Review: Love Is the Drug

By Alaya Dawn Johnson
Available now from Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)
Review copy
Read my review of The Summer Prince

Emily Bird - Emily to most, Bird to the best - is a senior at one of the most prestigious high schools in the country.  She doesn't entirely fit in, being one of the few black kids.  She also doesn't fit in because she might be going along with her mother's plan to go to college (and thinking of Stanford for herself), but her real goal is to run a small shop.  (Not that having a business degree wouldn't help with that, but it never comes up.)

When LOVE IS THE DRUG opens, Bird is at a party with her boyfriend.  She meets a man who works with her parents and drops the name of a lab she once saw in the trash.  What follows is a nightmare as the man stalks her, threatens her friends and family, and messes with her life in an attempt to get her to confess what she knows.  It just makes Bird determined to find the truth, and to discover whether she really did find out a national secret that night.

This thriller plays out against a widespread plague, the worst since the Spanish flu.  The v-flu, as it is known, is being held back by a quarantine.  Bird is as safe as can be in her high-class school full of politician's kids.  But how is the country ensuring that those kids stay so safe?  And, of course, does the flu have anything to do with what Bird might know?  Unrealistic diseases are a pet peeve of mine, so I like that this flu plays out like a real disease.  There's no killing everyone over 25 or anything silly like that.

I loved the paranoid atmosphere of LOVE IS THE DRUG, although I felt the plot faltered at the end.  There were a lot of ideas but nowhere for them to go.  And the romance dragged the whole thing down.  Bird falls for Coffee, the one guy who really gets her.  He's also a drug dealer, and the story never really convinced me to get over it.  He's just the cliche soulful, smart bad boy.  Now, Marella, Blue's lesbian friend, is where it's at.  Their friendship blooms throughout the pages, starting warily and growing as they're stuck in quarantine together.  I think they spend more time together than Blue and Coffee, and honestly have better chemistry.  I wished I were reading a more inventive lesbian romance instead of what the book actually was.

LOVE IS THE DRUG has its high points.  I loved Bird's relationship with her uncle, the disappointment of her family.  I loved the way LOVE IS THE DRUG tackled social issues, from being black to being foreign to being LGBTQ.  Alaya Dawn Johnson really brought the diversity of DC to life.  There are strong characters, a compelling atmosphere, and beautiful writing, but a boring romance and a plot that never has any steam.  Johnson has written better.

Review: The Summer Prince

By Alaya Dawn Johnson
Available now from Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)
Review copy

June lives in Palmares Três, a city in a futuristic Brazil that considers itself the most beautiful city in the world.  It's ruled by matriarchs, with a ceremonial king elected every five years to reaffirm the queen with his death.  June and her fellow young citizens aren't entirely happy with their government.  But the young have even less power in a world where people live to be hundreds of years old.  Enki, the new Summer King, wants to use his death to make a difference.  June wants to make art.

THE SUMMER PRINCE is not a perfect novel.  Gil is June's best friend and Enki's lover, making him pretty darn important to the emotional arc of the novel.  But he simply looks pretty and dances.  His character is never shaded in. Then there's the fact that June's art often seems pretty lame to me.  I have to admit, performance art is not my thing, and June leans to the performance side.  Things like her tree of light, pictured on the cover, and a portrait of her stepmother come to life in my mind, but some of her more important works seem more laughable.  Then there's the fact that Alaya Dawn Johnson is balancing a lot: art, family, friends, class, politics.  THE SUMMER PRINCE can swing wildly in focus.

But I really, truly enjoyed THE SUMMER PRINCE.  It has a lot in common with the dystopian trend, but it's more closely aligned with science fiction.  There's hacking, robots, genetic modification, and debate about how much is too much when it comes to blending man and machine.  Johnson clearly thought about the details of how her world worked.  She does manage to make it at least somewhat plausible that a city would practice regular blood sacrifice.  (And that is no mean feat.)  There's also a nice blend of familiar and unfamiliar social mores.  Some people are rich, some aren't.  Teenage pregnancy is even more ostracized.  Bisexuality is no big thing.

June is a terrific main character.  She's got a long way to go, as some of the other characters point out.  She's self centered and arrogant, although her experiences help her to think more about her world and empathize with other people.  She's consumed by her passion for art, but often out of touch with her own motives.  At the beginning of THE SUMMER PRINCE, she's a brat.  But working with Enki and being thrust into politics forces her to mature.  I did like the brief glimpses into Enki's point of view, though I found them confusing at first.  (I read the Netgalley Kindle ARC and the formatting was atrocious, so those bits may not be confusing at all in the final book.)

I think THE SUMMER PRINCE will satisfy science fiction and dystopian fans.  THE SUMMER PRINCE is filled with vivid, sensuous images and the inescapable tension between young and old, progress and tradition.  June lives in Palmares Três, a city on the brink of rebellion, and she may be the person to push it over the edge.