The Party

My recent book club pick was a drama-filled novel full of questionable actions and unreliable narrators: The Party. 

The story is told by alternating between four characters.  Hannah is excited for her sixteenth birthday party and her leap into the popular crowd.  Her four friends show up, her mother lays down the rules, but the night doesn’t go as planned.  Hannah wakes her parents up in the middle of the night covered in blood, and one of her friends ends up in the hospital. This throws the parents into a tizzy of who to blame, and a lawsuit ensues.  We are thrown into a whirlwind of lies, coverups, and bullying, both with the teens and the parents.

This book took me awhile to read, which is odd.  The story was propelled forward at a good pace, but the bickering and lying just made me cringe. I guess I look at Hannah’s parents, whose marriage was perfect from the outside but rotting from the inside, and think of how sad it is to not trust and respect your counterpart.  None of the three adult narrators act like adults.  Hannah’s father is in trouble for using LSD and has a flirtation with one of Hannah’s friends.  Hannah’s mother is so focused on having the perfect family from the outside that she can’t tell that her relationship with her daughter is flawed (oh, and she’s also having a work flirtation).  The mother who is suing them is so angry she’s tossing aside her maimed daughter’s wishes and is vindictively suing Hannah’s family.  The most mature character is Hannah, and she’s the sixteen year old!  

I also saw the teen bullying situation from a different light.  Interacting with teens on a daily basis, I know how close to home this hits.  Kids have their phones literally attached to their hands all day.  They can easily communicate with each other in a positive and a negative way, and most do not understand the implications of saying or posting inappropriate things.  I guess this book was too real for me?  Too drama filled?  I don’t know what exactly, but something rubbed me wrong.

If you love binge watching Lifetime movies, this book could be a winner for you, but in my mind it felt a little over the top.

Maid to Match

I’ve already disclosed my love of a heartwarming love story (see this post) and my fascination with Gilded Age history (see this post).  So it’s no shocker that I found Deeanne Gist’s novel Maid to Match enjoyable.

First, it’s set at the Biltmore House around 1899, right after George Vanderbilt married Edith Stuyvesant.  Tillie, the main parlormaid, is vying for the position as Edith Vanderbilt’s lady’s maid.  Her mother’s been training her to be a lady’s maid for years and now that Edith’s French maid is leaving to go back home, this is her chance to prove she is dedicated to Biltmore and the Vanderbilt family over everything else.  

Secondly, the love story is just refreshing, nothing forward or explicit.  Mac decides to come look for a job at Biltmore to help out his younger siblings that are split up due to his parents’ deaths.  He doesn’t like the idea of dressing up and taking orders when he’s more used to the open mountain air, but he is committed to getting his family back together.  When Mac meets Tillie, sparks fly, but the house rules say you cannot be in a relationship with another worker in the main house and Tillie is fierce in her desire to improve her station.  Then they find a cause that could possibly unite them:  the local orphanage that is being run by a ruthless couple who looks pious on the outside but abuse the kids when no one’s looking.  

The last reason I liked this book was the Christian undertones.  It does show the sinful nature of men and the lust that comes from it (for women, drink, or power).  It doesn’t scream “Christian fiction” at first, but the way Tillie and Mac treat each other is very Biblical:  he respects her boundaries, they sacrifice for each other, and come together to fight for the kids at the orphanage.  Even when Mac is resigned by the fact that Tillie won’t leave her job for him, his response is prayer because he realizes that he can’t force her to change her mind, only God can create that sort of change.

All in all, it was a sweet read with enough conflict and romance to keep you interested but without all the cursing and premarital sex that seems to permeate from other romance books.  It leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling and illustrates a healthy couple resolving conflict.  Good job, Deeanne Gist!

Long Way Down: (Another) Book in Verse

As I talked about in my previous post, I love books in verse for many reasons.  I also have a fondness for Jason Reynolds and his writing style.  He has a clear point of view and knows his audience well.  If you want to read more reviews of his books, you can look HERE and HERE and HERE.

Long Way Down is a novel written in poetry, but there’s nothing light and cheerful about this book.  Will is devastated by his brother’s recent death.  He was shot in a drive-by, and now Will has decided to get revenge because that’s the way it is in his neighborhood.  The entire novel is set during the three minutes it takes for Will’s elevator in his apartment building to go from the seventh floor to the lobby.  While he’s contemplating what he’s going to do, he’s met at each floor by visitors from his past…who are dead.  One’s his best friend from growing up who died after getting shot on the playground.  Another is his uncle who died because someone wanted to take over his drug-dealing corner.  All the people try to talk Will through what he’s thinking of doing and the consequences of it.

This book was bone-chilling.  Coming from a suburban background where gun violence wasn’t anything to be worried about, it made you understand how people can get caught up into that vicious circle.  I liked how the book showed the consequences of violence and how it just leads to more violence.  Some of Will’s visitors are connected, and you clearly see how one person’s death lead to another person’s death because of retaliation and so forth.  The one thing that I wish is that the ending wasn’t quite as ambiguous.  It is left open ended as to what Will is going to do next:  go through with his plan to kill or not.  I feel like the author does leave a few clues and hints as to which way he’ll go, but younger kids may not pick up these inferences.

Even though this may seem like an easy book to read, because of the content I would have to recommend this one for high school and up.

Booked

Books in verse are so much fun for many reasons.  First, kids who don’t think they can read a “real book” because it has too many words on the page feel empowered.  I’ve had a few kids this year tell me that they really love reading now because of books like Booked and House Arrest (another middle grades novel written in verse).  Second, it shows kids that poetry doesn’t have to be boring…or rhyme…it just has to have a beat and rhythm to it.  Yes, sometimes it does rhyme and yes, it can showcase other literary elements like repetition, personification, metaphors, and imagery, but just knowing that poetry can come in lots of different visual forms is mind boggling to some kids.

Booked is about an 8th grader named Nick who is obsessed with soccer.  He plays on a competitive travel team, and they’ve been asked to play at a prestigious tournament in Dallas this year.  But as Nick is preparing for his big game he is hit by a bombshell:  his parents are going to “spend some time apart” and his mom is moving to Kentucky to restart her equestrian career.  Now Nick is left with his father, a linguistics professor who makes him study the dictionary every night.  Nick’s confused and angry, and the only thing that is getting him through the day is his best friend Coby, his eccentric school librarian Mac, and his crush on April.

This book is an easy read and very relatable for kids.  It does cover some hard issues, like divorce, bullying, and suicide (Nick posts a rap lyric online about how he feels and his parents see it as a cry for help, so they attend family therapy sessions to work out Nick’s feelings) but in an age-appropriate way.  Another great thing about the novel is the vocabulary.  Since Nick’s dad has verbomania (an extreme obsession with words) Nick knows and uses lots of interesting words, like pugilism, flummoxed, and sweven.  Even if the kid doesn’t know what they mean, there are footnotes to explain them with some choice descriptions from Nick.  I also like how the author incorporated some blackout poetry into this novel.  My only qualm was the ending.  It felt very rushed compared to the rest of the novel and not nearly as descriptive.  After such a good read, the ending was kind of a wash.

If you enjoy this book, you should also check out Kwame Alexander’s other books in verse:  The Crossover and Solo.  You will not be disappointed!  

Serafina and the Black Cloak

Those of you who know me know I love history, and one of the most interesting time periods (in my opinion) is the Gilded Age.  It was the time of opulence after the Civil War ended until the early 1900s.  It featured many famous surnames, like Carnegie, Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and more.  One of the best preserved examples of this time is the Biltmore House, and I had the wonderful opportunity to visit her this week.

Living rather close to Asheville, I’ve had a chance to visit a few times, but this was the first time visiting as an adult.  I could expound on the estates many details and innovations of the time (if you want a more detailed Gilded Age history, read The Last Castle: the Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home by Denise Kiernan or my personal favorite Empty Mansions: the Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.), but the main purpose for our trip was the hear the author Robert Beatty speak about his Serafina series.

Serafina and the Black Cloak is set at the Biltmore House in 1899.  Serafina’s father works on the many machines and hides Serafina in the subbasement of the house.  Serafina is different from other twelve year old girls.  She prefers being up at night, has heightened senses, and has golden eyes.  She knows she’s different from other children, but she doesn’t have any friends of her own to compare.  But when children start to turn up missing at Biltmore, Serafina knows she must find who’s to blame and stop them.  She enlists the help of Braeden, the Vanderbilt’s nephew that lives at the house with them, and together they try to track down the mysterious man in the Black Cloak who’s behind all the mischief.  

Currently there are three books in the series.  I was hesitant at first to like this book, but as it continued, it grew on me.  The first half of the book is slow.  We’re being introduced to Serafina and this world of the Vanderbilts, but it just seems to drag out a little too long.  I will have to say the vocabulary is wonderful, and it is an appropriate kids thriller book, spooky but not too spooky.

If you have upper elementary or middle school kids who like a good mystery, this could be the next book for you!

Leah on the Off Beat

Obviously, after I read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda I had to move on to Becky Albertalli’s newest Creekwood book, Leah on the Off Beat.

Set about a year after the first book ends, Leah and her group of friends (Simon, Bram, Nick, Abby, Anna, Morgan, and Daniel) are all seniors and with that comes some decisions, like where to go to school and what to do about prom.  Leah also has another decision to make:  whether to tell her friends she’s bi or not.  After Simon’s coming out the year before, she thinks it should be easy, but everything seems to be needlessly complicated.  For instance, Daniel’s on-again-off-again flirting, her recently tense friendship with Morgan and Anna, and her mother’s new boyfriend.  Everyone just assumes Leah’s solid and stoic behavior is normal, but underneath she’s a hot mess.  Now she has to work out her romantic feelings while also help her friend Nick through his recent heartbreak, especially when she may have feelings towards his ex.

Leah on the Off Beat has the same themes as Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, however, it lacked some of Simon’s charm.  Maybe because Simon is such a charismatic main character who wears his emotions on his sleeves and Leah is definitely inwardly focused, to the point where she misses friendly intentions from others.  Looking back at the first book, this book makes sense.  I can see Leah’s attitude as a cover for her true feelings and I love her independent spirit, even if she feels self-conscious most of the time.  The one part I had a hard time with was Abby’s sudden decision to come out as bi.  In my opinion, it seemed a little like a forced storyline instead of a natural romance.  I also felt like it ended very abruptly.  I needed a little more on the falling action side of the plot map to even out the drama (sorry, English teacher rant is over).  

Basically, if you love Simon’s story, you’ll also fall in love with Leah’s story.

*Make sure you mark your calendars for October 20th…Becky Albertelli is coming to Read Up Greenville this year!

Alex & Eliza

Having never seen Hamilton: the Musical, I’m viewing this story purely on its historical fiction merits.  That being said, it was slightly a let down.

Alex & Eliza follows the unlikely courtship between Alexander Hamilton, right-hand man to General George Washington, and Elizabeth Schuyler, an aristocratic girl with a well-known family name.  Alexander and Elizabeth first meet at a ball at the Schuyler’s house, but Alexander is an unwelcome guest since he just gave notice to Eliza’s father that he’s being court-martialed for dereliction of duty during battle.  At the ball, he meets Eliza and her two beautiful sisters, who promptly beat him down and snub his flirtations.  Fast forward two years, Elizabeth is now going to visit her aunt in Morristown and help with the war effort, the same city where General Washington is stationed for the winter.  Alex, who is still the aide-de-camp to Washington, purposefully bumps into Eliza again and kindles a friendship between the two that quickly grows into a romance.  But the Schuyler’s are out of money and are determined for their daughters to marry well, so Eliza is thrown into an engagement with another wealthy friend while Alex must decide if he’s worthy enough to fight for Eliza’s love.

As a lover of most historical fiction, I liked that the author kept true to the time period.  It was fascinating to see what passed as fashion in 1790, but the story itself seemed a little stilted and melodramatic.  I understand the attraction between the two characters:  they are both fiercely patriotic and independent thinkers.  But the action itself in the story seemed forced, somehow.  I can’t really put my finger on it, but about half-way through the novel, I started skimming the dialogue because the story lost it’s charm.  Maybe it was her older sister Angelica’s sharp remarks to degrade Eliza and her younger sister Peggy’s romantic choices.  Maybe it was her mother’s willingness to push her daughter into a loveless marriage to keep up the appearance of being rich.  I don’t know, but something turned me off to the story.

There are another two books in this series, so if you love Hamilton, you may want to give this one a try.

Books and Albums: A Perfect Pairing

Sometimes I find myself listening to the radio or a CD, and it will make my mind wander to a book.  It brings back memories of the characters and their stories just like songs bring back my own memories.  So here are some of the songs and books that go together in my mind.

The Maximum Ride series = Some Nights by fun.

Reasoning:  Just listen to the title song “Some Nights”…I dare you not to roll down the windows and pretend you’re flying with a drum beat like that.  I can almost picture Max and her flock of genetically mutated bird-kids (they’re 98% human, 2% bird) flying through their forrest house or swooping through the skyscrapers in NYC.  The whole CD itself has a playfulness to it but also a sense of perseverance that I always attribute to Max’s do-whatever-is-necessary attitude.

The Wingfeather Saga = Where Eyes Don’t Go by The Gray Havens

Reasoning:  I can see the entire six track CD fitting perfectly with the themes from Andrew Peterson’s novel collection.  The Wingfeather Saga is all about redemption and trying to do what is right for the people you love (Set in the fantasy land of Aerwiar, the Igiby children are trying to escape from the Fangs of Dang while trying to figure out their own confusing history).  The song “Where It Goes” is like Janner’s longing to find out who his father was.  “Silver” sings about a sailing adventure which I can see the Igiby family sailing over the Dark Sea of Darkness to lands unknown.  Even “Train Station” delivers a message of redemption and sacrifice that is clearly shown in the novels.  It’s almost like they were made together.

PS: I Like You = Only the Lonely by Colony House

Reasoning:  Colony House’s CD has an eclectic mix of sounds, just like Kasie West’s quirky main character Lily.  Their track “Cannot Do This Alone” talks about having someone who knows you and will keep you true, which is what Lily finds in her mysterious friend (she doodles a note on her desk and an unknown person responds, sparking a note-passing anonymous friendship).  The tension in the song “You & I” is similar to the tension between Lily and her school nemesis Cade.  The upbeat mix fits well with this YA read.

The Beauty that Remains = The Click by AJR

Reasoning:  This CD has depth.  There are drums, guitar, synthesizers, strings, piano, multiple overlaid vocals…there’s a lot of layers going on, which is exactly like the characters from this novel.  Autumn, Logan, and Shay have all lost someone close to them and are going through the grieving process.  Some songs pull at your heartstrings, like “Turning Out”, and make you feel the ache for something lost.  Some are more upbeat.  The one that I feel just captures the essence of the novel is “Sober Up.” The sound blends well, the strings accompaniment is simple yet pulsing, and the words are about longing to be known and pulled back into the world, to “want to feel something again,” which is the whole point of the story.

Carry On = Dream Your Life Away by Vance Joy

Okay, okay, okay…so I know what you’re thinking.  How can an alt-rock/folky sounding album fit with a gay magical romance story.  I didn’t get it at first either, but the last time I read Carry On, I started hearing Vance Joy in my head and it just worked.  It just sounds so longing and hopeful, from the starter track “Winds of Change” all the way through “Straight Into Your Arms,” which is how I feel the main characters felt with their unrequited love.  Especially the song “Mess Is Mine,” which is my personal favorite song from this album.  I just feel like it is just so Baz, “this mess was yours, now your mess is mine,” a perfectly beautiful combination.

Honestly, I’ll probably try to do this again because I loved writing this and expressing reasonings behind the songs.  You just never know what combinations will occur!  And I love that.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

So a little context:  I follow Angie Thomas on Instagram (the author of The Hate U Give) and I saw this picture (below) from Y'all West.  Come to find out she’s friends with Becky Albertalli, the author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and Thomas’s main character, Starr, is cousins with Bram, a character from Albertalli’s book.  So now I had to read it because 1) I really liked The Hate U Give and 2) I think it’s awesome when authors support and are friends with other authors.

I’d seen this book before, so I understood the premise before getting started.  Simon is a high schooler with a secret:  he’s gay.  The only person who knows is Blue, an anonymous friend he met through a school Tumblr account.  The problem is now Martin, another boy from his school, knows and is using this knowledge as blackmail to coerce Simon into matching him up with Simon’s friend Abby. Throughout this, he’s also trying to figure out who Blue could be and dealing with his friends’ love triangle (Leah likes Nick but Nick likes Abby).  It’s all very high school drama-ish. 

The movie Love, Simon is based on this novel, so I haven’t seen the movie yet to compare notes.  Overall, it’s a cute story.  The action of the story is pushed along at a good pace, the reveal at the end just makes you sigh and say, “I knew it!”  Basically, it’s your typical rom-com but with gay main characters.  I enjoyed it, but as you know from my review of The Wedding Date, I’m secretly in love with rom-coms.  Now, if only the library would hurry up and get me Leah on the Offbeat, Albertalli's newest book, I'll be happy...

Educated: A Memoir

This memoir is exquisitely told and very reminiscent of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.  Like in The Glass Castle, Tara Westover grew up on the edge of society to eccentric parents.  Both stories also contain stories of abuse, Walls with abject neglect on her parents part and Westover’s physical and mental abuse by her violent older brother.  Westover’s tales of growing up will stick with you long after the story is finished.

Educated is a well-told story about Tara Westover growing up on a mountain in rural Idaho.  Her parents did not believe in formal education and kept them out of public school and out of the public records (like Tara didn’t have a birth certificate until she was nine years old).  Her scrapping father used her and her six siblings as labor in the junkyard, and her herbalist mother kept them away from the doctors.  The story takes you from about the time when she was ten years old until her adult life after finishing college, the second of her siblings to do so.  Some of the stories are humorous, like traveling with her brother on his semi-truck route, but most make you want to sweep into the story and give Westover a huge hug and say, “You’re doing the best that you can.”  Like when her family crashes their car (twice) on the drive from Arizona to Idaho or when her older brother falls on his head at a construction site or when her father burns himself horrifically while welding gas tanks off junked cars.  

One great lesson to pull from this story is tenacity.  There are many times when Tara could have given up.  She could have decided algebra and trigonometry were too hard to learn instead of putting in hours and hours of practice.  She could have stayed home instead of going to Bob Jones University.  She could have dropped out when she ran out of money instead of letting her roommate talk her into applying for a government grant.  But she didn’t.  She pushed through, even when classes didn’t make sense, even when it would have been easier to pack up her things and go.  The fact that she persevered is amazing and well worth reading her book. 

My one warning is for people who've experienced the psychological warping of abuse.  At times it is hard to read because Tara spends years pushing past the abuse, and it shows the cycle of abuse in a calculated way.  It shows her older brother's manipulation of the situation and of his power over her, and his ability to turn the rest of the family against Tara and against reality.  Just warning you from the start that it does get heavy.

Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now

Full disclosure:  I got this book free*, and I probably wouldn’t have finished it except I promised to write a review about it.  Although the premise of the book is interesting, the storyline is haphazard and poorly executed.

Basically, Tiffany Sly—a Chicago native whose mother just died from cancer—is flying to California to live with her biological father who she just found out existed.  When she arrives—surprise!  She has four stepsisters—one who is the same age as her—and a white stepmother.  She’s now expected to follow the strict Stone Family Rules, like no internet on cell phones, no dating until you’re 18, joining their Jehovah’s Witness church, dressing up every night for dinner, and absolutely no befriending Marcus, the weird boy across the street who paints his face white.  Along with adjusting to her new family life, Tiffany is also processing another bombshell…her biological father might not be her father.  Another man, Xavier, met Tiffany at her mother’s funeral and claims that he’s her father.  In between worrying about her paternity, starting a new, swanky private school, and trying to make friends, Tiffany has her mind full.

Okay, so the main storyline is her figuring out her paternity, but there are so many side stories and conflicts piled into this novel.  It’s confusing.  It’s disjointed.  It’s…just not good.  For example, there are four side stories that were brought up but never resolved and have no relevance to the story—Tiffany’s unnecessary attraction to her thirty-year-old teacher, when Tiffany punched a kid at school and now the racist parents are threatening to sue,Tiffany’s failed attempt to be on the basketball team, and her near-death experience.  The only reason these would be included and not resolved would be if there was a sequel, but if that’s the case, why not just wait and add these later.  Sometimes it’s okay to add details and side stories to help further the plot, but these were almost like stand-alone stories and didn’t develop the story at all.

Also, this book dealt with lots of issues:  paternity rights, OCD and anxiety, premarital sex and the consequences of it, religion and debating the existence of God, racism, and Autism, just to name a few. It was just too much information and too little time spent developing it.

The only positive I could pull from this story was her friendship with Marcus, the kid who lives next door.  It starts with Marcus’s mother fixing Tiffany’s hair in exchange for Tiffany talking to Marcus.  From there, he soon becomes the only person Tiffany trusts and finds out he has a heart disease that could kill him at any point.  With Tiffany’s grief over her mother, she needs someone who understands death and can help her process her feelings.

This is definitely one novel you can skip.

*I received this book free from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe

At the start of this book, I wasn’t impressed with the narrator (especially his continuous cursing) and the storyline, but as I continued, it started to grow on me.

Cliff is a nobody at Happy Valley High School.  Everyone calls him Neanderthal because of his giant stature, and he receives the brunt of the verbal high school abuse, even after his older brother’s suicide.  Until one day Aaron Zimmerman, the most popular kid in school, gets into an accident leaving him in a coma.  When Aaron wakes up, he befriends Cliff and lets him in on a wild secret:  while he was in a coma, he saw God and He gave him a list of how to make Happy Valley High School a better place.  God also told him he would need Cliff’s help to succeed with the list.  Aaron and Cliff start an unlikely friendship that leads them through many trials, like how to help their grouchy English teacher like teaching again and standing up to the school's biggest bully (who’s almost as big as Cliff) and finding out the identity of the school hacker HAL.

Like I said, I wasn’t nearly as interested and invested in the characters at the start.  They seemed very stereotypical and one-sided, but as the story progresses you can see drastic changes in them.  The biggest changes are with Aaron and Cliff.  Aaron is the quarterback superstar of school but does stupid and mean things to people.  Cliff is self-depreciating and lacks confidence in himself, especially since his brother’s suicide a year earlier.  After Aaron’s coma and “meeting with God” he seeks Cliff out, apologizes for his previous behaviors, and asks for his help with his list from God.  Aaron still has to deal with his past actions—they don’t just *poof* go away—but that’s a good thing.  It shows teens they need to deal with their issues instead of trying to shake them away and ignore them.  As their friendship continues, Cliff realizes all the anger and hurt he’s holding inside towards his brother isn’t healthy and the best way to deal with it is share his memories with others.  Throughout the process of completing “the List”, he gains confidence to stand up and fight for what he thinks is right.

The only thing that hurt this book is the continual foul language.  Yeah, I know.  It’s there to make the characters sound “authentic” but seriously.  It was way over the top.  There are also lots of other sexual innuendos and comments made throughout the book, so just beware if you don’t want your teen to start talking like a crass potty-mouth.

I’d like to thank Net Galley for this advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review.