Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock

4 minutes. 17 year-old Hadley Sullivan misses her flight to London by a mere 4 minutes. Though Hadley’s only very reluctantly flying out to attend her estranged father’s wedding to a woman she’s never met, she’s still not overly anxious about getting stuck at the airport and possibly being late to the wedding. And then she meets a boy. A British boy. And they just happen to be seated in the same row! So in the darkened cabin on their redeye flight, Hadley and Oliver banter charmingly and reveal deep thoughts and it’s basically a less pretentious YA version of Before Sunrise. But then they’re cruelly separated at customs and Hadley is left feeling more adrift than ever. Will Hadley and Oliver ever see each other again? Probably. It would be a real bummer if they didn’t.

Between the title, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight (Poppy/Little Brown 2012) and the description, I was intrigued but worried that this would devolve into some kind of Twu Luv soulmate nonsense. I love a good romance as much as the next … romance lover, but I hate it when YA characters (or real teenagers for that matter) declare their undying love and act like they’re destined to be together forever. Quite frankly, I thought this was ridiculous when I was a teenager and I’m the daughter of two people who’ve been together since the ninth grade. Thankfully, there was nothing of the sort. The jacket copy makes it seem like the story is all about the romance (and to be fair, so did my description. I’m lazy that way), but this book is really about connection, whether that be familial, friendly, or romantic connection. What happens when you first meet someone you click with or when you drift away from someone you were once close with? How do you repair that connection and what do you do when you realize it’s too late? The story was at times adorable and hopeful while at other times melancholy and contemplative, but that’s part of what I liked about.

The characters are all flawed but likeable and interesting, which is good since this book is more character driven than plot driven. Hadley could have very easily wandered into obnoxious, whiny teenager mode, but she is a grounded and sympathetic character. Oliver is the perfect YA dreamboat in that he’s charming without being smarmy and wounded without being damaged. Hadley’s parents also feel very real and I appreciated that the dad’s fiancé wasn’t some kind of evil home-wrecking stereotype.

This book is also well written and well paced. The story sure does move, especially when you consider that it’s mostly just people talking for 300 pages. There are hardly even any shenanigans! There’s also a great sense of atmosphere, from the intimacy of the plane at night to the jumbled confusion of London streets. And as someone who’s had a few panic attacks in her day and does NOT like crowds, I appreciated how sensitively Smith handled Hadley’s burgeoning claustrophobia.

YA has been all about the dystopias, paranormals, and fantasies recently, so it’s nice to read a straight-up contemporary story. The plot is pretty low stakes, after all nobody’s saving the world or anything, but there’s a lovely universal quality to Hadley’s journey that I think a lot of teens (or former teens) can relate to. In fact, lovely is just how I’d describe the book overall. Check it out, if that’s your thing. As for me, I’m already looking forward to author Jennifer E. Smith’s next book which sounds like a cross between Notting Hill and You’ve Got Mail. Who doesn’t want to read that?

This is what I automatically think of when I hear anything about 4 minutes. I cant help it!

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Apparently eye close-ups are really hot in YA covers right now.

The world of Nobody (Egmont 2013) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes is all about energy. I know that’s not the most enticing statement to start out with, but bear with me. See most people both give and receive energy with the world around them and it’s how people connect with one another. However there are some people, called nulls, who just take lots of energy while being incapable of giving any back to anyone. They tend to have lots of charisma and inspire slavish devotion while not giving a crap about anything other than themselves. So they’re all basically sociopaths and since they tend to do things like start cults and hack up women and bury them in their backyards, a secret society devoted to taking the nulls out has existed for hundreds of years. In order to fight the nulls when they get too out of hand, The Society (real creative name there) trains Nobodies to be assassins. Nobodies are on the opposite end of the spectrum from nulls, meaning they give out lots of energy but are incapable of receiving any. No one ever notices them, remembers them, or cares about them one way or the other. They are so unremarkable that they can even fade into nothingness, i.e. become invisible, go through solid objects, float, run real fast, etc. I didn’t really pay close attention in science classes and my physics teacher was kind of a nutcase, so I have no idea how much bullshit this concept really is, but just go with it.  Anyway, you can see how these kind of abilities would be advantageous for clandestine activities, but the Society’s training methods involve torture and emotional abuse, so you know they’re not on the up and up.

Got it? Ok, PLOT. 17 year-old Nix receives orders to kill a teenaged girl named Claire and is told that she’s a very dangerous null.  However he’s shocked when his target actually sees him and starts screaming bloody murder.  That’s never happened before! So naturally he becomes obsessed with her, saves her from other Society assassins because HE’S the only one who gets to kill her, kisses her, freaks out some more, and is generally very slow to realize that Claire can see him because she’s a Nobody too. Claire is so used to being ignored and forgotten, even by her own parents, that when a boy pays attention to her, even if that attention comes in the form of a threat to her personal safety, she’s intrigued. Nix realizes that if the Society lied to him about Claire, then they might have lied to him about some of his other targets and maybe he hasn’t been killing for noble reasons after all. Even though he instantly loves Claire, Nix vows to stay away from her because he’s an unworthy KILLER, ignoring the fact that he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Claire is heartbroken because she too fell instantly in love and Nix is the only one who gets her. If you’re seeing shades of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan here, you are not alone. Also, I get that 1) these are two emotionally abused and traumatized kids and 2) they’re hormonal teenagers so they’re predisposed to be all emo, but the first 1/3 of this book is sooooooooo melodramatic. There are lots of dramatic pronouncements and shaking fists at the heavens while shouting, “WHY?” It gets really repetitive and irritating after awhile.

Things pick up once they start focusing on the secret society conspiracy stuff. Claire and Nix know they’ll never be safe since The Society has all of their sensors (people who have a little something extra genetically that help them sense the nulls and nobodies) out looking for them, so they decide to unravel the society’s secrets and Take. Them. Down. They discover that the Society is trying to worm their way into the government and are developing dangerous drugs. Also, they are targeting Claire because they automatically kill any nobody that is discovered after the age of 5. Apparently after that, nobodies are a lot harder to brainwash and tend to balk at pesky things like murder.

So they happen to come across a group of sensors and Nix discovers he doesn’t have to kill after all, he can just injure them badly. It’s very heartwarming. One of these sensors also happens to be the one person in the whole organization who is sympathetic to their plight and wants to help them bring it all down, albeit on one condition. What a crazy, random, happenstance! I’m not going to spoil whether or not they’re successful, but I will say that there was a lot of cool action stuff that was then nearly ruined by a plot twist so ridiculous that I would have thrown the book down in disgust if I hadn’t already stopped caring.

I’m not going to lie, I mainly picked up this book because the plot description reminded me of the Buffy episode where Clea DuVall plays a girl who becomes invisible because no one pays attention to her and she starts terrorizing Cordelia and gets taken away by the government at the end to become an assassin. Unfortunately, the author took a less funny, more heavy-handed approach than Buffy did to the material, which made it a lot less enjoyable. Some of it might just be a personal taste thing and I did enjoy the action and conspiracy stuff, but overall the story was too overwrought and the plot relied too much on coincidences and short-cuts, to really hang together. I would recommend watching that episode of Buffy instead.

My, What Big Genetically Engineered Teeth You Have!

Warning: I will be spoiling plot points from Cinder, the first book in the series, with reckless abandon.

When we last saw our fair cyborg Cinderella, she had been thrown in jail after crashing Emperor Kai’s fancy ball. She was there to warn him that evil Moon Queen Levana planned on murdering him when/if they wed as a first step to world domination. Then while she’s waiting to be executed, Cinder learns that she’s actually the long-lost Princess Selene, the niece that Levana tried to get rid of by SETTING HER ON FIRE. Just in case you didn’t think she was evil enough. Because Cinder is the true heir to the Lunar throne, Levana wants her dead STAT, so Cinder resolves to break out of prison.

In Scarlet (Feiwel and Friends 2013), the second book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder uses her newly discovered Jedi Mind Trick powers to break out of prison. She takes her fellow prisoner, Captain Carswell Thorne, with her because he has a ship and he just happens to be there. More on him later. So the two of them along with Cinder’s beloved android, Iko (who’s salvaged personality chip is deposited in an unconventional vessel), become the most wanted fugitives on the planet. Queen Levana is furious about Cinder’s escape and threatens to declare war on Earth. Cinder is supposed to meet up with fellow Lunar refugee, Dr. Erland, in Africa, but she’s sick of having to follow other people’s orders and decides to track down the people who brought her to Earth in order to find out more about her past.

Halfway across the world we have Scarlet Benoit, a sassy French farm girl who’s beloved grandmother has suddenly gone missing. The police have closed the case, but Scarlet knows that her grandmother would never take off without telling her. When Scarlet’s suspicions that her grandmother has been kidnapped are confirmed, she enlists the help of Wolf, the new rough and tumble street fighter in town, to help rescue her grandmother. Along the way Scarlet learns shocking secrets about Wolf, her grandmother, and her own history. Scarlet and Cinder’s stories alternate throughout the novel until the two come together for an explosive and revelatory climax. But not in a dirty way.

Like rhymenocerous noted in her review of Cinder, none of the twists in Scarlet are particularly surprising if you have any familiarity with the source material or have ever read a dystopian novel. However, author Marissa Meyer’s execution of the story makes what could’ve been tired material feel fresh. The tight writing (even at 400+ pages), the quick pacing, and solid characterization make for a real page-turner. I was annoyed when I had to stop reading in order to do mundane things like go to the office.

Both Cinder and Scarlet make strong female main characters. I actually liked Cinder more in this one because she was a lot less victimy than in the first book. It’s not Meyer’s fault because original Cinderella is a pretty passive character in the first place, but in Scarlet, Cinder gets to take action and make choices about her own life. Scarlet comes close to “too stupid to live” territory at times (seriously, perhaps you should have a plan before rushing in to rescue your grandmother), but she’s also tough and not afraid to stand up for herself or others. Both characters are the damsels in distress at times, but they also take their turns doing the rescuing, which is awesome. My favorite character though was Captain Carswell Thorne because he’s one of my favorite types of characters: the charming rogue. He reminds me a bit of Han Solo, if Han Solo was a bit of a dandy. Seriously, Thorne was in solitary confinement because he had led the prison population in a soap rebellion. His skin is sensitive you know. I’ve heard he has a bigger part in the third book, which makes me happy.

Speaking of the third book, in addition to continuing the ongoing storylines, it’s supposed to be a retelling of Rapunzel and we have to wait until 2014 to read it. Booooooo!

To Catch a Thief

In Perfect Scoundrels (Disney/Hyperion 2013) by Ally Carter, teenage master thief, Kat Bishop, is left hanging (literally. There’s a zip line involved) in the middle of a job in Argentina when her boyfriend, billionaire W.W. Hale V, gets a call that changes everything. His beloved grandmother — the only family member who ever really understood him — has died and surprisingly left the whole Hale empire to him. Soon Hale is acting cold and distant and is sucked back into the world he was so desperate to run away from. Kat’s not sure how to help him, especially when she learns that his grandmother’s will might have been forged in a nefarious scheme to steal the Hale family fortune. To figure out what’s going on and stop the possible thief, Kat gathers her “family” (Gabrielle, Simon, the Bagshaws, Nick, Uncle Eddie, her dad, and more) to help save Hale’s. However, by saving her boyfriend’s company she could lose him to that fancy-pants world forever. It’s quite the dilemma.

As with the first 2.5 books in the series, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Perfect Scoundrels. I have a few minor quibbles (and one major one), but overall I really loved it.  Here are my somewhat scattered thoughts, in no particular order:

Five Reasons You Should Read & Watch The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Many moons ago (like, many MANY moons ago, wow is this post overdue), after Sword Mistress tracked down the one theater in Atlanta playing the movie, she and I, along with Captain Awesome and our friend M, went to see the must anticipated (at least by us) movie version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I remember reading this book when it first came out and loving it, but I hadn’t read it since. This is mostly due to the fact that I loaned it out to someone about ten years ago and never got it back. (FYI: Don’t be that person. Return books.) Happily, my local library had many copies, so I got to fall in love with these wonderful characters all over again.

(Another person you shouldn’t be? The person that passes up about fifteen perfectly good seats at Starbucks to come sit right next to me, the chick alone in the corner on her computer, and then proceed to have loud cell phone conversations. FIFTEEN OTHER SEATS.

Ahem. Sorry about that.)

This was going to be an analysis of how the book is awesome and the ways in which the movie did or did not stack up, but honestly, the movie was FANTASTIC. Seriously, one of the best book adaptations I’ve ever seen. It helped that the book is so short, meaning that there wasn’t much that needed to be cut. It also helped that author Stephen Chbosky was at the helm, both writing and directing it and pretty much making sure that his baby didn’t suffer in its transition to the big screen. The movie comes out on DVD on February 12 and the book is available pretty much everywhere, so here are five reasons why I think you need to pick up both and have yourself a Perks-fest.

1. The book is awesome. If you’ve never read the book, please go remedy that right now. It is one of the best books about life in high school I have ever read. For such a small book, Chbosky really digs into his three main characters and fleshes them out. It would be easy to shove many of the characters into the typical high school stereotypes, but Chbosky does an excellent job of sidestepping this and instead letting his little band of misfits shine as individuals. I won’t say too much about the story because if you’ve never read it, you really should go into it without knowing anything, but I promise it won’t be a book you forget.

2. The cast is awesome. Being the Harry Potter nerds fans that we are, we were beyond thrilled to see Emma Watson in her first post-Potter roll. I’ll admit that she was not the picture I had in my head of Sam, but she did an amazing job of capturing the character and making Sam her own. But as much as I love Emma, it was Logan Lerman as Charlie and Ezra Miller as Patrick who stole the show for me. Both were amazing, and made me fall in love with the characters of Charlie and Patrick even more than I originally was. Lerman captured Charlie’s shyness and complexity so perfectly – there was an underlying layer of tension in everything he did, and yet you could see his big heart shining through the whole time. And Miller as Patrick was equally outstanding, conveying both the character’s charm and pain beautifully.
3. The supporting cast is awesome. In particular, Mae Whitman was just perfect as Mary Elizabeth, balancing a fine line of keeping the character real and sympathetic while still making her annoying enough that you understand why she’s not the girl for Charlie. Also, PAUL RUDD.

4. This scene. How could you not want to watch this scene?? Also, ALL THE MUSIC EVER IN THIS MOVIE. But yeah, this little dance number is basically the standard to which I am now holding every high school dance scene in every high school movie until the end of time. (It also may have been one of the scenes where Captain A, who has been known to leave the room during particularly awkward moments on The Office, buried her face in her shirt because she was in the middle of the row and could not physically leave the theater. Which makes me love it even more.)

5. “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” Hands down, one of my favorite lines from any book EVER. Is there any line that more perfectly captures the feeling of being sixteen?

So go read it! And watch it! And then come back and we can talk about our feelings and sob together.

Battlestar Galactica: The Teen Years

If you know me, then you know that I love Battlestar Galactica, which would explain why I had so much fun reading Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011).

***SPOILERS BELOW***

So you have a spaceship filled with what is left of humanity in search of New Earth when ANOTHER spaceship randomly shows up, just like when the Pegasus found the Galactica and everyone was like, “What the frak?! More people?! Maybe they are Cylons…” and then Admiral Cain ruins EVERYTHING because everyone knows that Commander Adama should be running the show… except there are no Cylons in Glow and it is a woman named Mather that ruins everything.

The book starts with Waverly and Kieran hanging out on the Empyrean, discussing the sudden appearance of The New Horizon. According to the plan, two ships left Earth in search of New Earth since humanity had utterly ruined the first planet that had. Jerks. The New Horizon left first and was later followed by the Empyrean. There were light years of distance between the two ships, so The New Horizon had to slow down significantly in order for the Empyrean to ever catch up with them. Which made everyone realize that they had to be there for an important reason… dun Dun DUN.

There was something about the space travel that made all of them women infertile. After years of tests, the Empyrean figured out a solution and let the other ship in on their new found science. Except they didn’t. The captain was kind of a huge asshole and sent the wrong formula to the other ship and made all of the women permanently sterile. Not a smart move considering that they got so pissed off that they slowed down their ship and waited and plotted for YEARS in a nebula for the Empyrean to show up so that they could kill all of the adults and kidnap the girl children, abandon the boy children and then steal the girls eggs so that they could impregnate themselves. What the frak?! It is almost as bad as when Starbuck was captured by Cylons and they stole her eggs and then on top of that, she found out that they were basically using human women as incubators while they tried to create little Cylon babies.

The book alternated between Apollo, I mean Kieran, and Waverly as they try and survive on the two different ships. I was all there with Waverly’s story. She was fighting for her life, trying to save the other girls and keep them from getting brainwashed, all the while knowing that 18 women on the ship were pregnant with her babies and that some of the adults from her ship (her mother included) were on board if she could only find them! She is a strong female character who makes mistakes and is flawed, but is a fighter and kind of sarcastic, which I appreciate.

Kieran on the other had is kind of meh. I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t like him much either. He just is. His story line gets weird because he is clearly trying to make the best of an impossible situation, but ends up in the brig and they threaten to throw him out the air lock (why are people on spaceships always thrown in the brig? Are they Space Pirates?! And do spaceships ever have an airlock that is designated for throwing people out of it, because that seems to be the main form of punishment?!) because some huge asshole that we are supposed to feel sorry for, decides to take over and rule through fear and pain. Oh yeah, and there is supposed to be some kind of love triangle between violent jerk kid, boring teen and feisty girl. None of their actions made much sense to me. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but I usually found myself rushing to get to the next Waverly chapter.

I won’t give away any more of the story, but I would definitely recommend it to sci-fi fans. All in all, it is only missing Cylons. The second book in the series, Spark,  will be out July 17, 2012 and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

So You Think You Can Dance?

I really love the Busby Berkeley quality of the cover. Although it does look like a pattern of fungus before you notice the humans in there.

So I’m not going to lie, I bought Bunheads (Poppy 2011) by Sophie Flack because the plot summary made it sound exactly like Bitchy Maureen’s story from the cinematic opus, Center Stage. And give or take the bulimia and scary stage mom, it totally was!  For those of you not familiar with this dance masterpiece (and why the hell aren’t you?  To be honest, I judge you a little.  Get thee to Netflix!) the basic story goes like this: a young, ambitious ballet dancer, in this case Hannah Ward, is trying to climb the ranks of New York’s premiere ballet company when she meets a guy who makes her question her dreams. And though that last sentence makes it sound like Hannah is thinking of leaving ballet just for a guy (which is really a crappy reason to do anything), the boy is really just the catalyst for Hannah to reevaluate what she truly wants in life.

The fully realized ballet setting is the biggest strength of this novel. Flack peppers her world with just enough ballet terms and details to make you feel like you’re fully immersed in the world, without taking you out of the story because of the sheer amount of information.  I mean, you’ve read stories before where the author seems to be shoving all kinds of extraneous details into the narrative just to prove that he or she has done the research, right?  I find that quite irritating. But Flack, who is a former professional ballerina herself, really made me feel the pain, pressure, ambition, and joy that comes with the world of professional ballet.

Hannah is a great, three-dimensional main character.  She can occasionally come off as unlikable, but the story does such a good job of setting up why that is, that you still want to root for her.  The supporting characters however, are not so fleshed out.  There’s the megalomaniacal director, the cutthroat bitch, the drama queen, the wise veteran, etc.  The two love interests are similarly one dimensional (hey  it’s the artistic college boy vs. the rich, sophisticated playboy!), but since the story is really about Hannah’s relationship with ballet, at least we don’t get into TMBS territory.

I’ll admit that as a former dancer (although not even close to this level) I’m predisposed to like this story, but I think non-dancers could enjoy it as well. Bunheads is solidly written, briskly paced, and gives a nice peek into an oddly masochistic subculture.  Plus, it made me want to get up and dance. Or at least watch Center Stage again.

And now, for your pleasure, a ballet SO awesome that it can only take place outside of the space/time continuum:

Seriously, there’s no way any normal human being could make all of those hair and costume changes in that amount of time. And that’s what make it great.

Yet another tedious love triangle: Robin Hood edition

Yeah, she TOTALLY looks like a boy.

Like most people from my generation, my love of the Robin Hood myth began with the Disney cartoon. What’s not to like?  There’s a cheeky little fox in a feathered cap singing songs and robbing from the rich to give to the poor.  Since then, I’ve discovered that there are approximately 87,602 versions of Robin Hood floating around out there.  And while I’ve checked out a lot of these versions (Princess Consuela and I got sucked into the incredibly campy BBC show a few years ago.  Check it out if you ever want to see the shiniest armor that ever shined.), there’s also a sense there couldn’t possibly be any more ways that you could tell this story.  Enter Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen (Walker 2012).  It tells the Robin Hood myth from the point of Will Scarlet, who happens to be a girl in disguise.  Sold!

The plot is pretty typical Robin Hood, although the characters are all in their teens/early twenties.  Former nobleman Robin is the broody leader of his gang of outlaws.  There’s John Little, the frat boyish muscle, and Much the Miller, the everyman who lost his hand when he was caught poaching food for his family.  And then there’s Scarlet, aka Scar, the scrappy thief.  Robin’s gang is getting away with so much that the Sheriff of Nottingham brings in Guy of Gisbourne, a notorious Thief Taker and man from Scar’s mysterious past, to stop them.  This new dangerous foe, along with romantic tensions within the group, threaten to destroy the gang.

I think the concept behind the story is a great one, but I have more mixed feelings about the execution.  I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so I thought I’d just list out the things that I liked and disliked about the book.

LIKED:

• Scarlet is a strong, intelligent, and generous heroine. I also like that Scar is a badass knife-fighter, but has her limitations.  She’s naturally smaller than her opponents, so if they land a punch, she goes down hard.  But she’s so quick, that they hardly land a punch.
• Have I mentioned that I really love stories about thieves?  Particularly thieves that steal for noble reasons.  Because I do.
• In the author’s note, Gaughen talks about how there’s been a long tradition of writing women out of history and attributing their contributions to men and how the concept  behind Scarlet was born out of that idea.  Not that she insists this is actually what happened or whatever, but I love the idea of putting women back into their rightful place in history or historical fiction.
• Similarly, I’ve always been fascinated with stories like this that propose alternate perspectives to traditional tales or events.
• I’ve found Much to be really irritating in other Robin Hood incarnations, but he’s he’s really endearing in this one!  Who knew?
• I liked the tweaks that Gaughen made to the traditional Friar Tuck and Maid Marian roles.
• This kind of story ALWAYS has the unsuspecting girl who has a crush on the girl disguised as a boy, and this is no exception. I’m a fan.
• Every time they called her Scar, I thought of The Lion King and started singing Be Prepared in my head.  I’m ok with this.

DISLIKES:

• Kickass nature aside, Scarlet can be very whiny and clueless.  I also think she comes across as too young sometimes.  Yes, she’s only 18, but she’s 18 in medieval times (Not the restaurant, although that place rocks), which I’ve been led to believe that 18 year-olds were a lot more mature then than they are now, what with the shorter lifespan and all.
• And the other merry men, particularly Robin, treats her like a child sometimes.  I get that they would feel overprotective of the lady in their midst, but it rubbed my modern sensibilities the wrong way.
• The pacing is a little uneven.  There’s a bit too much moping around in the woods for my taste.
• This is completely subjective, but I’m not a fan of dialect in general, so I didn’t care for Scar’s low class, street thief manner of speaking.  I get that authors want to be authentic, but I find that kind of affected dialogue more distracting than helpful.
• I prefer my Robin Hoods to be saucy rather than emo, and this Robin Hood is definitely emo. Plus he’s kind of a dick.
• Must every YA book have a love triangle?  Is that really necessary?  And this isn’t even a very good one.  John’s feelings for Scar pop up out of nowhere and Robin clearly has romantic feelings for her, but doesn’t say anything and acts all slut-shamey when anyone else takes an interest in Scar.  Plus, a good love triangle only happens when you can see the heroine with either love interest.  Do we really think that anyone would choose John over Robin Hood?  He’s freaking Robin Hood!
• This is a little spoilery, but: “You called me a whore, Rob. You said awful things.” “Ah,” he said, and his hand took mine again, tight. “Hurting you is the best way I know to punish myself. And, despite that I’m not much proud of it, I can’t truly control myself when I see you even looking at John.” (p 284-285) WHAT THE HELL!  THIS IS A TERRIBLE THING TO PUT IN A YA BOOK.  OR ANY BOOK REALLY.

Scarlet isn’t a bad book by any means, but I couldn’t help being disappointed.  The concept is so fantastic, that I think my expectations were just too high.

And here’s my favorite moment from the BBC’s Robin Hood.  Go to 2:46 for the cheesiest moment in television history.

And this is for Princess Consuela. Go to minute 4:00 to see the shiniest suit of armor ever.

Furries and Killer Unicorns–What I’m Looking for in YA Fiction

Jacob Reckless is pretty pissed that his father has abandoned him, his mother, and younger brother.  Understandably so, since his mother is sick, and his brother is kind of a wuss and follows him around all the time.  Jacob is sure that he can find a clue in his father’s study that will help him understand—but finding a mirror that leads to another world wasn’t what he expected.

Paperback cover

We aren’t privy to the details of the next several years, but it’s safe to say that Jacob spends more time in the mirror than in his actual reality.  So it should come as no surprise to him when Will follows him through the mirror and into the fairytale world.  We haven’t learned much about either one of the characters at this point, but even so it’s pretty apparent that Will is a drip.   True to character, he gets seriously injured in about ten seconds.  And it’s not a good, normal injury, where you could just use some ace bandages.  Nope, Will has been fatally scratched by a Goyle—a race of men made out of stone.  Now, unless Jacob finds a cure (hint, there isn’t one) his brother will become a Goyle himself, forgetting his former life and living only to kill humans and mine precious rocks.

Meanwhile, the Goyle’s king, Kami’en, instructs his number one soldier, Hentzau, to find Will (obvi he doesn’t call him by his name).  Kami’en’s mistress, the Dark Fairy, dreamed that there was a human turning into a jade Goyle, who would make the king immortal.

Events are further complicated by the arrival of Will’s girlfriend, Clara, who somehow finds her way through the mirror.  Saddled with his useless-turning-to-stone brother, said bro’s gf, and his best friend, Fox (she is literally a fox, except for sometimes when she is a girl.  I picture her as sort of a Furry) Jacob leads a quest to find a cure for Will.  The best part of this book is the assortment of fairytale paraphernalia that creeps up.  In this world, Jacob is a treasure hunter, and he regularly goes on quests to find things like glass slippers or magic keys.  Funke embraces all that is macabre and disturbing about fairytales—the witches that eat children, the trees that will grab you if you get too close, or most terrifying, the Tailor, who’s hands are made of scissors and needles, and who makes his clothes from his victims skin.   The world beyond the mirror, is a magic world where everything can kill you (there are even killer unicorns, which I know my fellow bloggers here at Rampant are particularly fond of).

Hardcover edition: I'm glad they changed the cover--I would have never picked this up.

Jacob is single-minded in his task to reclaim his brother, even after Will turns completely Goyle and starts beating him up, or after Jacob is attacked by snakes or tortured by scorpions.  That kind of devotion is hard to find, especially when you are jonesing after your brother’s girl (I don’t understand why Jacob would choose a nurse over a shape-shifting fox, but then again, the fox might be thirteen, and Jacob might be thirty, the ages are never mentioned and the details in that department are a little too vague for me to decipher).  Regardless, Jacob manages to turn his brother back, and return him and Clara back to the mirror.  Unfortunately, in the next book, he better find a cure for himself, or he’ll die within the year.  Exciting!  Also, we find out that his father taught the Goyle most of what they know about engineering, weaponry, etc.    So I’m guessing that his father is still alive somewhere in this land and Jacob will meet him again.   Funke hasn’t revealed the sequel date or any info yet, so I’ll just have to wait.  And probably read a lot of Boxcar Children in the interim.

Clique. Click. Bang.*

17 year-old private eye Dalton Rev transfers to the cesspool known as Salt River High in order to solve the mystery of “The Body.”   Beyond that, I really don’t know how to succinctly summarize the plot of You Killed Wesley Payne (Little Brown 2011) by Sean Beaudoin.  Told in the style of hardboiled noir but set in the rough and tumble world of high school, I guess you could say that it’s The Maltese Falcon meets Mean Girls.  There’s a hardened private eye (Dalton), a femme fetale, corrupt cops, school officials on the take, and rival gangs (aka cliques) battling it out for control of Salt River High.  There are plot twists upon plot twists and nobody is who they seem.  Dun dun DUN!

I’m a big fan of both noir and YA (obviously) and I loooooved Veronica Mars so I was anxious to read this one.  And while I definitely enjoyed the book, I think I admired the execution of the concept more than I really loved the story.  The way Beaudoin employs the classic noir tropes in a high school setting is clever, but it also kept me from fully immersing myself in the story.  And the dialogue is so stylized and removed from our reality, that I found myself unable to relate to the characters and therefore I didn’t really care what happened to them.  That won’t bother some readers, but I find it necessary to really loving a book.

On the plus side, it’s an amusing tale and there’s a very funny glossary in the back matter that explains all of the slang and pop culture references used in the story.  Y’all, I had never realized what a fan of the funny glossary I am until I read this book.  I don’t know what that says about me.  Anyway, there’s also a clique chart that maps out the social hierarchy of Salt River High (The Balls are above the Scam Wows, in case you were wondering) and a sample chapter of Dalton’s favorite pulp detective series.  I love it when a book offers special features.

I’d recommend reading You Killed Wesley Payne just because it’s nice to read a YA that’s NOT a paranormal romance or a dystopian love triangle.   It’s also clever and funny, even if I ultimately found it emotionally unsatisfying.  And maybe it’ll inspire teens to pick up some Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler.  I’m all for that.

*This is the title of Chapter 19 of the book.  I’m not clever enough to come up with that on my own.