Review: The Truth About Alice

By Jennifer Mathieu
Available now from Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan)
Review copy

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE is told elliptically, through the eyes of her frenemy, her ex-best friend, a grieving golden boy, and a nerd with a crush.  She gets the final word, but most of the words are gossip, innuendo, speculation, and outright lies.

It all started at a party hosted by Elaine.  Shortly after the party everyone knew Alice had slept with two guys within one hour.  Then one of those guys, Brandon, died in a car crash, and Josh blamed Alice for distracting him with texts.  That's all it takes for Alice to end up totally ostracized, as a slut and killer.  Kelsie, her former friend, thinks she can't trust that Alice didn't sleep with the guys like she says.  Kurt wants to help, if he can gather the courage to speak to Alice.

The points of view weave together seamlessly, moving back and forth through time as they reveal their secrets, how they relate to Alice, and how they led to Alice being a scapegoat.  Everyone has their pain and regrets.  What happens to Alice is incredibly cruel, but debut author Jennifer Matheiu keeps it believable.  Even more, she doesn't demonize anyone.  Brandon might've been a heinous douche, but he still didn't deserve to die.

That being said, THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE is not a subtle book.  The characters have depths, but right and wrong are clearly portrayed.  It works though, because we do live in a world where girls are shamed for sex, whether they've had it or not.  Alice's voice isn't heard until the end, and that's very intentional.  Whether she had sex with Brandon or not isn't the question.  The way her classmates and town treat her is.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE is loosely woven, driven more by character than incident.  It is a very good thing the book is short, because there isn't much of a plot to speak of.  But the emotional journey is very cathartic and hopeful.  This is a stunning debut, and I look forward to Mathieu's sophomore novel.

Review: Take Back the Skies

The first book in the Tellus World series
By Lucy Saxon
Available now from Bloomsbury
Review copy

Nineteen-year-old Lucy Saxon's debut novel TAKE BACK THE SKIES wears its influences on its sleeve, but that doesn't stop it from being a fast-paced adventure with a surprising ending.

Protagonist Cat disguises herself as a boy and runs away to escape an arranged marriage to a true boor.  She hides on an airship headed out of the country.  From there, it doesn't take her long to realize that her own country isn't actually fighting an overseas war.  So why, exactly, are ever more children being conscripted for the army?  It is up to Cat to rally the smugglers and use her knowledge of the country's upper class to find the answers and effect change.

TAKE BACK THE SKIES has some serious worldbuilding issues.  The world's technology is pretty inconsistent.  There are mecha and electronic locks, but there appear to be no cars and people carry around money purses that are snatched by orphan pickpockets like something out of a Victorian novel.  Every time a bit of technology was mentioned I would abruptly remember that the story wasn't set in a quasi-18th century world.  Then there's the fact that the ersatz war seems far too preposterous to have lasted seven years.  Why would anyone believe that thirteen year olds were needed for the army?  Especially when they seem to stop recruiting before eighteen.  What sort of war would make an eighteen year old too old?  There are no efforts to explain this.

At the same time, I really enjoyed the story.  TAKE BACK THE SKIES moves quickly enough that you can turn off your brain and go with the flow.  Cat is an appealing protagonist.  I liked her insistence that she could pull her own weight and take care of herself, even when I rolled my eyes at her saying that life with her neglectful father was as bad as Fox's life as a poor orphan.  Fox, the love interest, struck me as generic, but he didn't do anything to make me dislike him.  (The romance, sadly, takes a turn for the worse when the obligatory love triangle rears its head.)  The other four members of the crew were easy to remember, even if they didn't get much character depth.  (And I appreciated the inclusion of a gay couple.  Or I assume we were meant to assume that they're a gay couple.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the ending of TAKE BACK THE SKIES.  I felt like it undermined some of the themes of the story.  The blurb promises that there are five more books in Tellus world to come, but they are non-linear and explore other parts of the world.  I do hope they address some of the fallout of Cat's final decisions.  It's generally an unsatisfying ending for the character, even if it is a satisfying ending for the story.

I feel like TAKE BACK THE SKIES could've really been special with a bit more attention to how the world actually operated and a bit less attention on the bog-standard romance.  At the same time, I really liked Cat and was swept along by the plot.  It's a fine first novel.

Review: Present Darkness

The fourth Emmanuel Cooper mystery
By Malla Nunn
Available now from Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Review copy

The Emmanuel Cooper books just might be my favorite ongoing mystery series.  The series started in 2009 with A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, set in 1952 South Africa.  Although PRESENT DARKNESS comes three books later, it is only one year later in story time.

The setting is incredibly important to these novels.  Apartheid legislation started in 1948.  It segregated people - white, black, mixed race, Indian - as well as services.  It also made sexual relations and marriage between people of different races illegal.  Cooper, a detective sergeant, grew up in a mixed-race slum, growing up as a "white kaffir."  In the present, he seeks to hide his sympathies even as he helps find justice for those the law would ignore.  It's becoming harder, especially since he has to hide all details of his private life.  His girlfriend is mixed race and they have a daughter together.

PRESENT DARKNESS starts with two separate crimes.  A prostitute is kidnapped.  A white couple is critically beaten, and their daughter names two black men as the attackers.  The first crime takes a long time to tie into the story, although the updates on the girl's situation are quite harrowing and make one hope that she'll somehow escape a grisly fate.  The second seems like an open and shut case.  However, one of the men she names is the son of Cooper's good friend Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala.  Cooper realizes that the crime is too neat and investigates on his own.

The mystery weaves together slowly, taking several unpredictable turns, complicated at every step by the inescapable racial politics.  Malla Nunn's hero might be impossibly progressive, but he does have his dark side, and as the case gets more personal it brings out his violence.  I thought PRESENT DARKNESS hammered a bit too hard on Cooper's concern about his secret family being discovered, but I did like how the theme of family was woven through the climax.

This series is good because Nunn's plotting is tight and twisted, the sense of place not a gimmick but an integral part of each mystery.  It is also good because Nunn's writing is so good.  Nunn got her start in screenwriting, and she has a real sense for laying out cinematic landscapes.  You can practically see the geography rolling out before you.  A new book in a favorite series is always cause for celebration, and PRESENT DARKNESS didn't let me down.  I know I'll be back for book five.

Review: The Feral Child

By Che Golden
Available now from Quercus
Review copy

THE FERAL CHILD is a story of imagination, loyalty, and bravery inspired by Irish folklore.  Orphan Maddy lives with her grandparents, and has been acting out some (understandably).  When she first encounters a strange boy in the woods, she doesn't know what's happening.  But when he kidnaps Stephen, the toddler next door, she sees him for what he is: a faery.

Maddy sets out to save Stephen accompanied only by her dog and her Grandpa's stories, but her cousins join her.  (They're a bit over their heads, as they meant to keep her from getting into trouble, not getting involved with actual, existing faeries.)  The adults won't do anything, because they think Stephen has been found due to a changeling left in his place.

There is nothing particularly new done with the mythology, but Maddy's journey is still captivating.  She has a lot of inner turmoil that needs to heal.  The adventures are fun in and of themselves, too.  Watching the children try to outwit the clever and devious faeries is a treat - especially because Maddy isn't always the one who has the good ideas.  Her cousin Roisin, in particular, becomes integral to the quest's success.

The ending felt a touch rushed to me.  The opening of THE FERAL CHILD takes its time setting up Maddy's life in Ireland, the woods, the strange encounter that becomes stranger.  There is no time at the end, however, for wrapping up the plot about Maddy's overbearing aunt who wants to take custody.  There is lots of sequel bait, so perhaps that is saved as an ongoing plot.

THE FERAL CHILD will appeal to young fans of fairytales and folklore.

Review: Breaking Free: True Stories of Girls Who Escaped Modern Slavery

By Abby Sher
Available now from Barron's Educational Series
Review copy

In my quest to read more nonfiction, I stumbled across BREAKING FREE.  It tells the stories of three women who escaped sexual slavery - Somaly Mam, Minh Dang, and Maria Suarez - with an additional section detailing more facts about sexual slavery, what to read next, and what to do to stop human trafficking.

I really appreciated that Abby Sher focuses on what Mam, Dang, and Suarez did after they escaped their captors and how they went on to help other women in sexual slavery.  She's very clear about what happened to them, but refrains from prurience.  There are none of those magazine descriptions of rape that go into every little detail.  However, I felt that Sher's writing was too simplistic.  This is a book about sexual slavery for teens, but the style often made it seem like a book about sexual slavery for children.  I preferred the quotes in BREAKING FREE taken directly from Mam, Dang, or Suarez.

The majority of the book, slightly over one third, focuses on Mam.  She has saved innumerable Cambodian girls from sexual slavery through her foundation AFESIP.  However, she resigned from her foundation after the May 21, 2014 Newsweek article "Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking" by Simon Marks.  This article revealed that Mam lied about parts of her history and coached other girls to lie about theirs.  It casts a pall over this section of the book, and the depth of Sher's research.  (There have been previous, less complete and publicized reports, of the inconsistencies in Mam's stories.)

I think others might stumble upon BREAKING FREE and be inspired by the stories of survival and activism within.  But I can't recommend it as an introduction to the topic of sexual slavery.  I do recommend that people look into the stories of Maria Suarez and Minh Dang.  They will be particularly eye opening to some readers, because both women were held captive in the United States.  Trafficking is a problem everywhere.