Review: This Side of Home

By Renée Watson
Available now from Bloomsbury Children's
Review copy

Renée Watson's debut novel THIS SIDE OF HOME is the story of Maya's senior year at high school.  It starts with a big change, when her best friend is evicted from the house across the street and has to move across town.  The new family that moves in is white, just like most of the families moving into the historically black neighborhood.

Maya is passionate about her town, about the history of her neighborhood and school and the people who have lived there.  She's angered by the gentrification, by the opportunities given to business owners moving that were denied to the black people who already live there and tried to get loans and backers.  She's angered that when her school tries to present a better side to the press, something she supports as student council president, the principal forces them to tone down the blackness and present a multicultural lens that focuses on making sure the white students don't feel left out.

Maya is also confused.  She and her twin sister, Nikki, and her best friend, Essence, have always planned to go to a historically black college.  But now Nikki is friends with the new girl and looking at different schools.  Essence isn't looking at college at all, but beauty school.  And Maya finds herself falling for the boy across the street, instead of the nice boy she's been dating for ages.  Can she stand up for her culture if she's dating a white boy?

I loved THIS SIDE OF HOME.  Gentrification is a pressing issue in many cities, and Watson presents it in an understandable way.  Like Nikki, many people appreciate new shops and restaurants and other nice things moving into a neighborhood.  Like Maya, many people dislike it because they see the people who get forced out of their homes because they can no longer afford them.  Like Essence, some are too busy figuring out how to make ends meet to care about the bigger picture.  Watson presents a variety of voices and a variety of perceptions.  Maya tries to do the right thing, but THIS SIDE OF HOME makes it clear that she isn't always right.

THIS SIDE OF HOME is a great novel for readers who like narrators with a strong voice and contemporaries that treat romance and friendship with equal importance.  It's a multifaceted look at a community through the eyes of a teenage girl on the verge of a bright future.  And I can only assume that Watson has a bright future as an author ahead of her.

An Appetite for Violets Giveaway

Today I am giving away a copy of AN APPETITE FOR VIOLETS, the debut novel by Martine Bailey.

One special feature of this novel is that it contains a variety of 18th century recipes that were researched and transcribed by Martine.  Sounds delicious, no?

“That’s how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you're invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. Then you find something, something you should not have found.”Irrepressible Biddy Leigh, under-cook at forbidding Mawton Hall, only wants to marry her childhood sweetheart and set up her own tavern. But when her elderly master marries young Lady Carinna, Biddy is unwittingly swept up in a world of scheming, secrets, and lies. Forced to accompany her new mistress to Italy, she documents her adventures and culinary discoveries in an old household book of recipes, The Cook’s Jewel. Biddy grows intrigued by her fellow travelers, but her secretive and unconventional mistress is the most intriguing of all.

In London, Biddy finds herself attracted to her mistress’s younger brother. In France, she discovers her mistress’s dark secret. At last in Italy, Biddy becomes embroiled in a murderous conspiracy, knowing the secrets she holds could be a key to a better life, or her downfall.

Inspired by eighteenth-century household books of recipes and set at the time of the invention of the first restaurants, An Appetite for Violets is a literary feast for lovers of historical fiction. Martine Bailey's novel opens a window into the fascinating lives of servants, while also delivering a suspenseful tale of obsession and betrayal.

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Review: The Honest Truth

By Dan Gemeinhart
Available now from Scholastic Press
Review copy

I was 100% sure I did not want to read a novel about a twelve-year-old boy with cancer, but I was convinced to give this one a try anyway because of some trustworthy people gushing about the writing.  I must say that the writing is lovely, especially the little haiku Mark comes up with on his journey.

THE HONEST TRUTH evokes old-school adventure novels, just a boy and his dog surviving on their own.  The boy is not stranded by a plain crash nor parental death or abandonment.  He runs away to climb Mt. Rainier, which he promised to climb before he died.  And he's afraid, and angry, now that his cancer is back.  He fought a long, four-year fight, and Mark's not sure if he's up for fighting again, even if he doesn't want to die.

That angry part is important.  I loved that Mark is not a nobly suffering kid with cancer.  He is tired of being the nobly sick child.  He makes a lot of bad decisions in THE HONEST TRUTH, but they do feel like they come from an honest place.  They come from anger and despair and fear.

There are places where the novel falls apart for me.  The chapters alternate with interstitials from Jessie, Mark's best friend who knows where he is running.  I wasn't thrilled by the depiction of their friendship, but horrified that she wouldn't realize this is not a time to keep her friend's secret, especially when the weather turns worse.  I find the adult who knows that Mark is the runaway on television and does nothing to stop his foolhardy plan absolutely unbelievable.  I must agree with Mrs. Yingling that Mark choosing to take his small dog on this dangerous journey is unspeakable, rather than a beautiful portrayal of the bond between boy and companion.

I thought THE HONEST TRUTH was a beautifully told story, and I really liked that Dan Gemeinhart didn't turn it into a tearjerker.  THE HONEST TRUTH was much less sad than I expected.  At the same time, if you're handing this book to someone actually in the intended audience, I'd accompany it with a discussion about bad decisions.  I can just forgive the ailing twelve-year-old, but so many of the other characters act like they have no sense.

Review: The Vanishing Girl

First in a trilogy
By Laura Thalassa
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

I'll admit that I wanted to read THE VANISHING GIRL entirely because I thought the cover was gorgeous.  I like the colors and the abstract strangeness, like a bit of classic sci-fi sneaking into a modern YA cover.

The eponymous girl is Ember Pierce, who teleports for ten minutes every night just after she falls asleep.  She thinks she used to it until she wakes up in a club and flirts with a man named Adrian, only to find a gun in her purse and a note telling her to kill him.  Rather sensibly, she panics more over someone knowing what she can do and trying to use her instead of attempting to assassinate a complete stranger.

Then she finds out that her parents could only have a child through an experimental program, and she now owes two years of service to the military.  It's very obviously illegal and preposterous, even in a world where people can teleport, so you just have to go with it.  At the school she's taken to she's paired with Caden Hawthorne, who is infuriatingly good at keeping her from escaping.  Ember falls for him in a rather rote manner, although I did appreciate that there wasn't a forced love triangle with Adrian.  The scenes between Ember and Caden are written with lots of tension, its just hard to believe she falls for him after how terribly he treats her at first.

Ember, unsurprisingly, starts to find more and more evidence that the school is sinister.  Because secret experiments on babies and being kidnapped weren't enough evidence that everything was bad new.  I sound cranky, I know.  I enjoyed reading THE VANISHING GIRL, and thought it was a a fun ride.  But after I finished, it was hard to seize on anything as a standout moment.  Also, it was one of those books without a real ending, which drives me nuts.

I am, however, eager to read the second book.  THE VANISHING GIRL ends with a cliffhanger, and I'm not sure how Ember will survive or how she'll react to what happened in the next book.  I also hope the next book has more Adrian, who is conducting his own investigation into the school and experiment outside its walls.

Review: Pacific Fire

Sequel to California Bones (my review)
By Greg van Eekhout
Available now from Tor (Macmillan)
Review copy

I've gotten used to series where one book leads directly into another.  PACIFIC FIRE starts ten years after CALIFORNIA BONES ends, which is a refreshing change of pace.  In fact, the entire book is a refreshing change of pace.

First, if you haven't read CALIFORNIA BONES, please do so.  It is a heist novel wrapped up in a well-developed urban fantasy world with a generous dollop of horror for flavor.  If you haven't read it, this review will be full of spoilers.

Daniel Blackland spent those ten years after the heist on the run with Sam, the Hierarch's golem.  Both are wanted because they'd be perfect ingredients in someone else's spell.  When Argent, an old frenemy comes with news that various factions in LA are banding together to build a dragon, Daniel knows he has to leave hiding to stop it.  The point of view switches between the three men, giving multiple perspectives on a dangerous mission gone wrong.

I love the world Greg van Eekhout is developing.  It's full of sinister and helpful characters, a lovely mix of the wonder of powerful magic and the horrible things that are done to make it stronger.  Despite the fact that most of Daniel and Sam's bonding happens off page, there's never a doubt about their father-son relationship.  It is a strong emotional anchor for the novel.  I liked that most of the characters from CALIFORNIA BONES who survived showed up again, although lamented that Cassandra gets the least to do.

This is a fast-paced novel that ends in a killer cliffhanger.  It is looser than CALIFORNIA BONES, since it doesn't have the heist structure.  But as crazy as things get, they never feel like they're out of van Eekhout's control.  I can't wait for the next book, because things are going to go down.  And based on the strength of PACIFIC FIRE and CALIFORNIA BONES, I trust van Eekhout to stick the landing.