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YA FictionYA

Cleopatra’s daughter comes into her own

Review by Cat Acree

Many know the story of Cleopatra, but few know of her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, whose wholly dark life is captured in Vicky Alvear Shecter’s Cleopatra’s Moon. A daughter of Egypt and Rome, Cleopatra Selene faces the world after the fall of her parents, the collapse of her kingdom and her capture and confinement (along with her brothers) in the Emperor Octavianus’ palace. She grows up as a prisoner of Rome, but from the moment she leaves Egyptian soil, her mind never strays far from her chosen fate: to reclaim Egypt in place of her powerful queen mother.

Shecter’s first novel mixes fact and fiction but never shies away from the most tragic moments of Cleopatra Selene’s life. The world seems to fall apart around her as she loses all that she loves in her unfaltering quest to become the ruling force she is destined to be. After years trapped in the walls of Rome, she seeks followers of Isis to help her but discovers the gods are not on her side. Her next step is to forge an alliance to return her to her rightful place as queen, and her future hangs in the balance as she must decide between Marcellus, the son of her enemy, and Juba, the king of her dreams. Her choice just might break her heart.

While the book is mostly focused on Cleopatra Selene’s persistent efforts to reclaim her throne, one main question reappears throughout: Can a person choose his or her own fate? Cleopatra Selene and Juba have one main difference: She fights the Fates every step of the way while Stoic Juba accepts his lot and moves on with his life. While Cleopatra Selene is never able to come to a conclusion about her role in her own fate, Cleopatra’s Moon just might get some readers thinking.

Shecter’s novel has magic, romance and the mystique of Egyptian royalty, as well as the intrigue of fact vs. fiction. It also challenges its characters, and possibly its readers, to question life, destiny and ironclad beliefs. Cleopatra’s Moon might be a story of a queen, but it is also the story of a girl just figuring out where she stands in the world.

Many know the story of Cleopatra, but few know of her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, whose wholly dark life is captured in Vicky Alvear Shecter’s Cleopatra’s Moon. A daughter of Egypt and Rome, Cleopatra Selene faces the world after the fall of her parents, the collapse of her kingdom and her capture and confinement (along with […]
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

No ordinary rehab

Review by Heather Seggel

Amy Reed sets her new novel, Clean, in a drug and alcohol rehab clinic for teens. Actually, she tosses us in and locks the door behind us until graduation, and it’s a tough but fascinating sentence to serve.

Clean follows five teens through treatment: Christopher (“the nerdy guy”), Kelly (“the pretty girl”), Jason (“the tough guy”), Eva (“the emo/Goth girl”) and Olivia, who just got there. Through journal entries, medical forms and transcribed group therapy sessions with hard-nosed counselor Shirley, we learn each person’s story a little at a time. While the path to becoming an addict is always bleak, teasing out the details makes Clean unfold like a mystery. Is the guy climbing in Christopher’s bedroom window real or imaginary? Olivia is “just” hooked on diet pills; does she really belong here?

With a subject as broad as addiction, Reed uses small moments to show us daily life in rehab.  A simple thing like watching a movie now requires kids to sit two feet apart with no blankets, after previous residents were busted in a moment of intimacy under the covers.

When it’s time for graduation, we don’t know who will stay sober, but the characters in Clean make us hope for the best, for them and for anyone facing a similar challenge.

Amy Reed sets her new novel, Clean, in a drug and alcohol rehab clinic for teens. Actually, she tosses us in and locks the door behind us until graduation, and it’s a tough but fascinating sentence to serve. Clean follows five teens through treatment: Christopher (“the nerdy guy”), Kelly (“the pretty girl”), Jason (“the tough […]
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

True love thinks

Review by Emily Booth Masters

Good girl Lacey Anne Byer longs for nothing more than to play the part of “Abortion Girl” in her church’s Hell House production over Halloween weekend. As a lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment Evangelical Church, and the daughter of the youth pastor, she plans to turn the role into her “movie moment.”

The scenes in Hell House—which deal with abortion, gay marriage, drunk driving—all seem like cut-and-dried ways to go straight to Hell as far as Lacey is concerned. She is so firm in her beliefs that she has trouble recognizing the new feelings that wash over her when “new guy” Ty Davis sends her on a wild ride of emotions.

For the first time in her life, Lacey is forced to stop and think about her faith, her friendships and what she wants for her future. Even as her feelings for Ty grow, and are returned, she finds her conversations with him challenging and frustrating. Ty is not someone who is willing to simply accept the beliefs and standards that are handed to him by authority figures. He insists on examining what seems right to him, and Lacey finds herself drawn down the path of introspection as well.

In Small Town Sinners, Melissa Walker tackles difficult subjects with a unique approach. Hidden within this sweet and engrossing story of first love is one of an intelligent young woman with strong moral values, discovering her own truth. Young readers will find themselves enchanted by the likable characters and challenged to examine their own convictions.

Good girl Lacey Anne Byer longs for nothing more than to play the part of “Abortion Girl” in her church’s Hell House production over Halloween weekend. As a lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment Evangelical Church, and the daughter of the youth pastor, she plans to turn the role into her “movie moment.” The […]
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Suspended in time and space

Review by Angela Leeper

After 62 years in stasis, a chemically induced hypersleep that suspends the aging process, Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy—or simply Rose—awakens, still 16 years old, to discover not only that she’s been slumbering in a forgotten subbasement all these years, but that she’s the sole surviving heiress, a princess if you will, to an interplanetary empire known as UniCorp. In Anna Sheehan’s futuristic young adult debut, A Long, Long Sleep, this sleeping beauty bears no resemblance to the Disney princess. Rose’s chilling story explores the emotional aftermath of lost time, dreams and love.

As Rose tries to assimilate in her new Uni Prep school (the best in the solar system), she learns the history of the last half-century, including the Dark Times, in which a population boom was followed by a resurgence of tuberculosis and bubonic plague, as well as widespread infertility. Flashbacks to Rose’s youth slowly reveal her numerous stays in stasis (really making her 100 years old), the long-term effects of her abusive parents and her first love with Xavier, whom she met when he was an infant and she was seven years old, though he grew to surpass her in age.

Although Rose finds some comfort in her friendships with princely, handsome Bren and Otto, a mute human-alien hybrid created by UniCorp who understands the briar patch she has formed around her heart, she still longs for Xavier. And adjustment would definitely be easier if there weren’t a Plastine, a plasticized human corpse, programmed to find and kill her. Outrunning this nearly indestructible assassin and finding its original programmer add layers of adventure and mystery to this already intriguing science fiction story.

Whether comparing Rose’s story to other Briar Rose and Sleeping Beauty variants, wondering about her complicated situation or simply enjoying the thrilling suspense, readers will hope that Rose can find some happiness ever after in a complex world.

After 62 years in stasis, a chemically induced hypersleep that suspends the aging process, Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy—or simply Rose—awakens, still 16 years old, to discover not only that she’s been slumbering in a forgotten subbasement all these years, but that she’s the sole surviving heiress, a princess if you will, to an interplanetary empire known […]
YA FictionYA

Unlikely romance and a little bit of magic

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

Sixteen-year-olds Gwendolyn Reilly and Philip Wishman (aka Wish) were inseparable childhood best friends. Playing “Gone With the Wind” at the New Jersey Shore where they lived, it didn’t matter that they were awkward goofball kids, as long as they were together. Even when Wish moved away to California and suddenly became hot overnight, he still loved Gwen and asked her to be his long-distance girlfriend. But when Wish announces he is moving back East, Gwen worries that he’ll dump her once he discovers that she is overweight and a social outcast.

Even after she reunites with Wish, who still seems to adore her, Gwen spends so much time waiting for the other shoe to drop that she ignores his odd behavior (he wears long-sleeved black shirts in the blistering summer heat) and the chaotic weather threatening the family bakery. When Gwen meets Christian, her mother’s newest (and strangest) employee, she learns that Wish has been dabbling in astrological magic, thus putting Gwen and everyone she loves in danger.

While the ending to this story is a bit anticlimactic (and readers will wonder if she ends up with the right guy), no one can deny that Gwen is an irresistible protagonist whose first-person narration is funny and self-deprecating. On the first day of school, she compares her attempt to find her place in the high school social hierarchy to sperm trying to break into the egg: “Thespian egg? Denied! Chess club egg? Denied! Future Homemakers of America egg? Denied! I don’t even bother to go near the really popular eggs, because that would be spermicide.” Starstruck is sure to enchant fans of paranormal romance and will find a place next to Meg Cabot on many readers’ bookshelves.

Sixteen-year-olds Gwendolyn Reilly and Philip Wishman (aka Wish) were inseparable childhood best friends. Playing “Gone With the Wind” at the New Jersey Shore where they lived, it didn’t matter that they were awkward goofball kids, as long as they were together. Even when Wish moved away to California and suddenly became hot overnight, he still loved […]
Children's & YAYA Fiction

Between death and sisterhood

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

Chloe and Ruby have an unbreakable bond. Half-sisters who share an alcoholic mother, the girls live a bohemian life in a sleepy New York town that borders an infamous reservoir.

All of this changes when 14-year-old Chloe finds the body of a dead classmate in the reservoir. Traumatized, she decides to move in with her estranged father. Two years later, Ruby shows up at Chloe’s house begging her to come home. When Chloe returns, she discovers that Ruby’s influence is far more extensive than anything Chloe could have imagined—and that their sisterly bond is rife with deadly secrets.

Chloe’s first-person narration is often haunting, bringing to life not only the enigmatic Ruby, but also the mythic reservoir that surrounds their home: “You had to watch your toes, because the jagged bottom could cut you, and hang tight to your clothes, if you were wearing any, because the reservoir was known to take what it wanted when it wanted it.”

Imaginary Girls will submerge its readers in an eeriness and intensity not often felt in YA literature.

Chloe and Ruby have an unbreakable bond. Half-sisters who share an alcoholic mother, the girls live a bohemian life in a sleepy New York town that borders an infamous reservoir. All of this changes when 14-year-old Chloe finds the body of a dead classmate in the reservoir. Traumatized, she decides to move in with her […]
Children's & YAYA Fiction

Rhythm of the queer hip-hop revolution

Review by Norah Piehl

If ever there was a candidate for the current “It Gets Better” campaign supporting gay and lesbian teenagers, Esme Rockett is it. The heroine of Sister Mischief is a smart, gorgeous and funny high school junior, and she can throw down some mad rhymes with the other members of her all-girl hip-hop group. But it’s hard to hear that she’ll be loved and appreciated someday, when the girl she loves right now wants to keep their relationship a secret, and when neither the students nor the school administrators at her prestigious public school in suburban Minneapolis understand the righteous importance of a gay-straight alliance—not to mention the cultural relevance of hip-hop.

Esme’s burgeoning political passions burn just as hot as her secret love affair with fellow band member Rowie. But when the “thinking Christian” in their group discovers the relationship before Rowie is ready to go public, Esme must own up to the feelings of abandonment she’s been hiding ever since her mom left when Esme was in preschool. Is Esme doomed to be left by women forever? Or can she use the example of her countless hip-hop heroes to turn her pain and anger into emotionally searing art?

Esme and her friends sometimes talk like a veritable encyclopedia of rap music, but they (and author Laura Goode) clearly know their stuff—and although their conversations can veer toward the polemic, their verbal acuity also results in snappy banter that can be pretty darn funny. In the end, Esme’s story demonstrates to her friends, to the reader and, most importantly, to herself that despite her tough-girl persona, she can love—and live—passionately, openly and well.

If ever there was a candidate for the current “It Gets Better” campaign supporting gay and lesbian teenagers, Esme Rockett is it. The heroine of Sister Mischief is a smart, gorgeous and funny high school junior, and she can throw down some mad rhymes with the other members of her all-girl hip-hop group. But it’s […]
Children's & YAYA Fiction

Meta rock’n’roll fantasy

Review by Angela Leeper

Robert T. Jeschonek takes metafiction to the extreme in his teen novel My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, which features no fewer than three alternate realities. Idea Deity has an unshakable fear that he is a character in a novel and that its malevolent author has doomed him to die in chapter 64. When not worrying about his fate, he’s working on his hoax website about a fake band called Youforia and marveling over its legions of followers on YoFace and Yapper. In alternating chapters, Reacher Mirage, lead singer of Youforia, wonders how so many people know about his secret band when they haven’t even gone public yet. (He’s waiting for that magic feeling, so quit pressuring him.) Interrupting Idea’s and Reacher’s stories are dog-eared chapters out of Idea’s favorite book, Fireskull’s Revenant, a parody of bad fantasy writing that features the ongoing battle between Lord Fireskull and his mortal enemy, Johnny Without. As the story—part Spinal Tap, part Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and part its own surreal invention—twists and turns, these four characters begin to parallel one another.

Confused yet? That’s all part of the fun in this urban fantasy that exudes tongue-in-cheek humor as it mocks everything from politics and the internet to literature and parenting. With the help of a (literally) two-faced character, Idea and Reacher (or is that Fireskull and Johnny?) not only confront their difficult pasts and their uncontrollable fears, but just may restore the Chain of Realities to their worlds. To reveal any more would spoil the intricate and irreverent plot; to call this novel unique would be an understatement.

Robert T. Jeschonek takes metafiction to the extreme in his teen novel My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, which features no fewer than three alternate realities. Idea Deity has an unshakable fear that he is a character in a novel and that its malevolent author has doomed him to die in chapter 64. When not […]
Children's & YAYA Fiction

Misadventures on the moors

Review by Heather Seggel

Tallulah Casey is spending the summer at a performing arts school in Yorkshire (described in its brochure as like “Wuthering Heights but with more acting and dancing and less freezing to death on the moors!!”). Hence, Withering Tights. At 14, Tallulah’s looking forward to making new friends, finding her talents (spontaneous attacks of Riverdance are a talent, right?) and having unfettered access to boys, but the summer has even bigger things in store. Like baby owls hatching, performance art aplenty—including a female Heathcliff—a small fire in the dorms . . . and a lot of access to boys. Oh, and a handy glossary, so American readers can tell a “noddy niddy noddy” from a “nunga nunga” (a crucial distinction).

Fans of author Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson series will be tickled to find Georgia in a sort of cameo here, and the glossary, eccentric adults (and toddlers!), animal characters and beaucoup de boy drama are virtually Rennison’s trademark. But Withering Tights departs from the other series with Tallulah herself; instead of Georgia’s hilarious self-involvement, this series is anchored by someone who wears her insecurities front and center, like her nobbly knees. Her parents are traveling constantly; her father’s idea of a helpful talk on growing up was to give her a James Bond novel and call it a day. As a result, she’s kind and appreciative of those around her and quickly forms familial bonds. Rennison hasn’t changed too much, though: Like Georgia’s diaries, Tallulah’s story is a laugh-out-loud winner, chock full of Irish jigs and the occasional sheep’s bladder. Start here, and be glad nothing’s neatly resolved at the end, because there’s more to look forward to in the series!

Tallulah Casey is spending the summer at a performing arts school in Yorkshire (described in its brochure as like “Wuthering Heights but with more acting and dancing and less freezing to death on the moors!!”). Hence, Withering Tights. At 14, Tallulah’s looking forward to making new friends, finding her talents (spontaneous attacks of Riverdance are […]
YA FictionYA

Searching for the elusive Margo

Review by bookpagedev

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen and his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, played together as children, but over time Margo has become an unattainable girl of allure and mystery. Just a few weeks before graduation, the two reconnect when she suddenly appears at Q's window and asks for help with an all-night revenge spree targeting unfaithful friends and bullies throughout their Orlando neighborhood. This adrenaline-filled adventure kicks off Paper Towns, another insightful novel by the Printz award-winning novelist John Green, and refuels Quentin's desire for Margo.

But the next day Margo has vanished. Since the girl has disappeared before, leaving ambiguous clues and turning up in outlandish places, her family has written her off this time, and her high school friends are awaiting a spectacular return with an even more dramatic story of her escapades. Only Quentin fears the worst, that she has taken off to commit suicide, when he finds clues left specifically for him in highlighted passages of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

His desperate search for Margo leads him in and out of abandoned subdivisions, what the girl once called "paper towns." Along the way, he realizes that his search is not just for Margo, but for the "real" Margo, the girl nobody really knew, perhaps not even himself. Helping Q solve the puzzle are Ben, who achieves instant popularity and a date with a possible prom queen despite his often sexist remarks, and Radar, a more grounded classmate with a Wikipedia-like website that cracks some of Margo's clues. Their witty, hilarious banter lightens Quentin's quest, and provides rich fodder for the friends' culminating road-trip investigation.

Like that famous saying, it is Q's journey rather than the destination that matters most. Whether or not he finds Margo and her paper towns, Quentin discovers love and finds that it can be just as elusive and multifaceted and imperfect as Margo. With author John Green at the controls, the ride is always memorable.

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen and his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, played together as children, but over time Margo has become an unattainable girl of allure and mystery. Just a few weeks before graduation, the two reconnect when she suddenly appears at Q's window and asks for help with an all-night revenge spree targeting unfaithful friends […]
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Is a spoiled sister better than no sister?

Review by Emily Booth Masters

While Molly’s mom is dying from cancer, she confesses to the 16-year-old Indiana native that her dad is Brick Berlin, a famous movie star. Mom’s dying wish is for Molly to connect with her father. So, grief-stricken and ready for anything that might bring some change into her life, Molly moves to Hollywood. She hopes to get to know Brick as she recovers from her loss. Instead, she is greeted by a manic—at best—half-sister and an absentee father.

Her newly discovered half-sister, also 16, is anything but helpful in introducing Molly around and making her transition to a new school easier. It turns out that Brooke Berlin has been coping with having Brick as a father for years, and she’s not about to share what little bit of face time she has with him with a hick from Indiana. Colby-Randall Preparatory School is a hotbed of cliques and spoiled rich kids, and Brooke’s unwillingness to take Molly under her wing makes the school all the more difficult for Molly to navigate. Her only rays of light are the friendships she begins to create with the headmaster’s two kids, Max and Teddy. However, when her feelings for Teddy threaten to undermine her relationship with her boyfriend back in Indiana, her life gets even more complicated.

On the surface, Spoiled is as much about fashion as relationships, but within a few pages it becomes clear that Molly and Brooke are multifaceted and extremely interesting characters. They both grow and change as the story progresses, and readers will appreciate their transformations as well as the cheeky and often hilarious prose of authors Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, whose site, gofugyourself.com, is one of the most popular fashion blogs on the web. Their trademark wit and fashion sense are both evident within the pages of Spoiled, and readers will hope their debut YA novel isn’t their last.

While Molly’s mom is dying from cancer, she confesses to the 16-year-old Indiana native that her dad is Brick Berlin, a famous movie star. Mom’s dying wish is for Molly to connect with her father. So, grief-stricken and ready for anything that might bring some change into her life, Molly moves to Hollywood. She hopes […]
YA FictionYA

The persistence of memory

Review by Angela Leeper

Every day at 4:33 a.m., high school junior London Lane’s mind resets and her memory is wiped clean for no apparent reason. Much like Drew Barrymore’s character in 50 First Dates, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, London forms no new memories of each day’s events. But she can “remember” memories of events that will happen to her in the future. Relying on meticulous notes from the days and weeks before, she pieces together her life for the current day, from what she should wear and which classes have homework due, to why her best friend, who is dating one of their teachers, refuses to speak to her, to how Luke Henry, the cute guy who picks her up each morning, has become her boyfriend.

Part romance and part thriller, London’s story intensifies when she notices that she has no memories of her future with Luke and a recurring memory of a funeral begins to haunt her. Will the funeral be for Luke, her absent father or even a stranger she hasn’t met yet? With the discovery of a hidden envelope in her mother’s closet and help from Luke and their growing love (“I wonder whether my heart keeps time even when my head doesn’t”), London realizes that her funeral memory from the future may actually be from the past. Stuck between these two times, she must find out if her breakthrough in memory is the family tragedy that’s been kept secret all these years and what impact her memories hold on the future.

Forgotten is a thought-provoking debut novel and a glimpse at the mysteries of the brain. Experiencing London’s dilemmas, readers can’t help but ponder the importance of their own memories.

Every day at 4:33 a.m., high school junior London Lane’s mind resets and her memory is wiped clean for no apparent reason. Much like Drew Barrymore’s character in 50 First Dates, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, London forms no new memories of each day’s events. But she can “remember” memories of events that will happen […]
YA Fiction

What lies beneath

Review by Barbara Clark

Take a lovely tree-shaded campus, add wealthy alums and a big-ticket endowment, and fill it with rich and entitled preppies headed for big-name colleges. Stir with selected townies from working-class Greenville at the bottom of the hill, and flavor with secret student societies (or “freaky cults” as one teacher calls them) and hidden passions at this institution of privilege, and you come up with The Twisted Thread, an addictive summer read written by Charlotte Bacon, a winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction.   

Claire, a beautiful but icy blond senior at Armitage Academy who, incidentally, has just given birth in secret, is found dead in her dorm room. Where is her newborn baby? And who is the father? Why did no one on the faculty know? These dark questions seem preposterous, set as they are in this upscale environment, but they loom large as police detective Matt Corelli (a former graduate of Armitage anda resident of Greenville) and his partner, Vernon Cates, begin to uncover a seamier side of campus life with its welter of cross-currents and relationships.

Central to the story is Madeline Christopher, an intern/teacher in English. With her ebullient, spilling-over personality, mussed-up hair and lack of perfect attire, Madeline becomes both confidante and foil to the girls in her dorm, who alternately confide in, threaten and use her for their own ends in covering up what they know. She must painfully discover for herself how this bastion of wealth conceals the same layers of passion, vulnerability, slyness and deceit that abound outside in the “common” domain.

All the characters in this surprising story are beautifully realized. Each must come to terms with the tension between a knowledge of what lies beneath the surface at Armitage and a desire to keep the superficial calm unruffled. Vernon is an endearing and imaginative addition to the long line of detective partners in mystery fiction. Claire’s former boyfriend, Scotty, snatches at our interest, even though at first glance he seems to inhabit the borders of the story. All the members of the cast, including townies, ancillary faculty wives, too-old faculty members, even the mother of a buildings and grounds worker, emerge as worth listening to in their own right.

Much more than a standard whodunit, this story goes to the heart as it seeks to unravel and lay bare the tensions and costs of living in the cocoon of privilege.

 

Take a lovely tree-shaded campus, add wealthy alums and a big-ticket endowment, and fill it with rich and entitled preppies headed for big-name colleges. Stir with selected townies from working-class Greenville at the bottom of the hill, and flavor with secret student societies (or “freaky cults” as one teacher calls them) and hidden passions at […]

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