Justin Barisich

YA FictionYA

Relationships bound up in love

Review by Justin Barisich

BookPage Teen Top Pick, March 2017

Set in the modern-day border town of El Paso, Texas, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life boldly shows the resilient humanity of three high school seniors—sharing their confusions, heartbreaks and thoughtfulness—as they grow to learn that “normal” is a term with far more than one definition.

Salvador is the caring, adopted, white son of an unmarried -Mexican-American man—a famous artist who is openly gay in a Southern town. Samantha is the sassy and smart Mexican-American girl from down the street whom Sal has loved as a sister for as long as he can remember. But Sam’s mother drinks too much, falls in love with the wrong kind of men and fights viciously with her daughter nearly every day. Fito is the gay kid at school who’s determined to graduate, save enough money to go to college and move away. He’s one of the smartest, kindest and hardest working kids at school, but he has never realized it because his drug-addicted mother and abusive family would never let him believe it.

As life toys with Sal, Sam and Fito throughout their senior year, they learn to lean on one another, pick up the pieces and face the world again—and that just might be enough for them to make it through and build a “normal” that’s all their own.

Following his multiple award-winning Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s fifth YA novel is yet another outstanding work of literature in a lauded career. In this noble portrait of a group of friends and their questioning minds, Sáenz has crafted characters so memorable that they’ll remain with you—and inspire you—for a lifetime.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Benjamin Alire Sáenz for The Inexplicable Logic of My Life.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set in the modern-day border town of El Paso, Texas, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life boldly shows the resilient humanity of three high school seniors—sharing their confusions, heartbreaks and thoughtfulness—as they grow to learn that “normal” is a term with far more than one definition.

YA FictionYA

My brother’s keeper

Review by Justin Barisich

BookPage Teen Top Pick, January 2017

Julian and Adam are friends turned brothers by way of tragedy. Though years apart in age and on opposite ends of the personality spectrum, the boys bond over their shared disabilities, their respect for one another’s differences and the fact that they save each other’s lives—more than once.

Adam is a charismatic high school senior with ADHD. Julian is his shy and sweet former foster brother, an incoming freshman with dyslexia. Prior to the start of school, the last time they’d seen each other was five years ago, when Julian’s parents died in a sudden and horrific car accident. Back then, Adam cared for Julian like an older, patient brother, helping him cope with his tragic loss. That was until Julian’s uncle showed up out of nowhere and ripped him from the safe and healthy life he’d had with his foster family. Julian’s strict uncle has no patience for his “odd” behavior, his quietness or his appreciation for children’s books. And even though everything looks fine to outsiders, all of Julian’s pain is boxed up and pushed beneath the surface. When Adam finally begins to notice the signs, it falls to him to save the sensitive Julian from a dangerous home.

Debut author Robin Roe drew from experiences counseling and mentoring at-risk teens to create A List of Cages. In the same vein as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this is a raw and eye-opening story, destined to spark important and necessary conversations.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Robin Roe for A List of Cages.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Julian and Adam are friends turned brothers by way of tragedy. Though years apart in age and on opposite ends of the personality spectrum, the boys bond over their shared disabilities, their respect for one another’s differences and the fact that they save each other’s lives—more than once.

YA FictionYA

Adrenaline-charged social activism in Baltimore

Review by Justin Barisich

Set in modern-day Baltimore and steeped in the racial inequalities and police brutalities that have long plagued the city, AIR is the story of an unlikely hero who discovers himself, his inner peace and his truest power through high-octane sports, used as a unique form of civil disobedience.

Grey Monroe is 17 years old when his father murders his mother in their Colorado home, and soon after her funeral, his family splits him up from his younger siblings and sends him to live with his aunt in Baltimore. Days later, Grey befriends Akil Williams, a secretive teen who lives nearby with dirt bikes in his den. That same night, Akil convinces Grey to take a wild ride with him through the streets of downtown Baltimore, and from then on, Grey is absolutely hooked on the freedom and adrenaline the bike brings.

On a later ride, Grey and Akil end up saving Kurtis—an internet-famous, motorsports daredevil who blurs the lines between social activism and criminal behavior—during one of his stunts. The three teens grow closer, but when Akil is run down by a vindictive police officer, something shifts inside Grey, and he becomes an urban rebel with a bigger cause than he ever could have imagined.

In AIR, author Ryan Gattis (of All Involved critical acclaim) once again captures the pulse and plights of America’s urban youth, particularly those trying to survive in black and brown bodies. Crucially, his characters are more than just caricatures, and they must do anything they can to fight an establishment that seeks to eliminate them under the guise of safety—despite whatever freedoms, or however many breaths, it may steal from them.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Set in modern-day Baltimore and steeped in the racial inequalities and police brutalities that have long plagued the city, AIR is the story of an unlikely hero who discovers himself, his inner peace and his truest power through high-octane sports, used as a unique form of civil disobedience.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

Love and revolution

Review by Justin Barisich

Set along the Texas-Mexico border in the early 1900s, Shame the Stars follows the trials and heartaches of two families trying to survive the war-torn years of the Mexican Revolution while staying true to themselves and what’s right by the people and lands they’ve loved for generations.

Eighteen-year-old Joaquín del Toro lives on the expansive Las Moras ranch, where his father is responsible for much of the local economy. Joaquín’s longtime love, Dulceña Villa, helps her father run the local newspaper responsible for relaying the truth of the Mexican Revolution to the people. When the paper prints a poem anonymously written by Joaquín, it tears apart these two once-friendly families that hold contrasting opinions of how they should react to the rebellion. But when two Texas Rangers assault Joaquín and Dulceña one night, the fire of rebellion they were all trying to keep contained comes flaring out in devastating ways—making enemy and ally of the most unexpected.

Firmly grounded in real Mexican and American history, the latest novel from Pura Belpré Award-winning author Guadalupe García McCall takes this vital period and makes it relevant to a new audience—one that still feels the burn of these flames a century later.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read an interview with Guadalupe García McCall for Shame the Stars.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set along the Texas-Mexico border in the early 1900s, Shame the Stars follows the trials and heartaches of two families trying to survive the war-torn years of the Mexican Revolution while staying true to themselves and what’s right by the people and lands they’ve loved for generations.
Science Fiction & FantasyYA FictionYAScience Fiction

Fragile truth from lines in a book

Review by Justin Barisich

BookPage Teen Top Pick, September 2016

Set in the fictional land of Canaan, The Forgetting follows one young woman’s journey to discover why all her neighbors forget who they are every 12 years—and how all their hard truths can be so easily bent.

In Canaan, if you don’t write down your memories in your book, you’re destined to forget them and lose all sense of identity. Nadia was just a toddler for her first Forgetting—when her father scratched himself out of her family’s books and abandoned them all. But Nadia knows what he did. While everyone else loses all memories after each Forgetting, Nadia secretly remembers everything, and she’s the only one who’s trying to make sense of their shared truth. 

The next Forgetting is looming just weeks away, and Nadia has grown careless in her race against the clock to learn how to stop it. Gray, the glassblower’s son, catches her breaking the law as she hops the high walls of Canaan, and he demands to see the other side as well. As the two explore the world outside the walls together, their friendship morphs into a romance. But their true love may soon become fiction if they can’t solve the mysteries of Canaan before the next Forgetting. 

The Forgetting is Sharon Cameron’s fourth young adult novel, and she’s grown adept at blurring the lines between fantasy, dystopian and science-fiction genres. Cameron reminds us, through Nadia’s documented memories, that we must learn to appreciate the truth as much as question it, exploring the morality tucked within the fallacy of memory.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set in the fictional land of Canaan, The Forgetting follows one young woman’s journey to discover why all her neighbors forget who they are every 12 years—and how all their hard truths can be so easily bent.
YA FictionYA

Oddballs together

Review by Justin Barisich

Set in the suburbs of modern-day Austin, Texas, Lucky Few follows three outsider teenagers as they attempt to discover themselves, their places in the world and just how much they mean to one another.

Junior Stevie Hart and her best friend, Sanger, have been homeschooled together since they were toddlers. But they swear they’re the “normal” kind of homeschoolers—not the weird children of hippies or religious fanatics. And yet when Stevie and Sanger discover a young guy who pretends he’s committed suicide—twice in one day—their lives and friendship take a turn for the extra weird.

They learn that this cute guy, Max, is actually Stevie’s new neighbor, and he only has eight fingers. In two months he’ll ship off to some sort of boarding school, and before he moves, he’s trying to complete an epic list of “23 Ways to Fake My Death Without Dying.” Stevie and Sanger don’t know what to think about Max at first, but once they agree to help him complete his list, readers watch the trio through their shared shenanigans and learn how they truly feel about each other. But as they attempt to defy death over and over again in the name of some “innocent fun,” are Stevie, Sanger and Max too weird even for Austin?

Lucky Few is Kathryn Ormsbee’s first young adult novel, in which she adeptly captures the feeling of being “other” that every single teenager feels at some point, no matter where or how they learn about life.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Set in the suburbs of modern-day Austin, Texas, Lucky Few follows three oddball teenagers as they attempt to discover themselves, their places in the world and just how much they mean to one another.

YA FictionYA

Making the ultimate deal

Review by Justin Barisich

In a sort of modern retelling of the Faustian myth that legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson achieved his success by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads, Devil and the Bluebird follows the winding and heart-wrenching path of one young girl who’s trying to save her sister’s soul.

Blue Riley is willing to give up anything to find her missing older sister, Cass, who left to chase dreams of musical fame not long after their mother died of cancer. Blue finds the devil down at the nearby crossroads and bargains her soul to try to save her sister’s. She gives up her voice as collateral and gets only six months and a pair of vaguely magical boots in exchange. 

Throughout her journey to find Cass, Blue meets all sorts of gifted and seedy characters. And as the devil changes the terms of their deal, she must re-evaluate her understanding of good and evil, all while hoping that a bluebird has a chance in hell of defeating the devil.

Debut author Jennifer Mason-Black’s prose is fittingly lyrical, and her narrative always takes the most devilish of turns.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In a sort of modern retelling of the Faustian myth that legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson achieved his success by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads, Devil and the Bluebird follows the winding and heart-wrenching path of one young girl who’s trying to save her sister’s soul.
YA FictionYA

Tempting a curse

Review by Justin Barisich

Set in a dreamy, sweaty, stormy haze of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, A Fierce and Subtle Poison stands as a modern, mystical mythology of one young man’s attempt to find—and hold on to—truth while surrounded by half-lies and whispered curses.

Seventeen-year-old Lucas Knight has grown up hearing the supernatural tales of the island from a gaggle of the city’s old widows. Their stories are always thrilling, but he’s never known whether to believe them or to write them off as the locals just messing with the half-gringo whose hotel-developer father is slowly destroying Puerto Rico’s beaches while lining his own pockets. One day, Lucas—while entertaining his latest attraction, Marisol—decides to test one of the widows’ myths. He taunts the lush garden of the house at the end of Calle Sol, a supposedly damned structure where a famed botanist—and the rumor of a cursed girl born of poison—live. The next day, Marisol goes missing, and soon after, her drowned body washes up upon the pristine beach. But there had been a string of these “drownings” recently, and when Lucas suddenly becomes the lead suspect in an investigation of foul play, he finds himself drawn back over and over again to the cursed house—asking for answers from the poison girl herself.

In her first novel, author Samantha Mabry extracts a fascinating, genre-bending tale in A Fierce and Subtle Poison. The novel is part native lore, part murder mystery and part romance story—all wrapped up in a humid island blanket of magical realism. Like any good enchantment, Mabry’s prose is simultaneously delicate and forceful, and the poison of this story will linger in readers’ blood for many days after turning the final page.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Set in a dreamy, sweaty, stormy haze of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, A Fierce and Subtle Poison stands as a modern, mystical mythology of one young man’s attempt to find—and hold on to—truth while surrounded by half-lies and whispered curses.

YA FictionYA

The dark story behind a delicacy

Review by Justin Barisich

Enveloping us in the tropical forests and cacao farms of Africa, The Bitter Side of Sweet keenly inspires empathy in readers through a tale of abusive child labor and the resilience of the human spirit.

When 15-year-old Amadou and his 8-year-old brother, Seydou, left their home in Mali to harvest cacao plants in Ivory Coast, they assumed they would return after a season. But working as child slaves for the past two years has broken their bodies and their spirits. That is, until 13-year-old Khadija, the first girl they’ve ever seen on the farm, bursts into their lives with such ferocity that Amadou nicknames her “the wildcat.” 

Khadija attempts to escape on her first day, and when she’s caught, Amadou is blamed and beaten for it. But when Seydou is severely injured in the fields, Khadija keeps him alive after Amadou is dragged back to harvest. Amadou finally realizes the masters don’t care about his brother—they only care about his ability to work for them—and so he sets in motion a desperate plan for escape.

Tara Sullivan’s latest novel is heart-wrenching, with the power to leave a bitter taste of memory with every bite of chocolate.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Enveloping us in the tropical forests and cacao farms of Africa, The Bitter Side of Sweet keenly inspires empathy in readers through a tale of abusive child labor and the resilience of the human spirit.
YA FictionYA

A survivor learns to rebuild

Review by Justin Barisich

Chronicling in poetry one teen’s interior journey to process and understand the sudden, completely life-altering tragedy that has struck his family, his village and his country, Up from the Sea is a delicate and deep novel-in-verse that shows how we learn to go on living, and start anew, even after unprecedented loss.

On March 11, 2011, 17-year-old Kai cared only about the school day ending so he could practice soccer with his friends. But when the 14th largest earthquake in the world strikes the Tohoku region of Japan and, following closely on its heels, one of the largest tsunamis ever recorded decimates 300 miles of coastline, Kai’s life becomes literally, mentally and emotionally flooded. The tsunami completely wipes away Kai’s entire village, and he’s at such a loss that he doesn’t even want to try to tie together the shreds of his former life to make anything out of what’s left. But when Kai learns of an opportunity to visit New York City to speak with the children who survived that city’s tragedy a decade ago on September 11, 2001, he remembers that NYC is where his long-absent American father last lived. He’s at first desperate and then determined to demand either aid or answers from the man.

Author Leza Lowitz uses her first-hand experiences of living in Japan when the earthquake and tsunami struck to weave together a memorable amalgam of people and places. As the full meaning of Kai’s loss dawns on him, we witness all his worry, angst, anger, survivor’s guilt and sadness, as well as his eventual coping and recovery, providing a rare view of the human spirit.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Chronicling in poetry one teen’s interior journey to process and understand the sudden, completely life-altering tragedy that has struck his family, his village and his country, Up from the Sea is a delicate and deep novel-in-verse that shows how we learn to go on living, and start anew, even after unprecedented loss.

YA FictionYA

A dancer’s rising star

Review by Justin Barisich

Following the life and brief fame of a young black dancer living in New York City during the 1840s, Juba! is the historical tale of one man’s desire to use his art as activism to overcome the systemic racism that has hindered his people, and his nation, for generations.

Scraping by in the impoverished and Irish-immigrant Five Points district, William Henry Lane—better known by his stage name, Master Juba—lives to dance. But Juba rarely gets the chance to dance for pay these days, as the racial divisions between what an audience wants to see (blackface and minstrel shows) and what an artist wants to perform (something that transcends race and vague stereotypes) hold him back.

During one of his earlier bookings, Juba catches a huge break and unknowingly is interviewed by well-known novelist Charles Dickens, who writes both a character sketch and a rave review of Juba’s incomparable dancing skills and talents when he returns to England. This sets in motion a life-changing whirlwind of events for the dancer. But as Juba begins to find fame with his art, he may have to sacrifice his happiness and pride to appease the jaded masses.

The recently deceased Walter Dean Myers wrote more than 100 children’s and YA novels throughout his lifetime, including the New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning Monster, and he won countless awards for the majority of them. Juba! is a strong final note for Myers, who used his unique and insightful voice to the shed light on the racial and social plights of a people ever searching for equality.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Following the life and brief fame of a young black dancer living in New York City during the 1840s, Juba! is the historical tale of one man’s desire to use his art as activism to overcome the systemic racism that has hindered his people, and his nation, for generations.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

Old money and murder

Review by Justin Barisich

BookPage Teen Top Pick, November 2015

Set in 1890s New York City, when social lines starkly divided the city, These Shallow Graves follows the urban adventure of a smart, independent and beautiful young woman from high society who’s willing to risk everything to solve the mystery of her father’s untimely death.

Despite all the pleading from her wealthy friends and family, Josephine Montfort finds it hard to be content with everything being handed to her on a silver platter. She’s more captivated by the work of trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly, and she loves writing shocking exposés of the city’s societal ills. After her father is found dead in his study one night, Jo discovers that her polished world is far too small and suffocating. His “accidental suicide” reeks of foul play, and Jo grows ever more bold in her quest for the truth, eventually enlisting the help of handsome reporter Eddie Gallagher to hunt for clues. But as Jo and Eddie inch closer to the hard facts, repeatedly poking NYC’s seedy underbelly in the process, they find something bigger and more dangerous than either of them could have imagined.

Best known for her 2003 novel A Northern Light—one of Time magazine’s “100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time”—author Jennifer Donnelly returns with a powerhouse of a whodunit. Her eighth novel strikes hard against poverty, sexism, classism and greed, driving as relentlessly as Jo in her pursuit of truth and freedom.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set in 1890s New York City, when social lines starkly divided the city, These Shallow Graves follows the urban adventure of a smart, independent and beautiful young woman from high society who’s willing to risk everything to solve the mystery of her father’s untimely death.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Paulsen’s life with animals

Review by Justin Barisich

Gary Paulsen has long been beckoned by nature, and throughout This Side of Wild, he recounts numerous tales from his decades of outdoor adventures. The one constant throughout this collection of short, true-life stories is Paulsen's ever-evolving and maturing relationship with the animals he both raises at home and encounters out in the wild, all of whom seem to know far more than humans assume.

In select snippets from his lifetime of interacting with animals, Paulsen describes preparing to dogsled the Iditarod through the Alaskan wilderness and facing off with a murder of smart, mischievous ravens. He writes reverently about a dog named Gretchen that figured out her own special means of communication and then trained her human companions how to speak it. And he affectionately honors the sickly, nine-pound toy poodle that once saved his life from an overly curious grizzly bear lurking near his own backyard.

Famously known for his YA novel Hatchet, the three-time Newbery Honor Award winner Paulsen reflects on his 70-plus years of living with, among and through animals in This Side of Wild. And all the while, his keen observations encourage readers to reflect on the “humanity” and wisdom of the animal kingdom’s creatures, both the domesticated and the wild. The writing perhaps ventures into the land of the slightly mystical, but for anyone who’s ever grown close with an animal, the connection is undeniably real.

Gary Paulsen has long been beckoned by nature, and throughout This Side of Wild, he recounts numerous tales from his decades of outdoor adventures. As he does, he comes to realize that the one constant throughout is his ever-evolving and maturing relationship with the animals he both raises at home and encounters out in the wild, all of whom seem to know far more than humans have ever assumed.

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