Plot Summary:  Only at Manderley Academy to please her parents, if being away from home and super hard classes were not enough, the “new girl” is faced with reminders of the girl whose place she took–Becca.  She is in Becca’s room, she has feelings for Max Holloway, the love of Becca’s life and strange hints of what might have happened to Becca who just disappeared one night.  She doesn’t want Becca’s life, regardless of what roommate Dana thinks, but what will happen if Becca comes back?

Critical Analysis:  A little contrived in places, this re-telling of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier mostly works.  Most of the contrivances take place at the beginning.  I wish the author could have figured out another way to get the new girl into the story and at the boarding school…her parents remember her 8th grade wish and apply as a surprise?  And she doesn’t tell them that she doesn’t really want to go so goes anyway for her senior year?  Hard to buy, especially since she spends so much, especially at the beginning, longing for home and family and friends.  I also found some of the re-imagining/re-telling to be a little, well, literal.  A costume party where Dana Veers convinces the new girl to wear the same costume as Becca–straight out of the original.

And yet, the whole cruelty and cattiness between some of the girls really works, as does the isolation and independence of boarding school.  As with the original, the character of Becca and the mystery of what happened to her overshadows everything–the new girl can’t escape.  And still, the new girl manages to overcome, to be herself, to like her life, her situation and to realize she is more than just some girl from Florida, or some new girl who took a popular girl’s place.  I think teens girls will really like this, and if other blog reviews are any indication, they won’t have read the original but perhaps now they will seek it out–and maybe the movie too.

Readalikes: Breathless by Jessica Warman–Katie didn’t expect to like the boarding school, she didn’t want to be away from her older brother Will.  She can just be one of the girls, and focus on swimming and schoolwork.   So why then does she tell everyone he’s dead?

Looking for Alaska by John Green–Miles “Pudge” Halter is abandoning his ordinary life, leaving for boarding school where he is surrounded by friends whose lives are everything except ordinary. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, Pudge realizes that life is to be lived and love to be given freely.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier–the inspiration for the story, which has great teen appeal in its own right.

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced e-galley.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  All 19 year old Hannah has ever wanted to do with her life is dance.  And she is so close to living her dream.  Dancing with the prestigious Manhattan Ballet, she and her friends, all fellow dancers, eat, drink, and sleep ballet.  When they aren’t dancing, they are getting ready for a show, attending dinners and galas to fund raise for the company, gossiping about other dancers, taking yoga and Pilates classes, and hoping to make soloist.  But when Hannah meets musician and non-dancer Jacob, everything starts to change.  What has she given up in order to be a ballerina?

Critical Analysis:  I feel in love with ballet when I saw The Nutcracker on television.  Up till that point, I had been studying clogging (which was lots of fun in its own way.)  I begged my mother to let me switch to ballet classes.  There was something so graceful, so beautiful, so perfect about the dancers I had seen.  Bunheads shows all sides of the ballet world.  The beautiful glitzy innocent perfect side of performance is exemplified through Matilda, the young daughter of a stage hand who is enthralled with ballet and adores Hannah.  The intense competitive sometimes dark side is shown through Hannah and her friends, who comfort and confide in one another but always compete and never fully trust.  There is rejoicing in compliments, getting cast in certain parts while at the same time jealousy and despair.  How did that dancer get chosen over me?  There are even horrible scenes where Hannah is told to lose weight in her breasts and a star dancer collapses.

Even when Hannah starts to question her world and her devotion to dance, there are still moments where the reader can see that she loves ballet–a dancing a combination in a quiet moment, going up into the flies to have the best view of the performance.  Flack does an excellent job of communicating Hannah’s emotions to the reader.  We see her eyes opening and her world expanding.  We feel her being pulled in many directions, her struggle to return to her dream once she realizes that there might just be more out there for her.

I loved this book for it’s realistic portrayal of the world of professional ballet, all the glitz and the glam and the dirt.  Rather like Hannah’s description of her costume for dancing Rubies in Balachine’s Jewels: “The costume is a cherry-red cropped Lyrca dress that hits just below the hip.  The bodice is adorned with glittering ruby crystals all the way down to my belly button….The costume is old and not easy to clean and has a distinctly human smell….If I look closely, I can see where the fabric has been bleached by the sweat of other dancers and places where missing jewels have been replaced with ones that don’t exactly match” (p. 273).

With the popularity of movies such as The Black Swan and television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance?, even girls who aren’t dancers will enjoy this book.

Readalikes: For more books featuring dance:  So You Think You Can (Read About) Dance

Review Excerpts: ”A multi-layered and absorbing good read by a promising debut novelist.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilaration and drudgery, passion and exhaustion, exist side by side for dancers in the exalted Manhattan Ballet, a world unto itself, which Flack (a former New York City Ballet dancer) brings vividly to life in this strong debut.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“…[A]n entertaining read, shedding light on a world most readers know nothing about. After the success of the Oscar-winning Black Swan, this title will appeal to dancers and those with two left feet.”–School Library Journal

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  Teens Keri, Janna and Sione have something in common.  All had an older brother who committed suicide.  Janna tells Keri she and summer fling Sione think it might have been murder, with a pattern of deaths stretching back for years.  They try and catch the person responsible, but when they get close, strange and dangerous things start to happen.  Will they stop the killer from striking again?  Or end up victims themselves?

Critical Analysis:  I have a hard time writing about a book like this, as I don’t want to give too much away, so here goes nothing.

I hesitate to call this novel paranormal.  For me, as of late, that term invokes visions of vampires, werewolves and ghosts in a sort of other world that might look like our world but is different.  Healey instead gives the reader something real.  Real feelings both on the part of the main characters and the secondary ones.  Grief and fear and a need to do something, to take control.   Human feelings and motives that drive actions both good and bad.  This reality adds a layer of fear and suspense and emotion to the events as they unfold.  This story, the setting, and the characters as so well realized that days after finishing the book, I can see it in my mind, playing like a movie.  (It would be an excellent teen horror movie I think.)

Readalikes:  I was reminded of Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery and of Margo Lanagan’s Singing My Sister Down.

Review Excerpts:  ”[A]n intense and powerful novel that explores the effect of suicide on families….skillfully keeps her characters on an emotional roller-coaster even as they deal with physical threats. The climax delivers a gut punch that only underscores the sensitivity of the subject matter (without lessening the thrill at all).”–Publisher’s Weekly

“Healey has got a whopper of a concept here, and strong main characters to make the most of it. It is easy to identify with at least one of the trio—shattered Keri, lovely Janna, soulful Sione—and get swept up in the mystery that surrounds them as they work to protect Takeshi and Aroha, who are endearing.”–VOYA

“Told in alternating chapters by the teens, the story unfolds at an even pace, with the characters developing into fully realized and distinctly different personalities. Healey merges Maori and Samoan words and cultural influences throughout the text. A good choice for teens who prefer their fantasies mixed with more realism.”–School Library Journal

“…Healey (Guardian of the Dead, 2010) seamlessly integrates noir and fantasy tropes to explore issues of suicide, trust, sexuality, race, insecurity and free will in a way that feels fresh.”–Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Wow this is a busy week.  First Mystery Series Week, and now Great Books.  According to the website, “Great Books Week 2011 is honoring Great Expectations in its 150th anniversary year.”  They suggest all kinds of activities surrounding the book, including reading it online, watching the 1946 movie, and participating in their blog challenges.

I first read Great Expectations in maybe 3rd (?) grade in a paperback adaption from the Great Illustrated Classics series.  I had received a set for Christmas and felt rather grown up to read the classics.  (Nowadays I am torn–a part of me wants to say read the original!  But then, I read the adaption first and still went on to read and enjoy the full version of this and many others later.)  I remember reading the full novel in 9th grade Honors English.  It was a perfect kind of story for teenagers.  I think if I were to read it again now, I might feel differently.

Matter of fact, for anyone interested in the classics, I highly recommend finding audio versions.  I spent one summer listening to Pride and Prejudice on my mp3 player.  Austen’s writing (especially the dialogue) really came alive.  So I am off to my public library site to see if they have Great Expectations for me to download.  You can see what your library has as well.

Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography

Plot Summary:  The summer before eighth grade, and Drew is working in her mother’s cheese shop where she hangs out with surf bum Nick (who she also has a crush on.)  When she isn’t working, she plays with her pet rat and ponders her dead father’s Book of Lists.  When she met Emmett in the alley behind the shop after closing one night, she never expected the friendship and adventure that would follow.

Critical Analysis:  This quiet unassuming book is almost perfect.  A perfect picture of what it is like to have your everyday existence interrupted, to allow a stranger to become a friend, to widen the circle of your life.  It is about small events that change us and how we have to take a chance to grow and become the person we are going to be.  At least partially autobiographical in nature, Reinhardt’s mother also owned a gourmet cheese shop, it is also a perfect snapshot of atmosphere, time, and place.  I hope that librarians are preparing their booktalks using the details of rats, cheese and the Book of Lists to entice readers to pick this up.  They won’t be disappointed.

Review Excerpts: “Laced with mystery and fascinating details about Drew’s chief interests—rats and cheese—this quiet novel invites readers to share in its heroine’s deepest yearnings, changing moods, and difficult realizations. Strong imagery…will stay with readers.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“Reinhardt has written another book that will resonate with any readers learning to spread their wings and fly.”–School Library Journal

“[A]  lucid voice that is thoughtful and entertaining without being showy….There is a hint throughout of being a step removed that balances the immediacy of the events being related and the power of hindsight….Quiet yet immensely appealing.”–Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography: Pearce, Jackson. (2011). Sweetly. New York: Little Brown Young Readers. ISBN: 978-0316068659

Plot Summary:  As a child, Gretchen all but watched as her twin sister was taken by a witch in the woods.  Brother Ansel could do nothing either.  They kept waiting for the witch to return for them.  Many years later,  their stepmother kicked them out and they got in their car and drove, and drove and drove until it died outside of Live Oak, South Carolina.  Young and beautiful, candy maker Sophia invites them to stay, then keeps finding tasks for Ansel to do to keep them around.  The witch won’t find them here, or will she?  Local Samuel tells Gretchen of something that lurks in the woods and makes young girls disappear after the chocolate festival.  Could it be after her?  But this time, Gretchen is not going to run, but stand and fight.  The more Gretchen learns, the more afraid she becomes of discovering who the real monster is.

Critical Analysis:  I actually liked this much more than Sisters Red.  The problem I had with Sisters Red was that the book focused on the three characters and really no one else.  This made it hard for the characters to grow or change, and in places was to be honest a bit slow and boring.  Characters need other characters to interact with, they need to be out in the world.  I think Sweetly expands the picture, adding more primary and secondary players to the mix.  It feels more real, like a time and place and people that you might meet in the South.  I also find this loss and fear to be more primal.  The idea that something is lurking in the woods and the only reason it doesn’t have you yet is because it hasn’t caught you feels very much like an underlying theme from any number of traditional fairy tales.  And while I see many call this a reconstruction of the original tale (Hansel and Gretel) for me it is actually much closer to a retelling or re imagining and that works for me.

Review Excerpts: “The story revisits several themes…including sibling bonds and betrayals, the loss of childhood innocence, and the sharp teeth of the big, bad world. Gretchen is a more nuanced character …and her relationship with Ansel doesn’t suffer quite as much from the trials they face together.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“This is more of a mash-up of the fairy tale and some recent best sellers than a reframing of the story in a deep Southern setting, and Pearce’s writing is too long on breathlessness and suppressed anguish and too short on actual plot. Will any of this pull readers in? Make them want to read 300 pages? Highly unlikely.”–School Library Journal

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  Esme may be the only white Jewish lesbian teen in her Minneapolis suburb, but she has found her place with her 3 best friends performing in Sister Mischief, laying down hip hop beats and rhymes.  The girls decide to protest when the school sets a policy against any rap or associated clothing or paraphernalia.  When Esme realizes she has feelings for Rohini, part of her crew, she must come to realize that love, sex, coming out and culture can make matters of the heart complicated.

Critical Analysis:  It took me a few chapters to really get into this book, there is so much going on.  (Too much?)  It isn’t enough to have a white lesbian hip hop artist, let’s put her in Minnesota.  And make her Jewish.   And have her mom leave.  And give her a reason to protest her school administration.  And use texts and tweets and notes in a notebook to tell the story.  And then, somewhere around Sister Mischief’s first concert and meeting with the principal to protest the new policy against rap and hip hop culture, I fell for Esme and her crew.

I identified with them, I felt what it is like to be on the fringes, to be different and know it.  I felt the wonder of Esme and Rohini’s exploration of their feelings and of each other.  I felt both their pain when the romance ended.  I felt the empowerment behind their 4H meetings and their music.  I felt the love and unconditional acceptance that Esme and her dad shared.

It would be easy to say this is a good GLBTQ book for teens, which it is.  But more than that, this is a book for all teens who have ever felt like outsiders, like they were going against the stream to get to some other destination.  I just hope that those teens who need this story will wade through the beginning to settle into the rhythm that is Esme and her crew.

Review Excerpts:  ”Debut novelist Goode shows she’s as much of a “word nerd” as her characters….Goode knows her stuff. The girls have an encyclopedic knowledge and deep love of hip-hop, and Esme’s emotionally charged rhymes flow freely. If ever a book needed a soundtrack—or a beatbox—this is it”–Publisher’s Weekly

“[R]eaders will applaud heroine, Esme, and her band of friends. This debut novel is a funny and tender coming-of-age story. It reminds us to stand by our friends.”–VOYA

“Snappy dialogue, likable characters and an original concept make it hard to entirely dismiss this one, but the message overwhelms the good stuff.”–Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  Coming home from a party, Jack is kidnapped by a predator.  He manages to escape telling  no one except his best friend, Connor.  Later when Connor and Jack stumble across the same man, he ends up dead.  Travelling to England to look at boarding schools, Jack arrives in London a few days before Connor.  A strange man gives him  a pair of glasses showing an alternate post-apocalyptic world where Jack is trying to save two young boys while Connor has turned into a monster.  Jack wants to look away but he can’t.  The glasses call to him, and even as he looks through them, Jack wonders what is real and what isn’t.  Is he going crazy?  Or is his world?

Critical Analysis:  Interestingly enough for me, this book feels like a natural progression following Smith’s last book, In the Path of Falling Objects.  As with Objects, there is a real feel of the west here, although in this case, it feels more like a shriveled up ghost town and less like seeking a new (better) life.)  But even more so, Objects dealt with the scary heart pounding thrill of escaping from a mad serial killer.  Here Smith takes us one step closer to the darkness–what if we escape the serial killer only to discover there are even worse things in the world, that is, if the world we are in is even real?

I had a hard time reading this book.  It was so dark and so disturbing I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish it.  And yet, the character of Jack was vulnerable and needy and I had to know what happened to him, that he came out okay in the end.  I felt his fear, at the noises, his longing, his need to pick up the glasses one more time, his loss when he would come back to the present and couldn’t remember anything that had happened in the interim.  I find the juxtaposition of elements here to be as complex as they are surreal–a mix of teenage boys being boys and the darkness that is always out beyond the edge coming closer, threatening to take over.  The ambiguity is as sweet as it is frustrating.  What is real and what is just in Jack’s head?  This may be the first book in years that gets an almost immediate reread so I can soak more of it in.

Review Excerpts:  ”This bloody and genuinely upsetting book packs an enormous emotional punch. Smith’s characters are very well developed and the ruined alternate universe they travel through is both surreal and believable.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“Graphic and nightmarish, this will find a receptive audience of older teens who are fans of Stephen King’s darkest horrors….the story is suspenseful and deeply disturbing, written with multiple layers that will have readers arguing about what the apocalyptic scenes in Marbury are really all about.”–VOYA

“This is a haunting psychological drama, told in very adult language and descriptions that nonetheless is impossible to put down. Not for the fainthearted or the young, this is an incredibly well written story of emotional demons that is hard to forget.”–Children’s Literature

“An engrossing horror/fantasy hybrid, this page-turner will be best appreciated by those with a taste for ambiguous endings….Nightmarish imagery is chillingly effective, and the pacing superbly builds suspense.”–Kirkus Reviews

“This title will keep readers enthralled with its well-developed characters and unique plot…The novel is not an easy read, but it is one that will keep teens hooked….”–School Library Journal

“Mixing a trauma reckoning with dark, apocalyptic fantasy and notes of psychological horror, this commandeering novel’s multiplicity is elusively complex yet never complicated: although the many gut-quivering story elements are not clearly defined, they always speak to each other, and Smith wisely leaves much up to the reader.”–Booklist

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography

Plot Summary:  Paisley lives to play the drums, and sneaks away every day after school to play with a country rock band in her uncle’s airplane hangar.  They have hopes of playing in Austin at Texaspolooza and getting out of their small town.  When the band gets a new handsome lead singer, Gabe, Paisley tries not to faill for him and fails.  Will her feelings for him get in the way of her music?

Critical Analysis:  The Sweetheart of Prosper County, Alexander’s first book, resonated with me on a very personal level.  I knew those characters, had been at that school, in that town and those stores.  Paradise is a different kind of book–it feels more gritty and real and more like Texas to me.  (It reminds me quite a bit of the television show, Friday Night Lights, another favorite.)  While the title of the book is in reference to the lead singer, Gabe, who is from Paradise, TX, this book belongs to Paisley.  Her dreams, schemes, determination, longings, passions, feelings leap off the pages.  Paisley doesn’t share her dream with her family, her father and sister might be supportive, but her mother doesn’t see playing in a band as something to aspire to, as a way of living.  She loves both her daughters and wants for them more than she had, but doesn’t see that they need to find their own  way.  A key theme throughout the novel is that love is hard, on many levels.  Gabe wants more than Paisley can give him right now, the band’s song writer loves from afar.  Paisley’s dad knows that neither of his daughters are happy but loves his wife too much to interfere.  This story swept me away and then the bittersweet hope-filled ending got me.  Girls looking for a first romance will love this book, as will anyone, musician or not, who ever had a dream to be something more.  I am looking forward to Alexander’s next book.

Readalikes:  Although I have not read it in years, this book reminded me of Valerie Hobbes’ How Far Would You Have Gotten If I Hadn’t Called You Back? another emotionally driven teen romance.

Review Excerpts:  “Alexander’s simmering plot is equally driven by a complex story and multiple, complex characters.”—School Library Journal

“A tame romance, alternately captivating and clichéd, yet effective in portraying a determined teen driven by the music in her soul.”–Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed from author provided advanced copy.  (Thank you Jill for remembering me!)  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography

Plot Summary:  Leaving a destroyed Paris behind them, Nicholas takes the twins Josh and Sophie (and the pages of the codex) to London, dangerous territory of Dr. John Dee, in hopes of finding Gilgamesh the King to awaken the twins’ elemental magic of water.  With Pernelle trapped on Alcatraz and Scatty missing, the group will need all the help they can get.  Thank goodness London is also the home of Francis’ friend Palamedes and Shakespeare.  The twins and Nicholas will need all the help they can get to fight their way out of London to the location of the ley lines that will hopefully take them to California and Pernelle.

Critical Analysis:  Usually I don’t have patience for long books that are part of longer series that seem to go on and on.  For some reason,  The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel is a rare exception.  I think it is partly because of its basis in legend and mythology.  There is something so elemental in these creatures and their powers that speaks to Jung’s archtypes and collective unconscious.  It takes a real skill in crafting a plot to make these ideas and creatures both new and familiar.  Secondly, I love the historical figures.  If Nicholas and Pernelle can be immortal, then it makes sense that others might be as well.  And I like the fact that people become immortal for different reasons in different ways.

I find the twins to be perhaps the least interesting part of the story–they exist to drive the plot and to be acted upon.  For me, the characters that interest me most are Nicholas and Pernerlle.  I like that we get even more glimpses of who they are, their past in this entry in the series.  I would like even more of that, or perhaps a prequel.  I think this book has great appeal to both boys and girls, and while a bit violent in places, I think could go down into upper elementary.  I highly recommend the audio version, as it makes the action seem even more realistic.

Review Excerpts:  ”This book is a must-read for fans of the series, but even they will tire if the author doesn’t get to the point with reasonable dispatch.”–School Library Journal

“The intricacy of weaving so many legends into one complicated contemporary conglomerate is a fascinating juggling act, though plot is sometimes sacrificed for simply piling on new characters—which leads to some narrative bloat. Immersively imagined, this series remains a great choice to fill the post-Potter vacuum.”–Booklist

“Master yarnspinner that he is, Scott expertly cranks up the suspense while keeping his now-large cast in quick motion…this page-turner promises plenty of action to come.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Teens familiar with the previous two books or fans of adventure fantasies like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series will eat this one up.”–VOYA

Reviewed from public library audiobook.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.