Mini-Reviews: Young Adult Sequels

This is a very random selection of books; please forgive me.  But I'm trying to get caught up on my backlog so I'm throwing things together any way I can.

Under the Light by Laura Whitcomb
Sequel to A Certain Slant of Light
Available now from Houghton Mifflin BFC (Harcourt)
Review copy

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT has a special place in my heart, because when I went to college it was the first book my roommate lent to me.  How could we not be great roommates when she started our relationship with an offbeat ghost romance?

Now, years later, Laura Whitcomb has written a sequel.  UNDER THE LIGHT is a terrific follow up.  Jenny and Billy are back in their bodies and very confused.  It's been months since the day they remember, but to everyone else they've been there the whole time acting out of character.  Oh yeah, and Billy has a picture of them in bed together.  As they begin to piece together what happened to them, they also begin to fall in love.

UNDER THE LIGHT is a slow book to develop, but oh so lovely.  I feel like Helen's story really ended in A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT and that her parts were a bit extraneous, although I can understand her feeling guilt about what she did to Jenny.  At the same time, I enjoyed spending more time with such a wonderful character.  I highly recommend this duology for anyone looking for paranormal romances that don't follow the usual mold.

Truth or Dare by Ella Monroe
Book Three of the Capital Girls
Available now from St. Martin's Griffin
Review copy
Read my reviews of CAPITAL GIRLS and SECRETS AND LIES

I've enjoyed the frothy, soapy Capital Girls series.  TRUTH OR DARE is the third book and brings the first arc to a conclusion.  I'm not sure if there will be another book, but TRUTH OR DARE brings all of the big questions to a close.

The series starts shortly after Taylor Cane's death and follows her three best friends: Jackie, Lettie, and Laura Beth.  In TRUTH OR DARE, they finally figure out some of what was haunting Taylor and causing her destructive behavior.  It definitely paints some of Taylor's actions in a better light.

At the same time the girls are moving on.  Jackie is defining herself and figuring out what she wants.  (Her love triangle ends brilliantly.)  Lettie actually seems to have a new arc starting that might take her character in an interesting direction.  And Laura Beth is having to grow up and think about people other than herself.  It's a good entry in the series, which is basically GOSSIP GIRL for people who like a little politics with their over-the-top teenage shenanigans.

Confederates Don't Wear Couture by Stephanie Kate Strohm
Sequel to Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink
Available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt BFYR
Review copy

I haven't read PILGRIMS DON'T WEAR PINK, but read CONFEDERATES DON'T WEAR COUTURE anyway because it looked quick and cute.  I was right.  Libby is blonde, bubbly, and loves fashion and history.  It doesn't take her friend Dev much work to convince her to travel with a Confederate reenactment army to help him sell his dress designs to the women who travel with the army.

CONFEDERATES DON'T WEAR COUTURE combines a love triangle with a ghost story and stirs in a hilarious best friend for a delightful summer read.  I liked that the book does not gloss over that the Confederate side was very, very wrong about slavery.  (Dev's motive for not going with the union?  They don't pay as much.  And really, all of the characters have differing opinions on the ethics of the Confederate reenactment army, which is quite realistic.)  I liked that the love triangle wasn't drawn out and that Dev got his own love interest.

I think CONFEDERATES DON'T WEAR COUTURE (and likely PILGRIMS DON'T WEAR PINK) is a good read for history lovers looking to read a contemporary.  And the descriptions of the dresses make me want one.  Too bad Dev isn't a real designer.

Mini-Reviews: Four Young Adult Debuts

The Waiting Tree by Lindsay Moynihan
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

Simon Peters and his boyfriend, Stephen, were caught in a passionate moment by Stephen's father.  Stephen was shipped off to a gay conversion center and Simon's struggling in their conservative town.  He'd leave, but he can't leave his twin brother, who has an unspecified disability.  It's a particularly timely book, completely by accident, since Exodus International shut down and apologized.

I really enjoyed THE WAITING TREE until the end.  It's a good contemporary that really gets small-town life and the struggle to escape it when you don't have many resources.  But one bit of the ending is treated like a good thing, yet I have trouble seeing it as anything but terrible.  THE WAITING TREE turns out well for most of the characters, but this is not a book where everyone gets what's coming to them.  Some bad things happen to good people and some bad things never happen to bad people.

The End Games by T. Michael Martin
Available now from Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins)
Review copy

The world changed on Halloween.  That's when the dead started turning into Bellows (zombies) and attacking.  Michael and his little brother Patrick are headed to the safe zone, guided by a mysterious Game Master.  But the Game is changing, and the Bellows are getting smarter.

THE END GAMES was a book that kept shifting.  The initial premise doesn't last very long, and after that the status quo changes again.  I found the beginning and end more interesting than the middle.  The end especially, because it shows the best that Michael isn't as smart as he thinks he is, but he's still clever and resourceful.  And I love that all the characters are liars yet never quite believe that the others are lying.  The weakest element is the perfunctory romance, although I do believe that the possibly last teenage girl and boy alive would hook up.

Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos
Available now from Houghton Mifflin BFC (Harcourt)
Review copy

Evan Roskos's debut novel is a strange, brilliant creation.  Walt Whitman-obsessed James Whitman has depression.  He needs therapy, and not just from the imaginary bird therapist in his head.  But his distant, angry parents are unlikely to help him seek medical attention and his older sister was recently kicked out.

DR. BIRD'S ADVICE FOR SAD POETS could be a very dreary, painful book.  But it's quite funny and hopeful.  James is a fairly normal teenage boy, albeit a little weird about the environment.  I worried for him while reading the novel, but his story was most definitely not a tragedy slog.  (The only uncomfortableness came from some bits that reminded me of a friend's attempted suicide.)  It's a wonderful novel that deals with far more than teenage depression.  Plus, it makes poetry fun.

Permanent Record by Leslie Stella
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

PERMANENT RECORD was already getting rave reviews when I read it, but I found it disappointing.  I never really connected to the main character or story.  Badi Hessamizadeh is starting over at private school following being kicked out of his previous school for destructive behavior.  He quickly starts to make waves, especially by refusing to participate in the chocolate bar fundraiser.

I thought the parallels with THE CHOCOLATE WAR (which Badi is reading in school) were clever, but never really went anywhere.  The book does develop a mystery, when a anonymous letters criticizing the sale start showing up in the school newspaper.  Badi is desperate to clear his name.  I suspected the actual culprit, but thought that it was a nice reveal.  I also liked the friendship storyline, as Badi starts to connect to a couple of other outcasts who don't mind his depression, anxiety, and anger.  But I just didn't empathize with him.  He's got the flaws I normally like in protagonists, especially his self-absorbation, but no real motivation to work on his flaws.

Review: The Golem and the Jinni

By Helene Wecker
Available now from Harper (HarperCollins)
Review copy

Most debut novels are recognizably debut novels.  Even the very good ones have those common little tics.  But it's hard to believe that THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI is a debut.  It has a grand scope, but keeps the stories intimate and personal.  It's a meticulous bit of historical fiction married to the fantastic.  When it briefly turns to romance, I believed the characters' journey to the relationship.

The golem is Chava, created to be the perfect wife for a man who dies on their trip to America.  She is left alone to find a way to hide herself among the humans and start her own life.  The jinni is Ahmad, a rather selfish being who has been recently freed from his imprisonment.  They both live in immigrant communities in Manhattan, very close but with no contact until they stumble upon each other.  Soon their lives become intertwined in unexpected ways.

The detail Wecker develops in the communities is amazing.  And she doesn't forget to keep them separate, cheat to make things easy.  There are language and culture barriers that do not change.  At the same time, there are unexpected moments of connection.  As Chava and Ahmad get jobs and meet people, they affect where they live.  Sometimes they change things more than they expect.

Of the two leads, Chava is the more instantly likeable.  But Ahmad progresses throughout the novel because he no longer has the power to set himself entirely above humanity.  Even when he's a jerk, he's still interesting.  Both characters are in quite the predicament.  At the same time, no one coming to a new country has an easy time of it.  Two mythical being blend in more than one might expect.

There are many plot threads and characters in THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI.  As the book begins, it is easy to wonder why Wecker chooses to spend time in the heads of random characters.  Everything beings to pull together, however, and builds to an extremely satisfying climax.  Everything that seems random in the beginning contributes something to the end.

THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI is a fantastic novel.  I think this one is a good choice for fans of Mark Helprin and last year's ALIF THE UNSEEN by G. Willow Wilson.  It has a similar marriage of genre and literary appeal.  This immigrant epic has the perfect something extra.

Review: A Midsummer Night's Scream

By R.L. Stine
Available now from Feiwel and Friends (Macmillan)
Review copy

I outgrew R.L. Stine's books pretty quick.  I still kept reading them regularly, at least through seventh grade, because they were fun.  Formulaic, yes, but the Fear Street books especially were chock-full of inventive deaths.  For a morbid little kid an inventive death goes a long way.

Nowadays, I have a fond nostalgia for Stine.  It helps that I met him once in person and he was incredibly nice.  (I was super awkward because my friend dropped out on me and I was the only person over eighteen there alone.)  Without that nostalgia, I might not have finished A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SCREAM.  But I'm sure the intended audience for the novel will enjoy it.  There's one death that's probably going to make my dreams a little freaky for a night or two.

The plot is simple: Claire and her best friend Delia have small roles in Mayhem Manor, the remake of a never-finished horror film.  Three members of the original cast died on tape.  Pretty soon, bad things start happening to the new cast too.  It's made clear that the studio will shut down if the production fails, but it's still hard to believe they don't close down the film for everyone's safety.  As for the connection to A Midsummer Night's Dream, it's fairly faint.  Each girl has a crush on a guy who has a crush on the other girl.  There's also a hairy man, Mr. Puckerman, with potions.

There was one aspect I found disappointing.  I remember Stine being delightfully gross, but I don't remember him being gross about gender.  There's a third girl, Annalee, who goes after Jake when Claire keeps failing to make a move.  She's catty about it, but it still grated on me when Claire and Delia constantly derided her for being a slut.  No wonder she didn't care to observe their unspoken hands off.

Don't go into A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM expecting complex characterization and an involved plot.  The characters are types, and sometimes hard to keep track of since there's a bunch of them.  The plot is only complicated in that it often requires people to act quite stupid.  Claire, for instance, keeps using potions she steals from Mr. Puckerman despite always grabbing the wrong one.

But I can't help but find something comforting about Stine's formula.  He's keeping cheesy teen (and child friendly) horror alive.  Just take a look at the fine work of Bitching, Books, and Baking to see how big the genre used to be.

Movie Monday: The Heat

For some reason, the vast majority of Hollywood doesn't understand that women love movies just as much as men.  But every once in awhile, someone gets it.  Paul Feig, the director of Bridesmaids, is back with a buddy cop movie featuring two of the funniest women alive: Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock.  Now, I wasn't the biggest fan of Bridesmaids, mostly because it was approximately an hour too long.  But The Heat is a much tighter, if more conventional, movie.

Bullock plays Special Agent Ashburn, who desperately wants a promotion but first needs to prove that she can play well with others.  McCarthy plays Officer Mullins, a cop from the streets who has no desire to play well with others.  She just wants her neighborhood safe.  Once again, Bullock is relegated to the uptight role, although there are plenty of chances for her to show off her physical comedy chops.  McCarthy is the one allowed to let loose and go crazy with it.  She sells every single second of it.  I've loved McCarthy since she played Sookie St. James on Gilmore Girls, and Mullins is a long way from Stars Hollow.  When McCarthy is on the screen, she owns it.  She might not be able to chase a perp down on foot, but you believe that she has the confidence and authority to get the job done.

Okay, one of my favorite things about The Heat is that when Ashburn or Mullins gets hurt then they actually act hurt.  There is no magical recovery from wounds.  My second favorite might be that there's no romantic storyline bogging down the proceedings.  The movie makes it clear that both women can get it, then backs off.  There is a nice bit of flirting that intensifies throughout the movie between Ashburn and another agent (Marlon Wayans), but not a full-blown romance.  Who knew Wayans would age so well?  (Especially when you put him in some dapper threads.)

In case you doubted it, The Heat is hilarious.  Only one moment really fell short for me, and that was because there was a great deal of blood and I am squeamish.  (And yet I was laughing at corpse humor earlier in the movie.  My squeamishness is mostly limited to blood.)   I love seeing comedies in theaters.  You don't hear the experience praised as much as special effects extravaganzas, but there's something about laughing with other people.

The Heat is a movie men and women can love.  Adding some estrogen to the buddy cop formula doesn't ruin anything.  Especially not when the movie rides on the shoulders of actors as talented as Bullock and McCarthy.  If you're looking for a funny, profanity-laden action film, then go see The Heat.