood between the Ramseys and the Bloodgoods, but that doesn’t stop Ivy from spending time with Doyle Ramsey, the only person she feels like she can trust.

There’s a lot going on in Caitlin Kittredge’s YA novel Dreaming Darkly. As Ivy digs into her family history, she starts to discover that her mother had withheld more than just the size of the house she grew up in. Uncle Simon isn’t all that forthcoming with the family stories, either, and that just makes Ivy even more determined to get to the bottom of the family secrets. And there are lots of them.

While I did enjoy reading this book, I think it’s about 100 pages too long. The last 25 pages, as the secrets of Darkhaven are revealed, happen so quickly, you barely have time to get your feet underneath you. There were lots of moments in the middle that just slowed the narrative down and probably didn’t need to be there. There were also some instances where characters appeared only as a way to impart information to Ivy; they didn’t seem to serve any other purpose.

Still, if you like family secrets, a creepy location, and a plucky heroine then Dreaming Darkly might just be the book for you

Wilder – Andrew Simonet

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Jason Wilder is a high school senior who doesn’t actually attend classes. Instead, he spends his time in the Rubber Room…for his own protection.

Officially, it was In-School Suspension, but kids called it the Rubber Room. It wasn’t covered in rubber, but it was delinquent proof. […] The Rubber Room was set up to prevent tragedies like school shootings, or at least to make it look like you could prevent them.

Jason set a fire that hurt someone and now he’s a target. The thing about Jason is that he’s big and tough and, according to Meili, “a danger because [he] wants to be.”

Meili is in the Rubber Room because, according to the story that’s been passed around and likely exaggerated, she broke someone’s finger. She’s not afraid of Jason or his reputation for violence; she is fearless, mysterious, and just a tad crazy.

These are the characters in Andrew Simonet’s debut YA novel, Wilder.

Despite his propensity for violence, Jason is a sympathetic character. He has a distinctive voice and a troubling backstory. He lives alone; his mother and her boyfriend, Al, have moved to Florida, apparently to dry out. He lives in their crappy house existing on the little bit of money they send home to him. Because he is on probation for setting the fire, he can’t let anyone know that he lives alone. It’s not that hard to keep it a secret; Jason doesn’t really have any friends. Until Meili.

It is clear from early on in the story that something happens to Jason and Meili. Jason informs us

I have lots of time now to think about what happened. I’m straightening out how one thing led to the next, how I got drawn in, how things became inevitable.

Other people have their ideas, what should have happened, what I did and didn’t do. Meili has her version. This is my story, what it’s like inside my skin.

It is no wonder Jason and Meili are drawn to each other. It is also no wonder why things end up going horribly wrong.

I never want Meili – or anyone – to be so betrayed and broken. But if we’re gonna live in a world where that happens, I want this. I want her thrashing sobs and gut screams. I want to clench my body to hers and tumble. I want this velocity. I want my share.

Wilder is full of forward momentum. I found it a compelling read, by it’s definitely for mature readers. There is violence, lots of swearing and some fairly explicit sex.

Horrid – Katrina Leno

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There was a little girl 
Who had a little curl 
Right in the middle of her forehead. 
And when she was good, 
She was very, very good, 
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

You’re familiar with the nursery rhyme, right? Well, so is Katrina Leno and she puts it to excellent use in her YA horror novel Horrid. (And look at that fantastic cover!)

Jane and her mother, Ruthellen, have left their lives in Los Angeles and driven across country to Bells Hollow, Maine. Neither of them particularly want to be there, but they have no choice: they have no place else to go. Ruth’s has inherited North Manor, “a large colonial-style mansion with three gables at the front and four white columns supporting a white-railed balcony.” The issue is that the house is dilapidated and creepy, looking like “one big tetanus trap.” Still, Jane and her mother are hoping for a fresh start and a place to heal from their personal tragedy.

Ruth gets a job and Jane resumes her senior year, where she meets and befriends Susie and Alana. School is school and Jane doesn’t have any issues until she encounters Alana’s cousin, Melanie, who seems to dislike her on sight. Jane isn’t interested in drama and besides, Melanie has troubles of her own, including an older sister who is very ill.

North Manor’s reputation as the “creep house” is well-deserved. Lights come on before there is electricity. Jane sees a shadow in an upstairs room. Marbles roll across the floor. The smell of roses is so strong, Jane feels choked by it. There are sounds that Ruth says are just the house settling, but they sound like footsteps to Jane.

In all the usual ways, Horrid is a straight-up haunted house story. And an unsettling one, too. But there’s more going on in Leno’s book than just things that go bump in the night. Jane is tortured by her father’s death and her blind-rage temper, which only he seemed able to subdue. The house seems to exacerbate Jane’s anxiety and when she discovers a decade’s old secret, well things get really interesting.

I really enjoyed reading Horrid. Jane was a sympathetic character and the ending was not YA – all – is – well – in -the – world, which I actually really appreciated. Loads of fun.

We Weren’t Looking To Be Found – Stephanie Kuehn

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Stephanie Kuehn’s latest YA offering We Weren’t Looking To Be Found concerns the lives of Dani and Camila, two teenagers who end up as roommates at Peach Tree Hills, a live-in treatment facility for young women who suffer from addiction/mental health issues.

Dani comes from an affluent Dallas family. Her mother is a city councilor, about to make another re-election bid. Dani’s relationship with her mother is strained.

…leave it to Emmeline Rosemarie Washington to care more about our community than she cares about her only daughter’s happiness. But that’s par for the course around here, as is my insistence on ignoring her concerns. My mother only cares about the Black community so much as it can make her look good and boost her political clout…

Dani’s father is “clueless; he’s always griping about stuff like eating disorders and depression being these frivolous “white people problems””.

Dani deals with her messy life by not really dealing with it at all. Instead, she self-medicates with alcohol and the pills she steals from her parents’ medicine cabinet: Xanax, Adderall and Vicodin.

Camila comes from decidedly less affluent circumstances. She lives in Lamont, Georgia where “A foulness […] clings to our clothes, seeps into our skin, and haunts our dreams.” Her father is from Colombia and her mother is Mexican American and although she knows they love her, she doesn’t feel as though they understand her. What Camila wants more than anything is to attend Fieldbrook, a prestigious dance school in New Jersey. She’s auditioned twice before and failed to gain entry; she’s hoping this time will be different. And when it is different, and then her plans are kiboshed, Camila takes drastic measures.

When their lives go off the rails, Camila and Dani end up at Peach Tree Hills. Peach Tree Hills is “the best place for adolescent girls, especially girls of color. The staff is very diverse and sensitive to context and culture.” Neither girl wants to be there, but it is also clear that they have a lot to work through in order to become whole and healthy.

Kuehn is a clinical psychologist and it would probably be easy for this book to feel didactic, but it doesn’t. The professionals who work with the girls certainly sound authentic, but they don’t “instruct” the reader or the characters. More importantly, they aren’t able to wave a magic wand and fix these girls. Each of the main characters are a work in progress and the work is often messy and difficult. Often, it’s two steps forward and one step back.

I have read several other books by Kuehn (Charm & Strange, Complicit, Delicate Monsters, and When I Am Through With You) and each of those books had a sort of psychological suspense element. We Weren’t Looking To Be Found does have a teensy mystery, which I think is oversold in the book’s synopsis. The book really doesn’t need it anyway. Camila and Dani are engaging, and intelligent narrators (they take turns telling their story) and their journey to healing – while certainly not easy – is more than enough to keep readers engaged.

The Taking of Jake Livingston – Ryan Douglass

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Jake Livingston, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of Ryan Douglass’s debut novel The Taking of Jake Livingston, can see ghosts. Mostly ghosts are harmless, at least in Jake’s experience. They live inside death loops and can’t really interact with the world of the living.

There are several theories for why death loops happen. Mine is that the people who end up trapped just didn’t see it coming, so their minds got stuck in a glitch. As opposed to some people who did see it coming, because they brought it on themselves. Maybe ghosts who killed themselves get more autonomy when they cross over.

For Jake, an outsider and one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, real life is more problematic than what’s going on in the afterlife. His only friend is Grady, who is nothing more than a “long lasting accident,” and his single-mother is a pilot who is often away for two weeks at a time, leaving Jake at home alone with his older brother, Benji.

Then there’s Chad, the school bully and “one of those rugby dudes who can’t mind his own business. Chews his gum extra loud and throws his voice in your face when he speaks. Just to be heard.”

When the boy who lives next door to Jake, Matteo Mooney, turns up dead, Jake’s life gets more problematic than it already is. That’s because Jake knows who is responsible for killing Matteo. It’s Sawyer Doon, a student who had gunned down several students at Heritage High. Doon is unlike any ghost Jake has ever encountered; he can make things happen in the living world.

Douglass wisely allows readers a glimpse into Sawyer’s life by way of diary entries and by doing so he becomes less a malevolent ghost and more of a troubled teenager who is bullied and traumatized until he can’t take it anymore. While little glimpses into his life in no way excuse the violence he commits, at least they offer some explanation.

I can’t say that I really loved The Taking of Jake Livingston as far as reading experiences go. That said, Jake was an interesting character and I was really rooting for him as he started to make some new friends, one a potential romantic interest. I do think the book has insightful things about friendship, bullying, school violence and as it’s a debut, I would certainly say Douglass is a young author to watch out for.

Harrow Lake – Kat Ellis

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Lola Nox is the daughter of acclaimed horror film director Nolan Nox. It’s just been the two of them since Lola’s mother, Lorelei, disappeared without a trace. Lola likes to think that nothing can spook her, but one night she comes home and discovers her father lying in a pool of blood. As he recovers, Lola is sent to Harrow Lake to stay with her maternal grandmother.

Harrow Lake is where her parents met and also the place where Nolan filmed his most famous movie, Nightjar. It’s a weird town which depends on its celebrity for revenue, hosting a week-long festival each summer to give fans of the film the opportunity to check out the locations. The man who picks Lola up at the airport tells her to “never go into Harrow Lake woods on a moonless night, or the trees might mistake you for one of their own.”

All sorts of weird things start happening to Lola in Harrow Lake. First her suitcase disappears and she has to go around town dressed in the costumes her mother wore in the movie. There’s no cell service or working landline. The townsfolk are strange, although she does meet Cora and Carter, a brother and sister whose mother was once friends with Lorelei. If things are off-kilter for Lola, they’re even more wackadoodle for readers.

Harrow Lake is haunted by Mister Jitters. Cora tells Lola that

Mister Jitters lived alone out in the woods with no family, no friends – kind of an outcast nobody wanted to know unless they were in the market to buy what he was selling, you know? He hid his moonshine in the underground tunnels that run all around the lake, but he got caught in a cave-in when the land shifted in twenty-eight.

Apparently Mister Jitters survived by eating human flesh “so he started hunting for people to drag back to his lair to eat.” This legend is legitimized by the fact that every so often, people go missing in Harrow Lake.

There’s a lot going on in Kat Ellis’ book. Family drama and secrets, repressed memories, and imaginary friends who may not be all that imaginary are just a few of the elements that ramp up the tension. It’s a lot, I have to admit, and some of the time I wasn’t even sure I knew exactly what was going on. Lola is a character to root for, though, and the book is definitely a fun read if you are a fan if things that literally go bump in the night.

Watch Over Me – Nina LaCour

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Watch Over Me is quiet – which is exactly what I said about Nina LaCour’s book We Are Okay In this award winning YA novel, LaCour tells the story of eighteen-year-old Mila who has recently aged out of the foster care system, but is offered the opportunity to remake her life as an intern at a farm in Northern California. She’s told

“Quite a few people have turned it down. And some people haven’t known what they were getting into and it hasn’t worked out. You need to want it. It’s a farm. It’s in the middle of nowhere – to one side is the ocean and in every other direction is nothing but rocky hills and open land. It’s almost always foggy and cold and there’s no cell service and no town to shop in or meet people…”

The farm is owned by Terry and Julia, an older couple who have fostered dozens of young people including Nick Bancroft, a former resident who now interviews prospective residents and who tells her that the farm “becomes home if you let it.”

It sounds sort of perfect to Mila, though, a place to take a breath and think about what might happen next. She will be teaching a nine-year-old with a traumatic past and helping out with the farm’s booth at the local farmer’s market.

Once at the farm, she meets her fellow interns, Billy and Liz, and her new student, Lee, with whom she forms an immediate bond. Mila finds comfort in the farm’s structure and in Terry and Julia, who are patient and kind. There is a kind of magic in working hard and being with these people.

But there are also ghosts – figurative and literal.

The ghost hovered in place on the moonlit field. It lifted its arms to the sky and spun in a slow circle. A girl, I thought, by the way she moved. And, in spite of myself, I was mesmerized.

This is not the first ghost Mila has ever seen, and it’s not the only ghost on the property. But Watch Over Me isn’t a ghost story, per se. It is a story about one girl’s path to healing, the memories which haunt her, and finding a place to belong in the world. It’s a beautifully written book and, strangely, a page-turner, too. (Not that those two things are mutually exclusive.) And that cover!

Highly recommended.