Category Archives: young adult fiction reviews

THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS, a Young Adult Novel by Chloe Gong, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS
by Chloe Gong
Simon Pulse, Simon & Schuster, 464 pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

These violent delights book jacketChloe Gong’s These Violent Delights is a vibrant reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, taking place during the Roaring Twenties in Shanghai of 1926. Gong’s tale of two star-crossed yet ill-fated lovers begins in the middle of a fierce blood feud between two warring gangs: the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers. Described as “an age-old hatred whose cause had been forgotten to time,” their bitter vendetta runs deeper than the Huangpu River that cuts through the city. The weight of each gang’s future rests heavily on the shoulders of both Juliette Cai, heir to the Scarlets, and Roma Montagov, heir to the White Flowers. The pain of betrayal burns at each heir’s core, engulfing their previous love in flames. However, when a sinister presence lurking within the depths of the Huangpu threatens all of Shanghai, Juliette and Roma must work together if they ever hope to save everyone, including each other.

I thoroughly enjoyed Gong’s rendition of a timeless classic, combining Shakespearean pomp with Jazz Age flair. Her story of Juliette and Roma still rings true to the original, but what makes her tale different is that Gong adds historical, sociopolitical, and supernatural elements that give her tale a new level of context and depth. These elements put our two titular characters in a situation that’s more than simply rekindling a love once lost—the fates of the Scarlets, the White Flowers, and all of Shanghai hang in the balance. Told through the perspectives of Juliette, Roma, and a few secondary characters, These Violent Delights explores the struggles of two former lovers not only fighting to define who they are, but also fighting hard to protect those they love.

I appreciate Gong’s choice to subvert the gendered character roles of Juliette and Roma. The dainty, demure Juliette we’ve seen before is now, as Gong writes, a “Killer. Violent. Ruthless. All those and more­—that’s who [Juliette] was now.” As the female heir to the Scarlets, Juliette has to prove herself tenfold because a demure girl has no place leading the gang, but a dangerous woman can.

I appreciate Gong’s choice to subvert the gendered character roles of Juliette and Roma. The dainty, demure Juliette we’ve seen before is now, as Gong writes, a “Killer. Violent. Ruthless. All those and more­—that’s who [Juliette] was now.” As the female heir to the Scarlets, Juliette has to prove herself tenfold because a demure girl has no place leading the gang, but a dangerous woman can. Roma, on the other hand, is written as an heir who is loyal to the White Flowers, but sees things as a means to an end. Driven by emotion, Roma was once favored among his gang, but Gong writes that “…one day Roma had been trusted by his father as closely as one should expect from a son and the next, regarded suspiciously as if Roma were the enemy.” Now Roma makes sure to tread lightly—for his own protection, the protection of what’s still rightfully his, and the power that comes with it.

Chloe Gong

As riveting as Juliette and Roma are, the secondary characters are rife with personalities befitting their namesakes. Juliette’s cousin Rosalind is as Shakespeare writes: “The all-seeing sun / ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.” Stunning, cunning, and beautiful, Rosalind and her sister Kathleen are sisters with a deep bond and affection for one another. Gong brings Shakespeare’s comedic heroines from As You Like It and makes them prominent and capable women worthy of one day running the Scarlets beside Juliette. In contrast, Juliette’s quick-tempered cousin Tyler is the next male in line to rule the Scarlets—posing a direct threat to Juliette. Gong writes, “[Juliette’s] cousin was a boy with steel skin and a heart of glass.”

In Roma’s court we have Benedikt and Marshall, two of my favorite pairs in this story and in the original tale as Benvolio and Mercutio. Gong writes that Benedikt “always seemed to be simmering over something right below the surface, but nothing ever came through, no matter how close he came to it.” A calm, collected peacekeeper, he ensures that Roma and Marshall don’t get into trouble. Marshall is the opposite. Impatient and impulsive, Marshall moves, as Gong writes, “like the world was on the verge of ending and he needed to jam as many movements in as possible.” Then we have the old, wise, and intelligent Lourens reminiscent of Friar Lawrence, offering advice and aid to Roma during his investigation of life and death. Gong’s choice to tell the story from these varied perspectives made me invested in how Juliette and Roma’s actions directly influence their lives as well. The lives of the secondary characters further raise the stakes for Juliette and Roma, as their rekindling love further puts their friends in harm’s way.

What I admire about Gong’s writing is that she uses descriptive language akin to Shakespeare, but modernizes it to the slang and flair of the twenties. She also incorporates Russian, Korean, and Chinese language throughout the story to strengthen her characters’ cultural backgrounds. Though the language is reminiscent of lofty Shakespearean, her imagery and attention to detail create such a gritty yet colorful world that I could clearly visualize.

When members of both the Scarlets and White Flowers fall victim to the maddening demise of the Huangpu beast, Juliette and Roma set off to discover the cause. Although a deep-seated vendetta keeps Juliette from trusting Roma, and Roma has to prove his loyalty to his father, they are both bound by their duties as heirs to protect the members of their respective gangs. Their investigation points to clues of the monster’s origin, but the truth is one that moves beyond the petty feud of the Scarlets and White Flowers­—the monster’s wrath threatens everyone who encounters it, putting all of Shanghai in danger.

Gong weaves Chinese history throughout Juliette and Roma’s story, having Shanghai’s socioeconomic and economic status in the Roaring Twenties influence the operations and allegiances of the Scarlets and White Flowers. Eastern culture finds itself shrinking at the expense of a Western culture seeking to become more prominent.

Gong weaves Chinese history throughout Juliette and Roma’s story, having Shanghai’s socioeconomic and economic status in the Roaring Twenties influence the operations and allegiances of the Scarlets and White Flowers. Eastern culture finds itself shrinking at the expense of a Western culture seeking to become more prominent. Communists are gaining prominence and power within the city through workers strikes and backdoor dealings, threatening the Nationalists who want Shanghai to remain as it was. Juliette notices this, which strikes a sour chord with her pride in being Shanghainese. Roma is the descendant of Russian immigrants who claim parts of Shanghai as their official territory, and he doesn’t want any more competition with other foreigners, especially Communists. French and British influences were taking hold of the city, the integration forming less of a melting pot and more like crabs fighting in a barrel. Gong describes Shanghai as “[a] place that rumbles on Western idealism and Eastern labor, hateful of its split and unable to function without it, multiple facets fighting and grappling in ever-constant quarrel.” This historical context grounds the story, making it more tangible and real for me as a reader.

Gong’s horrifyingly symbolic creature of the Huangpu, described from different points of view spread via rumors throughout the city, is a creature that only terrorizes Shanghai at night, and anyone caught in its wake kills themselves in madness. Rarely seen, the creature takes a form of its own in my mind as a reader, as well as the minds of the characters. What I enjoyed most about the beast was that as foreboding as it was, it was also vulnerable, in a way like the city of Shanghai. One account of the monster describes it “panting, as if in pain, as if struggling against itself, half cast in shadow but doubtlessly an unnatural, strange thing.” As I read further I realized that Shanghai was the same way, a formidable creature that no longer recognizes itself.

As the first book in a series, Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights is a captivating, sharp and suspenseful retelling of an age-old classic. Original and reminiscent of Shakespeare’s story, this work feels entirely new and leaves me excited to see how it continues.

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

TIGERS, NOT DAUGHTERS, a young adult novel by Samantha Mabry, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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TIGERS, NOT DAUGHTERS
by Samantha Mabry
Algonquin Young Readers
288 pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Tigers Not Daughters book jacketSamantha Mabry’s Tigers, Not Daughters is a modern-day ghost story that follows the Torres sisters—Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa—one year after the untimely death of their oldest sister, Ana. Wracked with grief, the Torres sisters ache for Ana; but their profound sadness is met with unexpected events that eventually make their sister’s presence known: raps on doors and windows, writings on the walls, sensory overload, recurring storms, flickering lights, dying animals, and one escaped spotted hyena lurking in the darkness of their neighborhood in Southtown. Ana reappears in a way the girls can’t begin to imagine and returns with a vengeance they don’t understand. Mabry tells a riveting tale of three sisters who discover the power of sisterhood and what it means to stay together despite insurmountable, unnatural odds.

What stood out to me while reading Tigers, Not Daughters was how colorful and tangible each of the Torres sisters is. Their characterization is well-rounded, Mabry vividly telling the story through the individual perspectives of each sister, as well as including a fourth perspective of a character that watches them from afar. Each sister is unique in not just who they are, but in how they grieve over the loss of Ana.

Jessica, the oldest of the newly-rendered trio, bears the weight of the entire Torres family on her shoulders, a weight that used to be Ana’s to carry. Jessica deeply admires her sister, so in her absence she willingly assumes the role of the head of the household: taking care of their good-for-nothing father, Rafe, looking out for her younger sisters, and working at the local pharmacy to help put food on the table and keep the roof over their heads. But grief warps Jessica’s admiration of Ana into an unhealthy emulation of her. To mourn the loss of her sister Jessica tries to become her sister. As Mabry writes, “She was wearing Ana’s lipstick, a dangerous shade of near-hot pink, as well as a bluebonnet blue sundress that used to belong to her older sister. It was several sizes too big and swallowed her up.” I love Mabry’s description of Ana’s clothes “swallowing” Jessica up because it serves more than to show what she looks like, it describes how Jessica feels. Jessica is stifled by Ana’s absence, and mimicking her sister leaves her empty with no identity to claim for herself. This lack of personhood results in Jessica’s second tell-tale trait: her anger. The author writes that “Jessica was mean because she was so full of life that it chafed her from the inside out.”

Samantha Mabry

Iridian is the second-oldest of the sisters, a quiet girl who Mabry describes as someone who “never went anywhere without three things: a worn-out paperback copy of The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, a black-and-white composition notebook, and a peacock blue ink pen.” Ana’s death causes her to seek refuge in the books Ana left behind, and she tries to process her emotions through writing stories in her notebook. What I find interesting about Iridian is how Mabry describes so much of her character through her name alone: she’s observant to a fault but her pain allows her to only see what she wants to see, shutting out everything else and using her imagination to fill in the rest. Iridian internalizes her grief, coming across as cold, unfeeling, and stoic; but in reading the book further I realized that the opposite of this was true. To quote the book, “She felt everything—too much.” Iridian hides so much of herself within the pages of books because, without Ana, Mabry writes, “the world seemed so hard for her to live in.”

Rosa is the youngest of the three, an adventurous spirit who finds solace in nature among the animals. It was Ana who discovered that Rosa’s love of animals is something more, something akin to magic, and she continues to be in the company of creatures after Ana’s death. To honor Ana’s memory Rosa communicates with animals, particularly fireflies. She’s described as “[wanting] the creatures of this world to know they were being heard.” I find Rosa’s character special in that, despite being the youngest, she’s actually the most level-headed of her sisters. I believe Rosa’s maturity comes from channeling her grief to build upon her unique gift. Ana taught Rosa to love her abilities, thus she spends her time doing what she enjoys. Through Ana’s past encouragement, Rosa gains a unique piece of herself in Ana’s absence, while her sisters lose parts of themselves.

Mabry spins this modern ghost story with a fierce yet subtle magic that courses through her words, each sentence coming together like an incantation—filled with intent, purpose, and emotion.

Mabry spins this modern ghost story with a fierce yet subtle magic that courses through her words, each sentence coming together like an incantation—filled with intent, purpose, and emotion. Mabry is no stranger to the fundamental tenet of writing: “show, don’t tell,” which makes the story so riveting. Ana’s haunting spurs a series of events that are all connected, and the author reveals the true reason behind Ana’s return by employing classic storytelling techniques.

Rosa is the first of the sisters who learns of Ana’s return—noticing an abundance of fireflies in the evening, symbolic of her sisterly bond with Ana. Iridian’s copy of The Witching Hour foreshadows the haunting of the Torres sisters nicely, Mabry even hinting at the book’s ending: “at the end of The Witching Hour, the ghost wins.” Between the perspectives of Rosa, Iridian, and Jessica lies a fourth narrative—a quiet observer in the Torres sisters’ tale, reminiscent of the chorus of a Greek tragedy. The narrator is privy to the lives of the sisters, offering a near-omniscient perspective that adds a refreshing depth to the story. The author teases the identity of the fourth narrator with contextual clues, such as “We were the first people to witness Ana come back as a ghost, and we considered ourselves lucky.” Mabry sprinkles the tiniest details that help move the story along like breadcrumbs to follow, and near the end of the book I was delighted to discover who the mysterious narrator was.

In their pain each Torres sister holds onto a piece of Ana for themselves, each one believing that they love Ana more than the others. Grief is a personal, individualized struggle that Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa know all too well, so much so that their own pain cleaves them apart. Ana is supposed to be the glue that holds them all together, so who are they without her? But the beauty of the Torres sisters’ bond is that it’s forged in this loss. Ana’s death and the return of her ghost forces them to lean on each other, to cleave back to one another in order to protect themselves from the wrath of their older sister.

I particularly enjoyed how Mabry conveys the story’s overarching theme: the power of sisterhood. She explores this topic both through the loss of Ana and through the lens of toxic masculinity. With Ana gone the sisters try to find comfort, solace, and healing in the men that surround them, but to no avail. The men in their lives are self-serving, twisting Ana’s death to fuel their own desires and stroke their own egos. Their father is so crippled by the loss of his oldest daughter that he neglects the needs of Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa. Mabry writes that “the weight of [his] neediness was heavy enough to crush all of the Torres sisters.” The boys that hang out in the house across the street always watch the sisters from afar but would hardly intervene to help them in their time of need. Somehow they think of themselves as the sisters’ “protectors,” the author quips, “which was a silly thing all boys thought.”

I loved how the strength of sisterhood is reinforced through the symbolism of the spotted hyena that escapes from the zoo as a result of Ana’s haunting. Spotted hyenas live in matriarchal communities where the females are bigger than the males, stronger than the males, and all rank higher than the highest-ranking male. Female hyenas are also vicious killers who will hunt together and do whatever it takes to protect the other females in their cackle. Mabry is very intentional in her symbolism, as the hyena’s presence is Ana’s way of sending a message to her sisters that they must always stick together.

Tigers, Not Daughters is more than a modern ghost tale. The triumph of this story lies in the rawness in which the tale of the Torres sisters is told. The sisters’ loss is delicate yet ferocious, at times whispering through the pages, other times roaring to be heard. Mabry explores the depths and tenderness of grief and longing through her wonderful characterization of the Torres sisters. And her story shows us that there is something to be learned from both the literal and figurative ghosts of the past, so long as you take the time to listen.

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

WHAT I CARRY, a YA novel by Jennifer Longo, reviewed by Aja Todd

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WHAT I CARRY
by Jennifer Longo,
Random House Books for Young Readers, 336 pages
reviewed by Aja Todd 

Buy this book on Bookshop.org to benefit Cleaver

Cover art for What I CarryFrom the very first moment of her existence, Muiriel was born alone. Found abandoned at a medical center with no parents to claim her, Muiriel has lived in foster care her entire life. But blessed with a book of survival by naturalist John Muir and her experience in nearly twenty different foster homes, seventeen-year-old Muiriel knows she will not let her past dictate her future:

Aging out is terrifying.

Still…I can’t wait.

I can’t help believing I will be okay. Maybe I’m setting myself up for spectacular failure, but all this time I’ve been so lucky; if I am as perfect as I can be, I bet I can stave off the likely possibility of being homeless within a year, or pregnant, or dead. Outcomes for kids who age out with no family are mostly a nightmare, and it makes me furious. I refuse to let the stupid circumstance of my birth ruin me. I am a Muir, for Christ’s sake! Not in meaningless blood, but in what truly matters. I believe that the nurses who held me and named me could tell John Muir’s singular life force is in me and in our shared name, and I will end my childhood the way it began: alone. Finally free to live and take care of myself in the wilderness of the wide world.  

I hope.

In her latest novel, What I Carry, Jennifer Longo brings us on a heart-warming journey of independence, love, and vulnerability. While it can be difficult for anyone as a teenager to find their place in the world, Longo delicately conveys what it’s like for a girl who never had a solid foundation to start with. For Muiriel, she believes her only true home is the unchanging outdoors —the forest, the night, the stars  — and the only foundation she can ever rely on is herself.

That is, until Muiriel meets her final foster mother, Francine.

Across Seattle waters on a thirty-minute ferry, Muiriel appears to find paradise in the cozy home of Francine. Unlike past caretakers, Francine’s interests are all too similar to hers. While others enforced rigid boundaries on Muiriel, Francine gives her something she’s never experienced before: freedom. Freedom to take her time and adjust to her surroundings, to explore her new town, to meet new people. To Muiriel, it all feels too good to be true. Despite her instincts to survive and disconnect from the world, Muiriel starts to find comfort with Francine who strives to understand her; she makes friends who like her for just who she is; she even gains an opportunity for the career of her dreams. There doesn’t appear to be anything holding her back from a promising future.

But it’s difficult to trust others; it’s even more difficult to trust happiness.

Jennifer Longo

Longo’s What I Carry wonderfully explores that specific, transitional moment in one’s life. A moment that isn’t pushed forward by external events, but the struggles within oneself. Throughout the novel, readers learn why Muiriel carries herself as she does, and why being presented with this new support system is all too strange for her to accept. Too often in fiction, characters in foster care are shown as victims rather than people who, like anyone else, are just trying to survive. Muiriel represents that survival. Her strong sense of justice, independence, cautious behavior, yet love for other people show what she needed to get through the rootless life she has had so far. And while readers may find this new home an obvious solution to Muiriel’s uncertain future, her experiences have proven the danger of staying, and it all may be too much of a risk to take.

The story of Muiriel teaches us the importance of learning someone’s circumstances before judgment, the patience pain needs to dull, and the strength that is needed not only to be independent but to depend on someone. Through the beauty of that small town, the comfort of Francine’s home, and the openness of new friends, Longo shows us the power of love beyond family ties.

Aja Todd HeadshotAja Todd is a growing writer and editor from Chicago. She  earned her Bachelor of Arts in Fiction at Columbia College Chicago, where her work can be seen in Columbia’s Hair Trigger anthologies. She worked at Cleaver Magazine as an editorial intern in Spring 2020.

HOW TO BUILD A HEART, a young adult novel by Maria Padian, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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HOW TO BUILD A HEART
by Maria Padian
Algonquin Young Readers, 339 pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

How To Build a Heart jacket cover

Click here to purchase this book

Isabella Crawford doesn’t keep secrets, she guards them. Protects them:

People love to talk about themselves, and if you keep directing the conversation and questions back to them, they leave the interaction with the impression you’re the absolute best. Even though you haven’t told them a damn thing.

I’m crazy good at this game. And I’ve had years of practice.

For Izzy, a failure to safeguard a secret means the life she meticulously crafted for herself is in jeopardy. She’d prefer not to keep most of her life hidden away; but she also knows that the less you share about yourself, the less you get hurt.

In her new novel How to Build a Heart, Maria Padian brings us into Izzy’s world with one of her biggest secrets: she’s poor and lives with her mother, little brother, and dog in Meadowbrook Gardens, a trailer park on the outskirts of town. Aside from her best friend and closest confidante, Roz, nobody knows where she lives – or how she’s lived. And she intends to keep it that way.  

However, that’s only one of the things that Izzy chooses to keep to herself. She keeps her interactions with Roz hidden from her mother (who deems Roz “a bad influence”) and she never tells anyone that she and Roz have a penchant for spying on popular guys named Sam Shackleton (in his own backyard). Izzy’s teachers and classmates don’t know she’s one of the only kids in her school who still uses a prepaid cellphone and has to buy her own minutes.

Maria Padian Author pic

Maria Padian

In one seemingly-perfect moment the opportunity of a lifetime presents itself to her family: they can get a new house—an actual house—through Habitat for Humanity. All that’s required is putting in a few hundred hours of sweat equity and telling their story to the surrounding community to help raise funds for the build. This means that everyone in Clayton County—from her school friends to her classmates—will know her most closely-guarded secret.

It’s here Padian takes the reader on a deep dive into the many themes of this book, all bound by a single overarching question: what is the price we pay for keeping secrets?

Padian explores this question through a balance of vivid description and witty, discerning storytelling – giving a refreshing zeal to Izzy’s first-person narrative. It’s this balanced writing style that helps envelop the reader in Izzy’s world. Her emotions run raw across each page, written with a passion fueled by Padian’s shared personal experiences.

Through Izzy we begin to consider the weight secrets hold. Izzy’s mastered art of keeping secrets is built upon the ability to lie, or at the very least withholding the truth. Lie after lie, she keeps parts of herself private from others at the expense of her own happiness, unable to live her life to the fullest. Izzy’s secrets also hold a greater burden; her desire to keep her lifestyle hidden puts her family’s new Habitat home in jeopardy. Without her cooperation, their story may not be impactful enough to get the support they need to build. The only other option is to get the help of their estranged Crawford family, but her mother’s own secrets prevents that from happening. Then there’s Sam Shackleton who – through a series of well-timed coincidences – has taken a fancy to Izzy, which will end her friendship with Roz if she finds out.

The secrets that surround Izzy – those she keeps and those kept from her – become the cracks that weaken the foundations of her life: family, friends, opportunities, love, and fulfillment. She thinks secrets are necessary for survival, but what Izzy and the reader come to realize is that secrets and lies only help you survive, honesty and truth help you live:

…Secrets don’t stay secret for very long. It all comes out, in the end.

Padian’s How to Build a Heart encourages us to embrace our authentic selves by letting go, not only of secrets, but of the desire to hide parts of ourselves in hopes that others will accept us. The key to building a heart, as Padian passionately writes, is a solid foundation of self-acceptance. Once Izzy begins accepting who she is, the need for keeping secrets diminishes. There are, of course, secrets we are all entitled to; however, this book teaches readers that some secrets are a heavy burden. Through honesty, the truth unburdens us of our fears, releases us from what holds us back, and frees us to live our lives to the fullest:

I cannot remember the last time I felt so light. Maybe it’s because my arms are finally empty of stones.

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

OUTSIDE MYSELF, a young adult novel by Kristen Witucki, reviewed by Donna W. Hill

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OUTSIDE MYSELF
by Kristen Witucki
Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 232 pages
reviewed by Donna W. Hill

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

Outside Myself book jacket

Click here to purchase this book

Superbly written, Outside Myself by Kristen Witucki gets to the heart of the human experience. Blended and broken families struggle with issues that tear parents and children apart. Trying to do their best, they are fettered by incomplete and often false information. At the center of it all, two very different blind characters, determined to create their own place in the world, grapple with the negativity in their families, communities and themselves.

Outside Myself covers roughly fifteen months from May 1994 to August 1995. It is told by two narrators; Tallie, a young and precocious blind girl, and Benjamin, a withdrawn grandfather who works at a library for the blind. They represent different age groups, genders, races, belief systems and causes of blindness, growing up in different eras with different rights under the law.

Tallie, the child of a broken marriage, attends a Christian youth group, where she realizes that some of the kids want to pray for her healing. She wonders why so many people are invested in her becoming sighted. Whether through medical advances or faith healing, their actions say they can’t accept her as she is. Even her father believes he must keep her safe until she can get an operation to restore her sight. Tallie knows what being ostracized and bullied means, but she grapples with her own insensitivity to others.

Divorced and estranged from his family, Benjamin rents a tiny room in the house of an elderly woman and her thirty-five-year-old, dope-smoking grandson. Through memories of his early childhood, we learn he once had some sight – not enough to fit in with the sighted world and too much to fit in the visually impaired one. He was out there on his own, trying to have more sight than he did. He could focus on just one print word at a time. “Everyone was in denial about the vision problem, even me.”

An avid Braille reader, Tallie wants to learn more about the cure her father has mentioned so she calls the adult section at the Library for the Blind and speaks with Benjamin. For the first time, Benjamin shares his own blindness with a client and challenges her beliefs. Tallie has never encountered a blind adult and, though angry, is intrigued by him. Their interactions help Benjamin examine his role in his family’s separation, while Tallie begins to seek independence from her own family.

Kristen Witucki, author photo

Kristen Witucki

Witucki interweaves the two points of view with uncommon agility. Her ability to blend action, dreams, and memory allows their stories to unfold smoothly, drawing the reader into their separate worlds, even as she brings them closer together. Music, literature, and the love of learning are lifelines throughout the book. There is a commentary on Heidi, Swiss author Johanna Spyri’s classic children’s novel. Tallie’s concern for dry leaves and Benjamin’s relationship with the moon provide glimpses into their inner lives.

Misconceptions and stereotypes about blindness persist. The book helps readers consider that sighted people don’t always have the answers and highlights some of the challenges they have maintaining the attitudes of hopefulness and curiosity necessary for blind people to make a leap into an independent, nonvisual lifestyle.

Witucki’s experiences have placed her in an ideal position to tell this gripping and necessary story about the struggles and triumphs of life without sight. Born totally blind, she earned three master’s degrees in teaching gifted students, creative writing and teaching students with visual impairments and she is the Curriculum and Content Editor, Blindness and Visual Impairment at Learning Ally, the world’s largest library of volunteer-narrated books.

Outside Myself is unique in many ways, not the least of which is its double, first-person point of view. Carefully constructed with clear, concise language, nuanced characters and unexpected twists, it is an inspiring and enjoyable read. This beautiful and honest story of a mentor relationship reaches into several worlds to expose the deepest pain and the greatest triumphs of the human spirit.

Donna W. Will author photo with guide dogDonna W. Hill is the author of the educator-recommended young adult novel The Heart of Applebutter Hill, a fantasy for middle school and older readers. Find it in print and eBook versions through Amazon and other outlets. It’s available through Bookshare and Learning Ally for readers with print impairments. A former Philadelphia street performer, songwriter and recording artist, Hill lives in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains with her husband, her guide dog and their rescued kitty. Learn more at DonnaWHill.com

 

Purchase Outside Myself in Print, eBook & Audio Formats

Outside Myself is Kristen Witucki’s first full length novel. Purchase it and The Transcriber, a story for adolescent emerging readers, and follow Kristen at:

https://www.amazon.com/Kristen-Witucki/e/B00BCQVL4K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Audible has Outside Myself Narrated by Stephanie Keefer and Royal Jaye. Listen to a Sample at:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Outside-Myself-Audiobook/B07CY6KGFQ

Options for readers with print impairments

Outside Myself is available through the National Library Service for the Blind & Physically Handicapped (NLS), part of the Library of Congress. Both books are also available through Learning Ally.

 

 

 

BLOODY SEOUL, a Young Adult Novel by Sonia Patel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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BLOODY SEOUL
by Sonia Patel
Cinco Puntos Press, 276 Pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

Bloody Seoul jacket art

Click here to purchase this book

To Rocky, the city of Seoul is truly something to behold. Sprawling skyscrapers dare to kiss the sky, thousands of lights rival the sun at night, and millions of people bustle through at any given moment, while the Han River remains a calm force through it all. And it will soon be his to rule, just like his father, the leader of the city’s most notorious gang, Three Star Pa.

However, despite Rocky being the sole heir and next in line to become the big boss, his father refuses to turn the gang over to him. Frustrated, Rocky isn’t entirely surprised. It’s one of too many unanswered questions that plague him, especially since his mother’s faded memory threatens to slice the edges of his own mind like a knife.

Aim. Throw.
Sixteen times, one for every year of my life.
Aim. Throw.
Ten times, one for every year mom’s been gone.
Aim. Throw.
Ten times, one for every year Dad’s been the most pissed off person I’ve ever known.

In Sonia Patel’s poetic, fast-paced and electrifying second novel Bloody Seoul, the thread of Rocky’s past unravels the life he has carefully planned. Molding his life to mirror his father’s, he leads his own Three Star Pa gang made up of his closest friends. He beats up his weaker classmates, fist fights to defend his turf against rival gangs, and torments Ha-Na, a mixed Korean and Indian girl whom he regards as an easy target. Rocky’s life is structured to form the future he desires; but his mind frequently dives into the pool of reverie, where the ghost of his missing mother beckons and the needles of his fractured family sting.

Sonia Patel Author Headshot

Sonia Patel

What makes Rocky’s story so tangible is how Patel invokes memory and stitches it throughout the first-person narrative. Rocky’s past comes forth by means of his senses: he sees a family photo and remembers a time when his father was happy, he feels his mother’s love within the careful stitch work of the handkerchief he keeps, and smells her scent when he smokes her favorite brand of cigarettes. He also hears her humming when he plays his favorite songs and feels the presence of his uncles when he eats their favorite dishes. Memory is naturally triggered by the five senses, and Patel uses these to further develop Rocky’s character and have us connect with him.

The memories of his past reveal many open wounds, forcing Rocky to confront his father about what really happened to his uncles, his mother, and their family. But his father answers Rocky’s questions with threats and bruises, a direct violation of the first code of Three Star Pa: Family comes first. Family is to be protected at all costs. His father’s blatant disregard of that code forces Rocky to realize his father’s true nature and the lengths his father will go to get what he wants.

There are many ways I’m like my dad, many ways I want to be like my dad, but killing people isn’t one of them.

Patel’s writing shines. Her words flow across the page like a poem – descriptive yet succinct, observant of an entire world in so few phrases. Her writing style reflects Rocky’s character. It is observant, wastes no time equivocating, and takes everything in while focusing on what’s most important with sharp precision. The language may seem shallow at first – like Rocky’s perception of his own life and goals – but the more Rocky plunges into his memories, the deeper the language pulls readers in.

Patel explores how the interconnectivity of memory and family shapes one’s identity. Rocky’s identity is hugely shaped by his relation to his father and Three Star Pa, which had always remained unchallenged. Memories of his past and, most importantly, of his mother undermine this identity, causing it to crack and break. His journey toward redefining himself is a difficult one that readers can relate to. Who are we if not an extension of our family? When memories of a difficult past cause us to break away from our families, how do we go about defining ourselves without them? And who do we let in to our chosen family?

To these questions, Rocky learns there is no easy answer. Discovering who we are is simply that: discovery. And there is no end to it. It’s a journey with no set destination, and in the face of hardship all we can do – all we must do – is keep moving forward. Bloody Seoul teaches us this lesson through colorful and subtly powerful storytelling, gripping readers from beginning to end. A one-of-a-kind read.

New life just around the bend.
More happiness than I can comprehend.

◊◊

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

THE SILENCE THAT BINDS US, a Young Adult Novel by Joanna Ho, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

THE SILENCE THAT BINDS US, a Young Adult Novel by Joanna Ho, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
THE SILENCE THAT BINDS US by Joanna Ho Harper Teen/HarperCollins Publishing, 437 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Danny Chen is a basketball phenom who loves watching the Star Wars trilogy and singing, albeit off-key, Sam Smith’s song “Lay Me Down.” He enjoys eating burgers from In-N-Out and break dancing like he’s a member of the dance troupe The Jabbawockeez. At school he’s larger than life— everyone knows and admires him for his kindness and outgoing personality. To Maybelline Chen, he’s her goofy and loving big brother who cheers her up, believes in her, and always has her back no matter what. But when Danny dies by suicide, May finds herself coping with more than just her brother’s passing. Joanna Ho’s compelling new novel The Silence That Binds Us explores the impact of suicide, and how important it is to use your voice to change the narrative and stand up against racism. News of Danny’s death soon circulates around Sequoia Park High School during May’s junior year. Between the few “I’m so sorries,” the whispers, and the downright silence, there is one voice that drowns out everyone else’s—that of Mr. Nate McIntyre, a local tech mogul, and father of her classmate ...
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THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN AND OTHER STORIES OF DIRTY COMPUTER by Janelle Monáe Harper Voyager, 321 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson In her latest album Dirty Computer, songstress and visionary Janelle Monáe sings of a future bathed in the blinding light of a new regime. In a world where an individual’s inner circuitry—their deepest thoughts, feelings, and desires—faces judgment from the illuminating eye of New Dawn, freedom is sought out by those who find liberation in the shadows. Monáe’s songs follow the story of Jane 57821, whose queerness made society view her as a deviant with unclean coding—a “dirty computer.” Dreaming of a better future, Jane 57821 broke free of the chains of New Dawn by daring to remember who she really was, sowing the seeds of revolution in her wake. The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer is a collaborative work with influential writers of the Afrofuturism genre, exploring the expanded mythos Monáe created through her uniquely futuristic yet funky sound. Taking place in the same universe as Dirty Computer, The Memory Librarian is a collection of short stories set after Jane 57821’s daring escape. In the introduction “Breaking Dawn,” Monáe’s world unfolds like a memory uncurling itself ...
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THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS, a Young Adult Novel by Chloe Gong, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

These violent delights book jacket
THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS by Chloe Gong Simon Pulse, Simon & Schuster, 464 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights is a vibrant reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, taking place during the Roaring Twenties in Shanghai of 1926. Gong’s tale of two star-crossed yet ill-fated lovers begins in the middle of a fierce blood feud between two warring gangs: the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers. Described as “an age-old hatred whose cause had been forgotten to time,” their bitter vendetta runs deeper than the Huangpu River that cuts through the city. The weight of each gang’s future rests heavily on the shoulders of both Juliette Cai, heir to the Scarlets, and Roma Montagov, heir to the White Flowers. The pain of betrayal burns at each heir’s core, engulfing their previous love in flames. However, when a sinister presence lurking within the depths of the Huangpu threatens all of Shanghai, Juliette and Roma must work together if they ever hope to save everyone, including each other. I thoroughly enjoyed Gong’s rendition of a timeless classic, combining Shakespearean pomp with Jazz Age flair. Her story of Juliette and Roma still rings true to the original, but what ...
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TIGERS, NOT DAUGHTERS, a young adult novel by Samantha Mabry, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Tigers Not Daughters book jacket
TIGERS, NOT DAUGHTERS by Samantha Mabry Algonquin Young Readers 288 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Samantha Mabry’s Tigers, Not Daughters is a modern-day ghost story that follows the Torres sisters—Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa—one year after the untimely death of their oldest sister, Ana. Wracked with grief, the Torres sisters ache for Ana; but their profound sadness is met with unexpected events that eventually make their sister’s presence known: raps on doors and windows, writings on the walls, sensory overload, recurring storms, flickering lights, dying animals, and one escaped spotted hyena lurking in the darkness of their neighborhood in Southtown. Ana reappears in a way the girls can’t begin to imagine and returns with a vengeance they don’t understand. Mabry tells a riveting tale of three sisters who discover the power of sisterhood and what it means to stay together despite insurmountable, unnatural odds. What stood out to me while reading Tigers, Not Daughters was how colorful and tangible each of the Torres sisters is. Their characterization is well-rounded, Mabry vividly telling the story through the individual perspectives of each sister, as well as including a fourth perspective of a character that watches them from afar. Each sister is unique in ...
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HOW TO BUILD A HEART, a young adult novel by Maria Padian, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

HOW TO BUILD A HEART, a young adult novel by Maria Padian, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
HOW TO BUILD A HEART by Maria Padian Algonquin Young Readers, 339 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver Isabella Crawford doesn’t keep secrets, she guards them. Protects them: People love to talk about themselves, and if you keep directing the conversation and questions back to them, they leave the interaction with the impression you’re the absolute best. Even though you haven’t told them a damn thing. I’m crazy good at this game. And I’ve had years of practice. For Izzy, a failure to safeguard a secret means the life she meticulously crafted for herself is in jeopardy. She’d prefer not to keep most of her life hidden away; but she also knows that the less you share about yourself, the less you get hurt. In her new novel How to Build a Heart, Maria Padian brings us into Izzy’s world with one of her biggest secrets: she’s poor and lives with her mother, little brother, and dog in Meadowbrook Gardens, a trailer park on the outskirts of town. Aside from her best friend and closest confidante, Roz, nobody knows where she lives – or how she’s lived. And she intends to keep it that way ...
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BLOODY SEOUL, a Young Adult Novel by Sonia Patel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Bloody Seoul jacket art
BLOODY SEOUL by Sonia Patel Cinco Puntos Press, 276 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver To Rocky, the city of Seoul is truly something to behold. Sprawling skyscrapers dare to kiss the sky, thousands of lights rival the sun at night, and millions of people bustle through at any given moment, while the Han River remains a calm force through it all. And it will soon be his to rule, just like his father, the leader of the city’s most notorious gang, Three Star Pa. However, despite Rocky being the sole heir and next in line to become the big boss, his father refuses to turn the gang over to him. Frustrated, Rocky isn’t entirely surprised. It’s one of too many unanswered questions that plague him, especially since his mother’s faded memory threatens to slice the edges of his own mind like a knife. Aim. Throw. Sixteen times, one for every year of my life. Aim. Throw. Ten times, one for every year mom’s been gone. Aim. Throw. Ten times, one for every year Dad’s been the most pissed off person I’ve ever known. In Sonia Patel’s poetic, fast-paced and electrifying second novel Bloody Seoul, ...
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WORTHY OF LOVE, a young adult novel by Andre Fenton, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Worthy of love book jacket
WORTHY OF LOVE by Andre Fenton Formac Publishing Company Limited, 199 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver Two hundred and eighty pounds. For Adrian Carter that number isn’t just his weight, it is his shame. A shame he tries to hide underneath layers of black clothing but still faces every day as he is bullied for his size. Tired of the constant ridicule and feelings of inadequacy, Adrian decides enough is enough, and he vows to shed the pounds one way or the other…no matter the cost. Andre Fenton’s heartful debut novel Worthy of Love follows Adrian as he struggles not only with his weight, but with his own sense of self-worth. Candid, earnest, and full of emotion, Fenton gives us a unique yet personal story about one journey toward self-love. Desperate to drop his weight, Adrian scrounges up enough money to enroll in a few kickboxing classes. Along the way he meets Melody Woods, a skinny, quirky girl with a passion for health and fitness. Strong-willed but gentle, Mel’s confidence shines – which both intimidates and enthralls the less confident, timid Adrian. Much to Adrian’s surprise, Mel is unfazed by his size and decides to help ...
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A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS, a young adult novel by Alyssa Sheinmel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS, a young adult novel by Alyssa Sheinmel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS by Alyssa Sheinmel Sourcebooks Inc, 338 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver Hannah Gold was supposed to be enjoying everything California had to offer; getting ahead on her studies at a collegiate summer program; hiking through the mountains and sunbathing on the beach; enjoying her summer with her roommate and new best friend, Agnes. That is, until Agnes falls and lapses into a coma, and Hannah finds herself institutionalized in a seven-foot by eight-foot room, where she doesn't feel she's supposed to be at all. Alyssa Sheinmel's engrossing novel A Danger to Herself and Others, is an intriguing page-turner set almost entirely within the walls of a mental institution. It delves deep into Hannah's mind as she wrestles, not only with what happened the night of Agnes’ fall, but with her own mental state. Reminiscent of Ken Kesey's classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hannah is this story’s R.P. McMurphy – the intelligent, conniving, and self-proclaimed “sane” protagonist of her own narrative. She goes about her first days studying her surroundings, taking note of certain privileges that will get her ever closer to freedom (group showers, cafeteria access, and ...
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CHEESUS WAS HERE, a young adult novel by J.C. Davis, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

CHEESUS WAS HERE, a young adult novel by J.C. Davis, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
CHEESUS WAS HERE by J.C. Davis Sky Pony Press, 242 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver In the small town of Clemency, Texas Sunday morning worship is even more important than Friday night football. With a population of 1,236 and only two churches in town, everyone looks forward to putting on their Sunday best and lifting the Lord’s name on high. That is, everyone except Delaney Delgado, the main character in J.C. Davis’ debut novel, who chooses to spend her Sundays working at the local gas station. Her sanctuary lies behind the cashier’s counter where she’s free to observe the spectacle without having to engage in any of it. However, when her coworker discovers the face of baby Jesus on a wheel of Babybel cheese, Clemency goes into a frenzy of miraculous proportions. Word travels fast in a small town, and it isn’t long until news of baby Cheesus spreads like wildfire. Del watches in horror as her quiet life becomes an uproar, with classmates and citizens claiming they were healed after they gazed upon the blessed wheel of cheese. How anyone could believe in miracles—or God for that matter—is beyond her; but matters get ...
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HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD, an anthology for young readers edited by Kelly Jensen, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD, an anthology for young readers edited by Kelly Jensen, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD edited by Kelly Jensen Algonquin Young Readers, 218 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Feminism. It’s an ideology that has long been approached with trepidation, met with both skepticism and controversy. There have been countless articles, papers, films, and books exploring and defining the concept. However, Here We Are is more than a series of essays on feminism. It’s a collection of stories, blog posts, comics, drawings, and interviews featuring an array of different voices – each more unique than the last – describing what feminism means and how it plays a role in our lives. Each page encourages readers to think about how they, as individuals, can relate to a belief that strives to unite us as a whole. “The people and the world around us shape our individual path to feminism…The journey is always changing, always shifting, and influenced by our own experiences and perspectives.” The book is structured like a scrapbook, having a combination of calligraphy, designs, and doodles drawn across the pages, accenting each chapter. Not only is this visually appealing, it creates a sense of comfort that softens the intensity of the subject matter. Through its playful design ...
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RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT, a young adult novel by Sonia Patel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT, a young adult novel by Sonia Patel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT by Sonia Patel Cinco Puntos Press, 314 Pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver In her debut young adult novel Rani Patel in Full Effect, Sonia Patel takes us back to the era of faded box cuts, high-top Adidas, and gold chains as thick as your wrist; to the era where hip-hop reigned supreme and rhymes flowed out of boom boxes like water down Moaula Falls. The year is 1991, and here we meet Rani Patel, a straight-A student council president by day and an emerging rapper under the stage name MC Sutra by night. In a one-of-a-kind mixture of nineties slang, pidgin Hawaiian, and traditional Gujarati, Rani's story is told from a perspective that's undeniably fresh and unapologetically raw. From the very beginning the book ensnares you with a powerful scene of Rani shaving her head after seeing her father with another woman. As her tears fall so, too, does all of her hair, giving herself the Indian mark of a widow. Her father once meant everything to her, and she meant everything to him—or so she thought. He lovingly called her his princess, and for a time they were ...
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LOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY, a young adult novel by Ellen Wittlinger, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

LOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY, a young adult novel by Ellen Wittlinger, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
LOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY by Ellen Wittlinger Merit Press, 269 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Ellen Wittlinger's Local Girl Swept Away is a gripping story of loss, denial, and deception wrapped up in a page-turning mystery that’s hard to put down. When Lorna is pulled underwater during a storm, her death shakes the community of Providencetown, but no one is more shaken than her best friend Jackie Silva. Lorna was everything Jackie feels she isn’t: untamed, beautiful, brave, and outgoing—not to mention lucky enough to have had Jackie’s crush, their best friend Finn, as her boyfriend. Jackie is the undisputed number two and it's something she has accepted about herself. But, with Lorna gone, life becomes confusing and uncertain. Who is she now? In Lorna’s absence, Jackie slowly builds the strength to rediscover parts of herself she had forgotten. Her love of photography takes on a new fervor and, through the camera lens, she experiences the parts of her life that still hold meaning. Her increased volunteer work at the Jasper Street Arts Center opens doors that she didn’t know could be opened: a chance at getting into her dream school, the Rhode Island Institute of design, and ...
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BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA, a young adult novel by Laura Moe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA, a young adult novel by Laura Moe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA by Laura Moe Merit Press, 252 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson At some point in our lives, many of us bury parts of ourselves that we aren't ready to face. These layers can form over time; from people we've encountered, from situations we've endured, or from issues we've found lodged deep within our psyche. They can protect us, like a shield, from life's many fluctuations, and they can contribute to a great part of who we are. However, this protection can come at a cost–we can become distant, untouchable, and unreachable to those we love or resist the change we need to grow. In Laura Moe's debut novel, Breakfast with Neruda, we journey with Michael Flynn as he learns to peel back the layers that have shielded him for so long. We first meet Michael spending the summer cleaning his school, which serves as the first part of his two-part sentence after detonating his locker in an ill-conceived attempt to destroy his ex-best-friend's car. Through Moe's simple, yet, descriptive, writing, we soon realize that being condemned to custodial work and having to repeat his senior year are the least of Michael's worries. I go out to my car ...
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A 52-HERTZ WHALE, a YA novel by Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

A 52-HERTZ WHALE, a YA novel by Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman, reviewed by Kristie Gadson
A 52-HERTZ WHALE by Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman Carolrhoda Lab, 197 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson When a humpback whale becomes separated from its pod, it emits a unique song in an effort to find its way back to its loved ones. When certain people experience feelings of isolation, they seek companionship through indirect social interaction. Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman's A 52-Hertz Whale explores the nature of loneliness through a series of email correspondences, all between people with little else in common other than the desire for understanding. From the conversations of these starkly different people springs a series of beautiful, if uncanny, friendships. A 52 Hertz-Whale reveals that some of the most meaningful relationships can be forged even when the only thing we have in common is the fear of being alone. Fourteen-year-old James Turner ("[email protected]") sends his first email after discovering that his adopted humpback whale, Salt, was separated from its migratory pod. Recent film graduate Darren Olmstead ("[email protected]") receives the long email detailing James' efforts to uncover the lost whale’s whereabouts, and a plea for Darren's assistance. What a kid from a middle school social skills class wants with the guy who ...
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WORTHY OF LOVE, a young adult novel by Andre Fenton, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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WORTHY OF LOVE
by Andre Fenton
Formac Publishing Company Limited, 199 Pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

Worthy of love book jacket

Click here to purchase this book

Two hundred and eighty pounds.

For Adrian Carter that number isn’t just his weight, it is his shame. A shame he tries to hide underneath layers of black clothing but still faces every day as he is bullied for his size. Tired of the constant ridicule and feelings of inadequacy, Adrian decides enough is enough, and he vows to shed the pounds one way or the other…no matter the cost.

Andre Fenton’s heartful debut novel Worthy of Love follows Adrian as he struggles not only with his weight, but with his own sense of self-worth. Candid, earnest, and full of emotion, Fenton gives us a unique yet personal story about one journey toward self-love.

Desperate to drop his weight, Adrian scrounges up enough money to enroll in a few kickboxing classes. Along the way he meets Melody Woods, a skinny, quirky girl with a passion for health and fitness. Strong-willed but gentle, Mel’s confidence shines – which both intimidates and enthralls the less confident, timid Adrian.

Much to Adrian’s surprise, Mel is unfazed by his size and decides to help him develop a health regimen to get in shape. Despite her kindness and understanding, Adrian’s anxieties start to get the better of him.

Maybe someday I’ll be skinny…Maybe Mel will like me if I am.

With support from Mel and his kickboxing trainer, Scarlett, Adrian makes steady progress…until he looks at the scale. Against Scarlett and Mel’s encouragement he regards the slowly decreasing numbers as a personal defeat. Adrian decides to take matters into his own hands to speed up his weight loss, but his drastic methods end up doing more harm than good – not only to his body, but to his mental health as well.

I stuck two fingers in my mouth. It was graphic, painful, and afterward my throat really hurt… [but] If it meant I would lose the weight faster, then maybe that was the way to do it.

Author Photo Andre Fenton

Andre Fenton

Fenton doesn’t just give us a weight loss journey, he also gives us the frenzy of emotions that surround one’s struggles with weight. For Adrian, the greater damage is his self-image. Years of bullying, internalized views of masculinity, and self-pity have eroded his confidence. Mirrors and scales become the measures of his self-worth, flinging him into a downward spiral that hurts, not only himself, but those who care about him. Adrian’s journey starts at weight loss but quickly transitions to a loss of self.

Fenton writes with such emotion it’s as if he lays bare Adrian’s soul on every page. But this is the allure of Fenton’s writing – he’s a spoken word artist, and his poetic flow connects Adrian’s story with our own individual ones. His words never miss a beat, pulling readers in as if they are listening to his stunning live reads.

Candid, earnest, and full of emotion, Fenton gives us a unique yet personal story about one journey toward self-love.

Readers who’ve struggled – or continue to struggle – with their own weight will find themselves in Adrian; but the beauty of his story is that it applies to anyone who wrestles with self-image in some way, shape, or form. Without being heavy handed, the narrative is one of body positivity from a unique perspective. Adrian’s plight is universal. His feelings are relatable and his path is hopeful and illuminating. What readers will take away from this story is a profound message that may take a while to sink in but will have an effect that will last a lifetime.

No matter what we look like, and no matter what the circumstance, we are all worthy of love.

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

*If you or a loved one is suffering from an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders helpline at (800)-931-2237 or visit their website at www.nationaleatingdisorders.com.

 

ECHO NORTH, a young adult novel by Joanna Ruth Meyer, reviewed by Rachel Hertzberg

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ECHO NORTH
by Joanna Ruth Meyer
Page Street Publishing Company, 394 pages
reviewed by Rachel Hertzberg

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

Echo North book jacket, featuring a black and white illustration of dragons

Click here to purchase this book

Joanna Ruth Meyer’s second YA novel, Echo North, opens with a classic fairytale premise: Echo, who was attacked as a small child by a wolf, is scorned by her village because of the brutal scars on her face. When her father remarries, the cruel new stepmother takes every opportunity to let Echo know just how ugly and worthless she is. Hoping to pay off the debts that his new wife has incurred, Echo’s father journeys to the city. In his absence, Echo’s situation at home becomes unbearable and she flees to the woods. There, Echo stumbles upon her father, not lost in the city after all, but terribly wounded. As Echo rushes to his side, a wolf appears in the forest clearing—the same beast that scarred Echo’s face years earlier. The wolf promises to heal Echo’s father for a price: Echo must stay with the wolf for one year in his house under the mountain. Upon agreeing, Echo soon learns that the wolf is as much a prisoner as she is. He is confined in the house, and in his terrifying form, by a mysterious enchantment. The house’s magic becomes dangerous at night, and the wolf warns Echo not to leave her bedroom until daybreak. Although he sleeps at the foot of Echo’s bed, she must never light the oil lamp or look at him during the night. The similarity to “Beauty and the Beast,” the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, and the Norse tale “East of the Sun West of the Moon” might make these plot points seem predictable. However, Meyer does not simply retell an old story; she complicates and reconceives the genre’s conventions.

The greatest wonder of the wolf’s house is his library. Rather than books, it is filled with mirrors that are portals to fictional worlds. The mirror library becomes Echo’s retreat from the increasingly chaotic house and from the wolf himself, who, as the year draws to a close, is careening toward a grim fate that Echo does not fully understand. As Echo explores more of the mirrors, she meets fellow travelers, one of them a young man named Hal whom she finds both attractive and pitiful. She suspects that he is trapped in the mirrors, his ties to reality fraying. She also meets the princess Mokosh, who offers Echo cryptic advice and the possibility of friendship without judgement. For Echo, Mokosh, and Hal, fiction holds the potential for addiction.

Headshot of Joanna Ruth Meyer

Joanna Ruth Meyer

Echo North prods us to question our reliance on the stories that have been handed down to us over the generations. After all, fairytales taught Echo that only outer beauty confers worthiness, and that all questions have answers. “In fairytales there was always a thing to do,” Echo muses, “A kiss to give. An object to retrieve or destroy…” She cannot help but search for a concrete solution to her problems, an easy dichotomy between good and bad. In reality, Echo and the wolf have to constantly negotiate an entangling web of bargains without a clear morality.

As the year progresses, the book-mirrors, along with the rest of the house, start to morph. Within the mirrors’ stories, certain tropes remain the same while aspects of the stories change without warning. Outside the library, the house deteriorates; one by one, the rooms break apart from the rest of the house and threaten to float off into oblivion. Echo and the wolf try to keep things under control by sewing up the house with magical needle and thread but this is ultimately futile. Echo learns that nothing is truly stable. All stories can be rewritten, including her own.

Echo North is divided into two parts, plus an epilogue, and, by the beginning of Part II, Echo has to re-examine the narrative she took for granted about the wolf, Hal, and herself. In the fast-paced second part of the novel, Echo takes her story into her own hands. Some new characters are introduced in this section, and although their emotional significance feels a bit forced, they round out the cast of characters nicely. The most significant of these newcomers, a bard named Ivan, adds yet another layer of metafiction as he attempts to convert Echo’s story into one that he can tell to his audiences. A substantial plot twist will send readers back to search for earlier clues they missed and to reconsider their initial assumptions about the various characters.

Meyer’s prose is lovely, especially when expertly conveying the sense of infinite possibility and marvel of the wolf’s house: “We passed a row of doors that smelled of smoke, and a little ways beyond another row that smelled of rain.” One of the house’s most memorable rooms is the source of the magical binding thread, “… a vast hall overgrown with moss, sunlight streaming in through a tall, broken window. Silver spiders the size of my palm were gathering the sunlight and spinning it.”­

In other moments the writing falls flat. At the beginning of the novel, Meyer turns to cliched language to fill in Echo’s backstory: “And then my whole world shifted…earth-shattering pain.” The author also seems to have a penchant for star-based metaphors when describing romantic moments: “I breathed in the scent of him: leaves and sun, wind and stars.” “And he bent his head and kissed me, soft and gentle and tangled in starlight.” “I can taste my joy—starlight and honey and sharp winter wind.” Some readers might feel that these flourishes go too far, but they are not a distraction from the overall quality of the book.

Echo North is an engrossing tale and a mind-bending interrogation of the very nature of stories, choice, and love. Readers will appreciate the rich fantasy which pays homage to its source material while balancing a complex plot and a meticulously detailed world. Not simply an updated fairytale, Echo North is a thoughtful novel in its own right.

Headshot of Rachel HertzbergRachel Hertzberg is from Minneapolis and is currently pursuing a double major at Bryn Mawr College in English and Spanish.

A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS, a young adult novel by Alyssa Sheinmel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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A Danger to Herself and Others book jacket

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A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS
by Alyssa Sheinmel
Sourcebooks Inc, 338 Pages
reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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Hannah Gold was supposed to be enjoying everything California had to offer; getting ahead on her studies at a collegiate summer program; hiking through the mountains and sunbathing on the beach; enjoying her summer with her roommate and new best friend, Agnes. That is, until Agnes falls and lapses into a coma, and Hannah finds herself institutionalized in a seven-foot by eight-foot room, where she doesn’t feel she’s supposed to be at all.

Alyssa Sheinmel’s engrossing novel A Danger to Herself and Others, is an intriguing page-turner set almost entirely within the walls of a mental institution. It delves deep into Hannah’s mind as she wrestles, not only with what happened the night of Agnes’ fall, but with her own mental state.

Reminiscent of Ken Kesey’s classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Hannah is this story’s R.P. McMurphy – the intelligent, conniving, and self-proclaimed “sane” protagonist of her own narrative.

She goes about her first days studying her surroundings, taking note of certain privileges that will get her ever closer to freedom (group showers, cafeteria access, and grounds privileges), as well as keeping her conversations with the psychiatrist to a perfectly-tailored minimum so as not to arouse further suspicion and expedite her release. “…I don’t want [the doctor] to think I have anything to hide.” After all, she’s not really a danger to herself and others. What happened to Agnes was an accident. Hannah wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Then Lucy Quintana arrives as her new roommate – a reserved ballet dancer with an eating disorder, and the girl Hannah sees as her potential new best friend (save for Agnes, but as far as Hannah knows she’s still comatose.) Lucy becomes Hannah’s only friend – her best friend —and the one hope Hannah has of escaping the institution for good. The plan? For Hannah to show the doctor how good of a friend she is to Lucy, for the doctor to then see how Hannah couldn’t have possibly harmed Agnes on purpose, and for everyone (her parents, Agnes’ parents, and the judge at her upcoming hearing) to see that this was all a huge misunderstanding.

However, Lucy’s arrival becomes more than what Hannah bargained for. Lucy isn’t what she seems and, through their interactions, Hannah encounters the painful realization of why she was institutionalized. Much like McMurphy, she realizes that the system she is trying to game has been gaming her from the beginning. With no way out, Hannah faces the hard questions she’s been avoiding. What really happened the night Agnes fell? And, more importantly, what is happening with her mind?

Headshot of Alyssa Sheinmel

Alyssa Sheinmel

Through Hannah’s experiences, Sheinmel opens the door to much more than a gripping story. She invites the reader to step into a larger conversation about mental illness itself: a subject that’s been cloaked in public fear and misunderstanding for centuries. Though Sheinmel isn’t the first to address such a daunting subject, she does so beautifully and sensitively, drawing a wide audience of readers to better understand what having mental illness is like—both for those who suffer from it and those who don’t.

For those of us with mental illness, we identify with Hannah. We walk in her shoes as she endures the stages of grief that come with diagnosis, and the denial, anger, and hopelessness that come with living with it. And, for readers fortunate enough to have never experienced mental illness, Sheinmel opens a world where readers can begin to understand the language regarding the subject (“a disease, a mental condition”), as well as the defeat one feels when having to take medication to keep it in check – an admission of what is wrong, and the question of who you really are without it.

“So then if we alter our brain – through drugs, alcohol, injury (Agnes),
or antipsychotics (me) – are we less of our true selves than we were before?”

This book isn’t the definitive book on mental illness, but it deserves to reside among the greatest who have tackled the subject. As readers close the book, they’ll find that Hannah’s story is open ended. We don’t know what the world holds for her, what challenges she’ll face, or how she’ll continue to live her life. But, the ending is honest, truthful and, ultimately, realistic. For those of us who struggle with mental illness, we don’t know what the next day holds, we don’t know which days we’ll triumph or fall, and we don’t know what treatment will be like a year from now, five years from now, or even ten. The whole process is something to be taken day by day, marking our progress along the way while remaining grounded in the present.

A Danger to Herself and Others is a wonderful, suspenseful read that does more than just tell a riveting story. The book opens the door to a larger narrative and seeks to cultivate compassion and understanding toward other, real-life stories just like Hannah’s.

Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children’s books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never “too old” to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls “her little corner of the universe.”

A ROOM AWAY FROM THE WOLVES, a young adult novel by Nova Ren Suma, reviewed by Rachel Hertzberg 

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A ROOM AWAY FROM THE WOLVES
by Nova Ren Suma
Algonquin Young Readers, 304 pages

reviewed by Rachel Hertzberg 

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The title of Nova Ren Suma’s gripping new book, A Room Away from the Wolves, refers to its central location, but also to an unobtainable promise: a place where a girl can go to be truly safe. This novel resists easy categorizations. Not just a ghost story, not just a coming-of-age story, A Room Away from the Wolves will leave readers questioning the notion of safety in a world where the most dangerous enemy is one’s own past—and double-checking dark corners of the bedroom before going to sleep.

Eighteen-year-old Sabina “Bina” Tremper has grown up hearing her mother’s stories of Catherine House, a boarding house in New York City where she lived for one glorious summer. Bina believes that Catherine House is a refuge—a room away from the wolves. In her mother’s stories, girls at Catherine House shun the outside world in favor of a private, all-female society. It sounds like a fairy tale: “It was red-bricked and eyed with many windows, gated and safe from fathers and ogres and other intruders … I imagined it nestled deep on the island somewhere, waiting for us with a light on and a cracked-open door.” Interestingly, for Bina, always an outcast, the wolves she wants to escape are other girls. Bina’s tormenters ambush as a pack, led by her vindictive stepsisters. They kick her with bright sneakers that “glow in the dark like teeth,” and as she flees through the woods that surround her suburban upstate home, she hears “howls carrying through the air.” A Room Away from the Wolves resists labeling adolescent girls as bullies or victims; they exist fluidly as predators, escape artists, saviors, thieves, destroyers, and creators all at once.

Bina soon runs away from home and makes her way to Catherine House, where the other boarders eye her with suspicion and only occasionally let her into their rituals and secrets. Although girls in Catherine House disappear from the outside world, the house itself holds them in close scrutiny. The house’s mysterious founder, Catherine de Barra—herself just 18 years old when she died—watches over the girls of the house from an eerie portrait, and there are rumors that she continues to visit the living. It soon becomes clear that the other girls want something from Bina that she may or may not be able to provide: escape. The strict curfew binds them to the house in a way that is much more permanent than Bina realizes. Leaving Catherine House means facing the violence and cruel surveillance of male-dominated society, but staying in the house means giving up individual passions in favor of a group identity.

Nova Ren Suma

The themes of escape, safety, and disappearance develop in surprising ways as the plot unfolds. Bina’s mother lives a comfortable suburban life, married to a good man, but she would leave if only she had the money to survive on her own. When Bina arrives in New York, she meets Monet, with whom she shares an instantaneous and intense connection. Although Monet is desperate to leave Catherine House, she cannot manage to get any farther than the fire escapes. Like her mother and Monet, Bina navigates the tension between her desires for security and freedom; Catherine House is, above all, a safe place that blocks out the dangers of the world. But this sense of protection is entrapping. The outside world may be dangerous, but it also offers possibility. Manhattan is the physical manifestation of all Bina’s aspirations. The city tantalizes her with its proximity but remains unreachable, making Bina a perpetual outsider.

Bina is a reluctant narrator. She guards her secrets, doling out information as she remembers it or as she believes it to be relevant. Certain incidents are retold several times, the details changing with each iteration as Bina comes to a fuller understanding of her own life, her mother’s sacrifices, and the way their paths intertwine. As the narration moves back and forth through Bina’s memory, it often takes on a dreamlike quality, complete with recurring symbols like a bricked-over door that leads Bina to painful confrontations with her past, and an ageless girl with startling freckles. Suma is concerned with color and rich atmospheric detail. Whether Bina is wandering through the disorienting maze of the West Village or trying to fit in at an evening soiree in the dusty parlor of Catherine House, Suma paints her world in hazy light and shadow, with the blurring hues of a fading Edwardian watercolor.

As Bina cautiously doles out information, Suma skirts the reader’s questions, keeping the novel clipping along. She is less concerned with tying up every detail of the plot than with exploring deeper questions of identity and the cyclical nature of family history. A Room Away from the Wolves is a book for the reader who is comfortable with ambiguity, but others might find the ending unsatisfying. The final chapters introduce new ideas that feel abrupt and undeveloped and leave many questions unanswered and unaddressed. Despite that, this beautiful and well-crafted story is well worth reading for its insightful and piercing look at the ingenious ways that girls manage to escape locked houses.

Rachel Hertzberg is from Minneapolis and is currently pursuing a double major at Bryn Mawr College in English and Spanish.

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, a novel by Carlo Collodi, reviewed by Beth Kephart

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The Adventures of Pinocchio cover art. Pinocchio peeks around a corner at a fox and a cat.THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO
by Carlo Collodi
illustrated by Attilio Mussino
translated by Carol Della Chi
MacMillan (1926), 401 pages

reviewed by Beth Kephart

The Oldest, The Newer, and the Four Pinocchios

The Pinocchio in the book on my lap is not the persistently gullible feather-in-his-cap Disney version with the Jimmy Cricket conscience and the wish-upon-a-star existence.

My Pinocchio—La storia di un burattino—comes from the mastermind himself, the Italian serialist Carlo Collodi, born Carlo Lorenzimi, who didn’t start writing for children until late in life. He’d been in the seminary as a young man. He’d volunteered in the Tuscan army. He’d written satire, translated fairytales, and by the 1880s, it would seem, he was primed for his most memorable creation.

You don’t have to stretch to note the parallels that dominate our news cycle. Donald J. Trump was prefigured more than 130 years ago. 

If Disney’s Pinocchio is an affable, pliable ingénue who was reconfigured, according to the lore, to look more like a boy than a puppet, Collodi’s is an anti-hero—a wooden thing with barely any ears who mostly can’t see beyond his own nose, no matter its current proportion. He is persistent, insistent, impossible, exasperating, willfully obtuse, a regular screw-up. You don’t have to stretch to note the parallels that dominate our news cycle. Donald J. Trump was prefigured more than 130 years ago. He was augured by a satirist who was most supremely skilled in imagining poor, and poorly curbed, behavior.

My 1926 MacMillan edition of Pinocchio was translated by Carol Della Chiesa and illustrated by Attilio Mussino, who found the character overbearing, spectacularly needy. “He came to live in my study and, after that, never left me a moment,” Mussino wrote. “He literally dogged my footsteps, following me everywhere—along the streets, into the theaters, to my luncheon.”

How desperately well we know that feeling. How hard it is, we find, to look away from the sort of character who does not want to learn, does not want to work, does not like the truth—who is, in short, an opportunistic groveler who sells most anyone who might shine a brighter light infuriatingly short.

A page from the Adventures of Pinocchio depicting both text and images of a man designing a doll

Right at the start Pinocchio is stealing Geppetto’s orange-yellow wig—trying it on for size, riling the marionette maker. A few pages on, and there Pinocchio is, smashing the head of a friendly cricket with a hammer. “Woe to boys who refuse to obey their parents and run away from home,” the cricket had said, a few beats ahead of the puppet’s violent temper tantrum. “They will never be happy in this world, and when they are older they will be sorry for it.”

But Pinocchio—that’s the thing—is never actually sorry, not, at least, over the course of the book’s first few hundred pages. He might say the right words, on a very rare occasion, but when the chance to do the wrong thing again presents itself, he’s all in. He veers from one bad choice toward the next. His friends are unseemly, they are riff-raff, they are swamp. His actions are self-serving, but he can hardly save himself.

An illustration in the book depicting Pinocchio jumping into water, with a black ghost in the background

Here’s a scene: Pinocchio, after a stint in jail, has (for will he ever learn?) been out stealing grapes. Hapless as always, he is snared by a trap. Released by the farmer who set the trap, Pinocchio is brought to the farm, chained like a beast, and told to guard the chicken coop. “I deserve it! Yes, I deserve it!” he claims, feeling sorry for himself, playing the victim.

Pinocchio will say whatever’s necessary to get out of the jam. If he had Twitter, he would Tweet it. But it’s not long before he’s out and about again, doing whatever he pleases.

“I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed any one and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old Father, I should not find myself here now, in this field and in the darkness, taking the place of a farmer’s watchdog.”

Pinocchio will say whatever’s necessary to get out of the jam. If he had Twitter, he would Tweet it. But it’s not long before he’s out and about again, doing whatever he pleases.

A page in the book with text and an image of Pinocchio chained to a doghouse

Case in point: After a mild attempt to locate his father, Pinocchio finds himself on an island, looking for “places where one may eat without necessarily being eaten.” Pinocchio, make no mistake, would rather beg to eat than earn the right. It’s only after he is outright starving—and promised bread, cauliflower, cake, and jam—that he agrees to carry a woman’s jug on his head. This lovely woman, as it turns out, is a fairy he’s met before—a fairy Pinocchio claims to love. Sated and instructed, he promises her that he’ll be good now, for real. But the grifter is no promise keeper. More bad company. More bad choices. More trouble afoot, and mostly of his own making.

“Four Pinocchios” is, today, the measure of a Trump whopper, according to the Washington Post’s intrepid fact-checking reporter, Glenn Kessler. It is a construction built on a satirist’s tale, a drubbing named for a character whose lie-lengthened nose must, at one point, be sawed off by a troop of woodpeckers. “I am a rascal, fine on promises which I never keep,” says the original Pinocchio in a moment of truth.

An image in the book of a man with balloons speaking to Pinocchio

Collodi ties Pinocchio’s momentary episodes of despair and self-reflection to uncomfortable consequences. When, for example, Pinocchio catches “donkey fever” after months of irresponsible behavior in the Land of Toys with his irascible, Putin-esque side-kick, Lamp-Wick, his ears grow long as “shoe brushes.” Again he succumbs to whining remorse: “‘Oh, what have I done? What have I done?’ cried Pinocchio, grasping his two long ears in his hands and pulling and tugging at them angrily, just as if they belonged to another.”

But Pinocchio will have to endure this bout of remorse, for—overwhelmingly long-eared and four-footed and shaggy now—the transformed marionette is bought by a circus owner. The circus man teaches his new donkey tricks and then announces him to the world: “Great Spectacle To-Night… First Public Appearance of the Famous Donkey Called Pinocchio.”

An image in the book of a crowd gathering outside a theater looking at an advertisement for a play

Then: “That night, as you can well imagine, the theater was filled to overflowing one hour before the show was scheduled to start. Not an orchestra chair could be had, not a balcony seat, nor a gallery seat; not even for their weight in gold.”

It sounds, well, an awful lot like a campaign rally.

Four Pinocchios” is, today, the measure of a Trump whopper, according to the Washington Post’s intrepid fact-checking reporter, Glenn Kessler. It is a construction built on a satirist’s tale, a drubbing named for a character whose lie-lengthened nose must, at one point, be sawed off by a troop of woodpeckers.

By the end of Collodi’s Pinocchio the marionette has ceded to the fundamentals of humanity—learned the value of work, learned the essence of compassion, learned the beauty of being brave on behalf of others, rescued, from the belly of a shark, himself and his long-suffering father. He has willingly sacrificed for the fairy, now lying ill. He has wanted to be forgiven, and he is. For all his antics, he has ultimately been redeemed. Even that back-from-the-dead cricket approves his transformation.

Pinocchio asks: “I wonder where the old Pinocchio of wood has hidden himself?”

“There he is,” answered Geppetto. And he pointed to a large Marionette leaning against a chair, head turned to one side, arms hanging limp, and legs twisted under him.

After a long, long look, Pinocchio said to himself with great content:

“How ridiculous I was as a Marionette! And how happy I am, now that I have become a real boy.’”

Such is the stuff of fairytales.

Beth Kephart author photo

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of 22 books, an adjunct teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-founder of Juncture Workshops. Her new book is Wild Blues. She can be reached at www.bethkephartbooks.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PRICE GUIDE TO THE OCCULT, a young adult novel by Leslye Walton, reviewed by Brandon Stanwyck

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THE PRICE GUIDE TO THE OCCULT
by Leslye Walton
Candlewick Press, 272 pages

reviewed by Brandon Stanwyck

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For a novel about witches, magic, and family curses, Leslye Walton’s The Price Guide to the Occult has a lot to say about humanity.

More than a century ago, a witch named Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island, where she was met with fear and vexation from the island’s founding families. Determined to rid their island of her “as the tide erases footprints in the sand,” they burned down her home. So she, naturally, cursed their entire bloodlines:

Her search for such a spell led her to the branches of the Blackburn family tree. She traced limbs that reached to the heavens and bent back to the earth again. She followed roots that stretched across all parts of the world and were inscribed in languages that had been dead for centuries. And there, buried deep beneath those gnarled roots of that ancient family tree, Rona found one.

But when Rona cast that bloody binding spell, she inadvertently fated every future female Blackburn to a life of heartbreak and displeasure—and a daughter to be fathered by a male descendant of Anathema’s eight founders.

Enter seventeen-year-old Nor Blackburn, eight generations removed from Rona. Nor is a powerful witch with a cutting sense of humor. Her insistence upon remaining unnoticed in the age of social media-driven narcissism will undoubtedly speak to a faction of adolescent readers, who, just like Nor, want “to make the slightest mark as humanly possible upon the world.”

When Nor’s estranged mother, Fern, who has been AWOL for years, reemerges as a celebrity, Nor must finally embrace her powerful bloodline in order to stop the monster her mother has become. A terrifying and apt villain, with Evil Queen-like tendencies, Fern has gone into the business of “selling spells that hadn’t been cast for generations—spells for success, good luck, beauty, revenge.” In an ethically condemnable act of the highest degree, she has published a catalogue of sorts—entitled “The Price Guide to the Occult”—so common people can buy some “magick with a k” (which, according to Nor’s sarcasm, is how you know it’s legit).

Leslye Walton

It’s here that Walton does a wonderful job of illustrating the harm that nonstop media outlets have on susceptible viewers. Television appearances begin to paint Fern as “the real deal,” and she develops a literal cult following. When an exceedingly dangerous Resurrection Spell begins bringing dead folks back to life, Fern must be stopped, because black magic “always comes at a wicked and terrible price.”

Worrying that the darkness in Fern might very well dwell within her, too, Nor quells her deep-rooted dread by practicing self-harm. Walton neither makes light of her teenage protagonist’s destructive behavior nor does she romanticize it. As the narrative builds, Nor’s anxiety worsens, and Walton’s handling of the imagery reflects that—her vivid, lyrical narration perfectly illustrates Nor’s troubled state of mind. Her haunting prose ultimately drives the well-paced plot to its gripping, somewhat grotesque climax.

With its dynamic family tree, the novel will leave readers wishing for more of the Blackburn family, particularly the generations between Rona and Nor, which get little storytime. But Walton does end her tale hinting that we may see more of the Blackburns and their lineage in the future.

Rich with atmosphere and character, The Price Guide to the Occult employs the magical and the macabre to weave a layered family tapestry abound with romance and blood.

Brandon Stanwyck studied film, literature, and theatre at Cleveland State University. While there, he led a student-run theatre company. He currently lives in Ohio, where he divides his time between working on independent movies and writing fiction. His words have appeared in The Fiction Pool, Corvus Review, and elsewhere. Twitter: @BrandonStanwyck.

SOMEDAY, SOMEWHERE, a young adult novel by Lindsay Champion, reviewed by Elaina Whitesell

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SOMEDAY, SOMEWHERE
by Lindsay Champion
KCP Loft, 270 pages

reviewed by Elaina Whitesell

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Dominique, or Dom, seems to have nothing. She lives in Trenton, New Jersey with her single mother and helps run their Laundromat. When Dom and her best friend Cass embark on a field trip to New York City to see the students of the Brighton Conservatory perform at Carnegie Hall, Dom sees Ben for the first time.

Ben, a precocious violin virtuoso with money and a life in New York City, seems to have everything. Attracted to his music and lifestyle, Dom tracks Ben down and, with borrowed and stolen money, she begins leading a double life, travelling to NYC weekly to meet and subsequently date him.

Lindsay Champion’s debut novel Someday, Somewhere begins as any tragic love story, with star-crossed lovers from different socio-economic backgrounds, educations, passions, and family structures. But it becomes a more complex story about how relationships can lead people to live more fulfilling lives and accept nothing less than what they deserve.

A love for jazz is the foundation of Dom and Ben’s friendship and romance. But the Dom that Ben falls in love with is posing as a student of dance at NYU and there are ominous mentions of Ben’s past struggle with mental health. When the inevitable moment of truth occurs, their relationship survives, however, they both come to realize the pressures of their lives have quelled their true passions.

When Ben manically pressures Dom to break into the upper rooms of Carnegie Hall, Dom’s less realistic dreams become tainted and she is able to draw the distinction between concrete, attainable dreams and pure fantasy. In this moment, a long-term relationship with Ben becomes fantastical. Sometimes loving someone means allowing him or her to seek their own happiness on their own terms.

Lindsay Champion reminds readers that just because things seem unhappy does not mean they’re all bad, and just because things seem perfect does not mean there isn’t room for growth. Not all drama has to be damaging. The process of becoming an adult means sacrifice and real, healthy love.

Lindsay Champion

Although Someday, Somewhere presents itself as a teen love story, it becomes a story of self-love, transformation, and acceptance. Beginning with simple tropes, the narrative slowly weaves a complex world of thought and emotion and becomes richer as the story unfolds, weaving a tapestry of heavy topics and ego establishment. The novel’s crescendo displays an intricacy of voice when it becomes apparent that their relationship is the catalyst Dom and Ben desperately needed to remind one another of their individual worth and have some autonomy over their own lives.

In this way, Champion’s novel serves as a good marker for what a contemporary teen love story should be: entertaining and focused on a broader human betterment, without skipping over the trials of the modern world. The reader accompanies Ben and Dominique on the path to adulthood, which is neither colorless, nor easy.  Champion shows the reader that the process of maturing can take another person to remind us where and who we are in order to choose the path to personal happiness.

Elaina Whitesell received her bachelor of arts from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She currently occupies a position as poetry editor for Cleaver Magazine. Her work appears in The RavensPerch and New Limestone Review.

CHEESUS WAS HERE, a young adult novel by J.C. Davis, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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CHEESUS WAS HERE
by J.C. Davis
Sky Pony Press, 242 pages

reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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In the small town of Clemency, Texas Sunday morning worship is even more important than Friday night football. With a population of 1,236 and only two churches in town, everyone looks forward to putting on their Sunday best and lifting the Lord’s name on high.

That is, everyone except Delaney Delgado, the main character in J.C. Davis’ debut novel, who chooses to spend her Sundays working at the local gas station. Her sanctuary lies behind the cashier’s counter where she’s free to observe the spectacle without having to engage in any of it. However, when her coworker discovers the face of baby Jesus on a wheel of Babybel cheese, Clemency goes into a frenzy of miraculous proportions.

Word travels fast in a small town, and it isn’t long until news of baby Cheesus spreads like wildfire. Del watches in horror as her quiet life becomes an uproar, with classmates and citizens claiming they were healed after they gazed upon the blessed wheel of cheese. How anyone could believe in miracles—or God for that matter—is beyond her; but matters get worse when someone discovers an image of Jesus on the drive-through windowpane of the nearby McDonald’s. Once the local news stations broadcast that Clemency is the Town of Miracles, visitors from all over flock into town to see baby Cheesus and McJesus. With sharp, unyielding prose Davis follows Del as she embarks on a journey to debunk these so-called “miracles” that come to plague her life.

Del wasn’t always a non-believer. She used to go to church, take communion, and pray every day like a good little Christian girl. It wasn’t until the death of her sister, Claire, when she decided that she wanted nothing to do with God or his overzealous fan club.

I believed, one hundred percent, that God was watching over me and my family. When my sister died, that was pretty much it for me and God. Clearly he didn’t have my back, why should I have his?

Of course, it’s hard for Del to maintain or voice her lack of faith when everyone around her is a firm believer, including her family and, especially, Gabe, her best friend and the son of Holy Cross’ pastor. Her skepticism, concerns, and disbelief are dismissed with talk of God’s love, grace, and mercy—the very things she felt were absent when her sister was dying of cancer. Armed with her personal brand of cynicism Del chooses, instead, to ground herself in reality, and the reality is this: her mother never speaks to her, her brother pays her no attention, her father moved to a different state, and her little sister died a slow, miserable death. No amount of churchgoing or prayer persuaded God to spare her now-broken family.

Part of me doesn’t want to believe in God anymore. The larger part, though, needs God to be real if only so I can blame him for Claire’s death.

Davis symbolizes Del’s lack of faith through her love of photography, a device that allows readers to confront Del’s truths. With her Polaroid camera in hand, she sets out to capture the snippets of life around her, each photo revealing the world as it is, in that moment in time. Polaroids leave no room for speculation – what you see is what you get, either something is there or it isn’t. It’s these tidbits of truth that Del finds comfort in, the pieces of her life she can make sense of.

A Polaroid camera’s a kind of truth you can’t find anywhere else. You press a button, and a minute later you’re holding a small piece of the world

With her trusty camera and a reluctant Gabe by her side, Del sets out to find who’s responsible for the miracles. With baby Cheesus locked within the walls of St. Andrew’s she starts with the image of Jesus on McDonald’s drive-through window. Despite the throng of visitors blocking her way Del manages to snap a few pictures and draws the attention of a local news crew, who asks her to share her opinions on the religious symbols favoring her hometown. Fueled by her frustration she states, unapologetically, that the miracles are a hoax and that someone—not God—is behind all of it. Once the interview is broadcast on national television Del finds herself at odds with everyone in Clemency, even her family.

At a steady narrative pace, Del’s search for the miracle maker unfolds, and the reader is exposed to Davis’ subtle use of dramatic irony: Del is no different than the people of Clemency, the people who choose to believe. The investigation serves as her own way of finding answers in her troubled life, much like those who attend church seeking answers of their own. Del displays a deep desire to make sense of the world around her, a feeling many of us share.

In this way, Davis invites us to seriously think about the complex intertwining of truth and ideals.

JC Davis

Del operates in truth, but it’s the truth about Claire’s death that exacerbates her grief and prolongs her pain. Gabe, her family, and the rest of Clemency operate through ideals, yet these ideals mask the painful parts of life without addressing them in a constructive way. Davis carefully presents these themes so the reader comes to realize that neither way of thinking is completely right or wrong. The truth, though devastatingly harsh, keeps people grounded and puts things in perspective while ideals, though ultimately unattainable, give hope and help people aspire to achieve something greater. Without being overly didactic or heavy-handed, Davis lays these concepts out for readers to draw their own conclusions. These complex themes are woven seamlessly throughout a riveting first-person narrative. It’s as if Davis has found a way to tap into the reader’s psyche, if only for a moment, to plant the seeds of thought to sprout and grow on their own.

Despite Del’s deep-rooted pessimism, she’s still an easy-to-relate-to, even likable, character. Readers who struggle with their faith can find themselves in Delaney. They’ll share her cynicism, her questions, and her feelings of being betrayed and abandoned by God. However, Del’s story is one that all readers can relate to, whether they believe in God, don’t know what to believe, or don’t believe at all. Davis doesn’t present a black and white story about religion being either good or bad; instead, she gives us a narrative about the gray, blurry lines we cross as we try to make sense of life, what it means, and how complicated it can be.

When Del discovers the truth behind the miracles she realizes that she isn’t prepared for what comes next. The answers she desperately wants turn out to be too jarring for her to comprehend, leaving her worse off than before. Despite the hopelessness she feels and the uncertainty that lies before her, Del comes to understand that having the tiniest bit of faith, even in oneself, can make things better. Or, in Del’s words,

I’m not sure about anything else in this world: God, tomorrow, why awful things happen. But I’m sure about Gabe and he’s right, I’m going to be okay.

Kristie-GadsonKristie Gadson is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in English. But, formalities aside, she knew that children’s books would become her passion when she found herself sneaking into the children’s section of Barnes & Noble well after she turned eighteen. She is a strong advocate for diverse children’s books, and writes diverse children’s book reviews on her blog The Black Sheep Book Review.

BETWEEN TWO SKIES, a young adult novel by Joanne O’Sullivan, reviewed by Brenda Rufener

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BETWEEN TWO SKIES
by Joanne O’Sullivan
Candlewick Press, 272 pages

reviewed by Brenda Rufener

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When I sat down with Joanne O’Sullivan’s Between Two Skies, I was immediately drawn to the subtle cover design; colorful yet subdued, water meeting sunset. Then the first line captivated me even more:

When I was little, my grandmother, Mamere, used to read to me from a storybook about a mermaid who lived at the bottom of an alpine lake.

From the start, O’Sullivan pulls readers in with well-crafted characters and a beautifully painted setting. She drops the reader deep into the South with Hurricane Katrina looming offshore. The opening pages saturate us with the warmth, hospitality, and food that are so true to this geographical location. But we aren’t allowed to get too comfortable. Not with the bad weather reports and the life-changing storm churning at sea.

Unlike other stories focusing on natural disasters, O’Sullivan takes our attention off of the storm, at least for a moment, and places it on a lovable character. We meet our beloved protagonist, Evangeline Riley, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. We learn how much she loves her tiny fishing town of Bayou Perdu, nestled way down south in Louisiana along the Gulf of Mexico and how she loves being on the boat with her father, a shrimper, where she spends hours watching the birds, the sky, and the sea. Evangeline’s world becomes ours and we immediately root for her.

Joanne O’Sullivan

Then the storms hits. And with destruction, comes chaos.

One minute, Evangeline is arguing with her sister and managing a new crush on Tru, a Vietnamese-American musician and shrimper. The next minute, when the storm surges and stirs, she’s evacuating her beloved hometown, becoming a refugee, and moving to landlocked Atlanta. It is through this turn of events that we get to know the characters on a deeper level. A truth through pain moment. Evangeline’s sister breaks down, her parents begin fighting, and who knows if her best friend was able to escape the storm alive?

Evangeline’s calm life in her small fishing town is shattered. We see the struggles firsthand through a realistic description that makes us feel as if we’re experiencing the pain along with Evangeline’s family.

We finally get word that we can go back. Forty-eight hours to get in, inspect your property, collect what you can salvage, and get out again.

After the storm settles, Evangeline’s family receives notice that they can return to their hometown. The closer the family gets to their tiny fishing town, the more destruction they see.

There’s an eighteen-wheeler with its back wheels in a tree and the front ones on the ground. A school bus like a crumpled-up soda can. There are cows on top of the levee, alive and dead. The live ones move slowly, grazing under a blue, blue sky.

But that glimpse of blue, blue sky offers the reader hope, even before Evangeline and her family see it.

Thankfully, the story doesn’t end here. A rebuilding process is inevitable. However, the landscape may never look the same.

Between Two Skies is a beautiful and lyrical story that explores the loss and abandonment associated with one of the most historic tragedies in the United States. Instead of using broad strokes and verbose description, O’Sullivan’s gentle touch paints a unique picture of what happens to a family when their world is turned upside down due to uncontrollable circumstances.

In Evangeline’s words:

A strange feeling comes over me­—emptiness, but not a sad one. An emptiness that is newness, that’s ready to be filled up with something else now that all that pain has come out.

This is a difficult-to-put-down, gently threaded love story with charming characters that will leave readers thinking about a family, their tiny fishing town, and Evangeline for a very long time.

Brenda Rufener is a technical writer turned novelist. She graduated from Whitman College with a degree in English and writes full time. Harper Teen/HarperCollins will publish Brenda’s debut young adult novel, WHERE I LIVE, in February 2018, with a second novel slated for 2019. Originally from Oregon, Brenda currently lives in North Carolina’s capital city with her husband and two daughters.

LOVE, ISH, a middle grades novel by Karen Rivers, reviewed by Christine M. Hopkins

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LOVE, ISH
by Karen Rivers
Algonquin Young Readers, 288 pages

reviewed by Christine M. Hopkins

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“As a planet, the Earth is mostly OK, I guess. It’s just not for me,” the titular narrator, Ish, begins. “You don’t have to try to change my mind. It won’t work! I know that there is plenty here that’s terrific. But none of it is enough.”

Twelve-year-old Mischa Love—or Ish—wants to be among the first colonists on Mars more than anything, and has applied to a program in Iceland offering this chance (and been rejected) nearly 50 times. She knows pretty much everything there is to know about Mars. When it comes to science, her convictions are strong. “Global warming is a real thing,” she tells us with unwavering certainty. “You can pretend it’s not, but that’s just dumb. It’s science.”

Love, Ish begins innocently enough; Karen Rivers immediately establishes Ish’s voice, a typical girl with occasional friend problems and an introspection and commitment to traveling to Mars that’s wise beyond her years. But on her first day of seventh grade, Ish collapses. When she wakes up, she gets news that will derail her entire future: she has a cancerous brain tumor.

Ish’s mantra, “My body is a machine,” is no longer applicable. She won’t she have the change to join a community where she thought she might finally fit in. Instead, she’s stuck on Earth in the most painful way, and she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself.

Karen Rivers

From the beginning of the story, it’s clear Ish has a penchant for lengthy, digressive stream of consciousness thought, a form that persists throughout the novel and does become exhausting. But when Ish is first in the hospital, these thoughts are more immersive. Every time she closes her eyes she dreams of the Mars colony of which she can no longer be a part. Her best friend, a boy named Tig who moved away after teaching Ish about the Mars program, is there. He’s joined by her new friend, Gavriel, the boy who made fun of her on that fateful first day and improbably ends up back in her life.

The objective improbability of going to Mars never stopped Ish from imagining a future away from Earth, but, despite her best efforts, the reality of being a “cancer kid” eventually sinks in. As Ish’s situation becomes more dire, Rivers’ writing intensifies, becoming ever laden with the type of language that suggests a sudden maturity Ish isn’t ready for. As she and her mother drive home from the hospital, Ish starts to reflect on what she is in for:

The sun is blindingly bright and the sky is endless blue and the music gets into my headache and wraps around it like vines and squeezes. The one rain shower we had didn’t do any good at all. Everything not there is just as dry as before, nothing has changed. Except me.

The last sentiment, “nothing has changed,” does feel as if it extends to the people in Ish’s life, especially as articulated by Rivers. Her mom keeps being so thoughtful she comes off as overbearing; her dad keeps making “Dad Jokes” and riding his bike to work. Then there’s Elliot, Ish’s 15-year-old biological sister she can’t get along with, and Iris, her New York City college-going adoptive sister whom Ish looks up to and loves more than anyone.

That’s about all Rivers offers about these characters. At the same time, maybe that’s just the nature of disease striking someone so young. When you’re at the age where getting along with your parents isn’t cool anymore, and your favorite sibling is away at college across the country, is cancer supposed to fix all those things? Or will it just amplify those feelings, not daring disrupt that most tedious normal?

With how slowly Love, Ish opens, it is easy to be lulled into the “feeling left out in middle school” trope that seems to initially define Ish’s existence—however, readers closer to Ish’s age will find her story immensely relatable. Rivers has nailed the middle school voice, which makes the progression of this story all the more poignant as Ish faces something even more frantically unknown than being the first girl on Mars.

Love, Ish solidly puts readers into the body of a girl whose lifelong dreams, like the fluctuating distance of Mars from the Earth, are creeping farther and farther away. Between Ish’s vivid dreams and her often lonesome real-life interactions, Rivers skillfully brings readers on a journey of maturity, heartbreak, and, yes, love, that they will not forget.

Christine M. Hopkins is a student at Iowa State University, where she studies journalism and English and serves as nonfiction editor of the undergraduate literary magazine, Sketch. She is also a member of the Iowa State Daily newspaper editorial board and consults at the campus writing center. In 2012 she received her first bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Iowa and is told all the time that she should combine her journalism and psychology degrees in questionably creative manners. She originally hails from Northern California and currently lives in Des Moines.

LABYRINTH LOST, a young adult novel by Zoraida Córdova, reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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LABYRINTH LOST   
by Zoraida Córdova
Sourcebooks Fire, 321 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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Alejandra Mortiz is a bruja. She lives her life in the presence of death. She comes from a long line of brujas, each with their own unique manifestation of power.

But Alex, as her family and friends know her, does not revere the magical legacy of her family; she fears it. After seeing her Aunt Rosaria rise from the dead as a child, Alex is burdened by the sense that magic is not a gift, as her sisters Rose and Lula believe, but a curse. Her fear grows more acute as her Death Day approaches. This is a bruja’s coming of age celebration when the manifestation of her power is blessed by her ancestors.

To add to Alex’s worries, strange things are happening. She crosses paths with a young brujo, named Nova, who is a charming and suspicious element in her already tense life. She hears mysterious voices in her head, and her magic power begins to appear in frightening ways, alienating her from her family and her best friend Rishi. When the family is attacked, Alex has to take things into her own hands to stop the malevolent presence that seems to stock her. On her Death Day, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power, but the spell backfires, and her family disappears. It is up to Alex to travel, with Nova, through a portal to Los Lagos, a magical in-between realm, to fight the malevolent being that has haunted her even before her birth and save her family.

Alex’s voice is the perfect blend of sincere emotion and sarcastic humor that embodies her teenage frustration at feeling apart from her family’s traditions:

I wonder what it’s like in other households during breakfast. Do their condiment shelves share space with consecrated cemetery dirt and blue chicken feet? Do their mothers pray to ancient gods before their leave for work every morning? Do they keep the index finger bones of their ancestors in red pouches to ward off thieves? I already know the answer is no. This is my world. Sometimes I wish it weren’t.

Like Alice travelling through Wonderland, Alex travels through Los Lagos, a place full of dangers, traps and ancient secrets, and realizes the extent of her own power, as friend, daughter, sister, and bruja. The present tense brings an immediacy to the storytelling that builds on the excitement of the quest and will keep readers turning to the next page.

Zoraida Córdova

The word “bruja” has a negative connotation in Latin American culture, largely due to the colonial conflict between Catholicism and the religious practices of indigenous and West African cultures. As Córdova states in her afterword, brujas and brujeria have largely been something to be feared. In recent years, Latinx writers, artists, and activists have actively worked to reclaim the word and celebrate their freedom of cultural expression and self-empowerment. Traditional brujeria denotes communal power over the malevolent forces. Unlike the covens of witches seen in movies and shows with young white women who wreak havoc on the people who have wronged them, Labyrinth Lost is an imaginative homage to traditional cultural practices and archetypal struggles between past and present, power and fear.

While the archetypal quest and struggle between good and evil are familiar, Alex’s journey feels especially necessary right now. Latinx readers, old and young, need a protagonist that is flawed, unique, powerful, but vulnerable, representing our multidimensional selves. Alex is often passive and unsure of herself. She lets her friends take the fall and get hurt for her. This allows the other characters shine and illustrates Alex’s journey as she begins to understand her role as bruja, friend, sister, and daughter. It is in this way that Alex comes to terms with her identity as a queer woman who loves deeply and fiercely; a potent part of reading this novel. In a social environment where Latinx people are being actively demonized, it is fitting to have a heroine and a cast of characters that shun stereotypes in a world set in, both, the real and the unreal.

Each chapter begins with a quote from the Book of Cantos, a book that holds all spells of the brujas, including their history and stories. Each one invokes the stories that form Alex’s past and prophesy her future. Each ancestor that visits Alex on her quest plays an integral part in shaping who she is. The mixture of the ancient, of things foretold and destinies altered, lends a sense that we are made up of our pasts, but, also, our futures, and that these futures depend on our actions, not upon who we believe we are. In this way, the story ends with a necessary feeling of hope.

Córdova also leaves us with a cliffhanger, providing ample room to spend more time in the wonderful world she has created in the next two novels in the trilogy. I look forward to seeing where Alex’s story goes.

Leticia-UrietaLeticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

IF YOU WERE HERE, a young adult novel by Jennie Yabroff, reviewed by Caitlyn Averett

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IF YOU WERE HERE
by Jennie Yabroff
Merit Press, 272 pages

reviewed by Caitlyn Averett

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Being normal and making it through high school unscathed can be a big deal, and, for sixteen-year-old Tess, it’s all she’s ever wanted.

In Jennie Yabroff’s debut young adult novel, If You Were Here, Yabroff shows the normal struggles of growing up combined with the confusion of dealing with a parent suffering from mental illness. If You Were Here follows Tess Block, a girl who relishes summer vacations where she can hide away in her grandmother’s country cabin and not have to deal with high school or family. It means no contact with her best friend, Tabitha, because there’s no cell service, but Tess enjoys the freedom of escaping NYC for a few months, and the freedom from what’s going on at home with her mother.

Tess manages high school and a difficult home life thanks to these summer breaks and weekends spent with Tabitha watching and quoting Sixteen Candles. But Tess’s semblance of ‘normal’ disappears when Tabitha decides she wants to be part of the popular group, leaving Tess behind. This abandonment marks the beginning of Tess’ life spiraling out of control. When her mother’s mental stability slips and Tess starts seeing strange visions, like being blamed for a tragic accident, she worries her own mental stability may be in question too.

The novel is told from Tess’ perspective, beginning with the line “Once upon a time, I was normal,” which sets the questioning tone, not only of Tess’ narration, but of the book itself. What is “normal”? Is it better to be normal than to be yourself? If You Were Here asks readers to think about fitting in and what must be given up in order to do so. Tess’ dry sarcasm and Grammar Police attitude add a lighter air to balance these tough questions.

Jennie Yabroff

If You Were Here has two main conflicts; one that carries the beginning of the story, and one that carries the latter half of the book. Tabitha’s betrayal of her friendship with Tess drives the first conflict, with a slower beginning that allows readers to get to know Tess, her everyday school life, and the roll-out of Tabitha’s new attitude. A tragic accident kicks the second half of the plot into motion. Tess is hurled into a whirlwind of trying to figure out what’s happened, combined with her mother’s declining mental state, all while hoping she isn’t going crazy herself. She’s pretty sure she didn’t have anything to do with the tragedy, even though everyone else says she did. Both storylines pick up speed as the novel progresses, leaving readers unable to put it down until they come to the final page.

“For every problem there’s a solution,” Tess’ father tells her, and she remembers his words throughout the book, refusing to give up and accept what everyone else blindly believes. Yabroff depicts an inspiring story that challenges readers’ views on what it means to fit in and to be “crazy” in this debut novel that is half typical high school drama, and half mystery and suspense, with a hint of magical realism thrown in.

Caitlyn Averett is in her final year as a grad student in the English and Creative Writing MA program at Southern New Hampshire University. She has a BFA from the University of the Arts, and she spent Summer 2016 in NYC working with a literary agency, attending lectures with editors at the Association of Author’s Representatives, and squeezing in some time to work on her novels.

RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT, a young adult novel by Sonia Patel, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT
by Sonia Patel
Cinco Puntos Press, 314 Pages

reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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In her debut young adult novel Rani Patel in Full Effect, Sonia Patel takes us back to the era of faded box cuts, high-top Adidas, and gold chains as thick as your wrist; to the era where hip-hop reigned supreme and rhymes flowed out of boom boxes like water down Moaula Falls.

The year is 1991, and here we meet Rani Patel, a straight-A student council president by day and an emerging rapper under the stage name MC Sutra by night. In a one-of-a-kind mixture of nineties slang, pidgin Hawaiian, and traditional Gujarati, Rani’s story is told from a perspective that’s undeniably fresh and unapologetically raw.

From the very beginning the book ensnares you with a powerful scene of Rani shaving her head after seeing her father with another woman. As her tears fall so, too, does all of her hair, giving herself the Indian mark of a widow. Her father once meant everything to her, and she meant everything to him—or so she thought. He lovingly called her his princess, and for a time they were nearly inseparable. With her father now out of the picture Rani turns to the one thing she can count on: rap.

sonia-patel

Sonia Patel

For Rani, rap is more than just the kind of music she listens to. It comforts her amidst her mother and father’s constant fighting, it’s there when her father isn’t giving her his undivided affection, and it soothes her during her loneliest moments. The lyrics of famous rappers like Run DMC, Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, and De La Soul help Rani make the best out of her difficult situation. In time, Rani gets the courage to put pen to paper and let her emotions loose on the page. By writing lyrics of her own she channels her thoughts into raps that express her sorrows, her fears, and the triumph she hopes to achieve at the end of it all. “Rap saved my life yo. And it’s been saving me ever since.”

When Rani receives a mysterious note inviting her to an underground rap society called 4eva Flowin’, she’s offered the chance to finally showcase her rapping prowess. With the help of of her friends and fellow 4eva Flowin’ members, Pono and Omar, Rani takes to the stage. As MC Sutra, Rani channels an inner strength she never knew she had. With the mic in her hand and rhymes on her tongue, Rani becomes her truest self on the stage. During those moments she is a powerful force, she can stand up to her father’s abuse, condemn him for his infidelity, and critique a culture that dictates a woman’s worth is determined by the men around her.

Isolated wife, his alone—he’s deprivin’
He got no love for her—cuz his ego lackin’
Wife a commodity—mirror crackin’
Had a kid to appease the masses, curry—curry culture
Raise her as your boo—perverse nurture…
…descended from his slaughter
me and a thousand other daughters.

As MC Sutra becomes increasingly involved with 4eva Flowin’ so, too, does Rani’s involvement with its founder, Mark. Despite warnings from Omar, Pono, and some of the 4eva Flowin’ crew, Rani can’t help but fall head-over-heels for him. Mark showers her with love, affection, and attention—the main things that are lacking in her life ever since her father left. Rani feels complete when she is with Mark, she is his queen, and she craves his love like batu (the Hawaiian slang term for crystal meth). Yet, as their relationship grows into something more serious, she notices the parallels between Mark’s love and her father’s, a harbinger of what’s to come. Despite the signs that point to danger, Rani finds it hard to practice what MC Sutra preaches.

Sonia Patel combines her past experiences and her love of hip hop with her formal training as a psychiatrist to tell Rani’s story. With a command of language that even the most seasoned of writers would envy, Patel tackles these difficult topics with ease. Through Rani, Patel addresses sexual abuse among women, a topic that many people tend to avoid. Patel explores it head on, revealing the ways in which different cultures perpetuate this behavior and how society places a stigma upon those unfortunate to have suffered through it. Patel masterfully examines this unavoidable truth and invites readers to think critically about these issues while giving them a story worth reading.

Rani Patel, MC Sutra herself, is so much more than a character on the page. As I read this book I thought of all the young girls, including myself at her age, looking for love in all the wrong places, whose experiences with their fathers shape their future interactions with men. Rani shows us the power every girl has inside themselves to break the cycle of abuse and reminds us that self love is what frees us up to become the amazing beings we are.

To my ladies it’s up to you—
Stay strong through this life like you’re bamboo.
His control ain’t love, do not misconstrue…
Stand up to the persecution
and make your contribution.

Check out Sonia Patel performing lyrics from the novel on her YouTube channel.  

Kristie-GadsonKristie Gadson is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in English. But, formalities aside, she knew that children’s books would become her passion when she found herself sneaking into the children’s section of Barnes & Noble well after she turned eighteen. She is a strong advocate for diverse children’s books, and writes diverse children’s book reviews on her blog The Black Sheep Book Review.

IT LOOKS LIKE THIS, a young adult novel by Rafi Mittlefehldt, reviewed by Allison Renner

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IT LOOKS LIKE THIS
by Rafi Mittlefehldt
Candlewick Press, 327 pages

reviewed by Allison Renner

Purchase this book to benefit Cleaver

The teenage years are a time for young people to discover their identities and explore and push the boundaries of structured life. The lucky ones are given room to experiment as they explore. It Looks Like This is a book about what happens when someone is not given that freedom.

When Mike and his family move, just before his freshman year, Mike starts high school in a new state and begins to forge some tentative friendships. But Victor, also low on the totem pole in terms of the high school hierarchy, seems to have a personal beef with him. Mike tries to lay low and mind his own business but Victor’s attention is unsettling.

Mike finds himself drawn to another new student, Sean, an attractive mixed-race guy who joins Mike’s French class. Assigned to a major project, they start spending a lot of time together and Mike starts to feel the electricity between them, though he’s not sure if those feelings are reciprocated. While their relationship grows, keeping things quiet at school, Victor is always around, it seems, watching.

This potential budding relationship is made even harder with Mike’s strict father keeping close tabs on his son. He doesn’t understand his son’s feelings, much less approve of them. Mike’s sister, Toby, is willing to stand up to her father and try to get him to see things her way, but Mike is older and knows he can’t win that battle. His father is more concerned with looking perfect and enviable; he doesn’t care what the individual family members might want.

Rafi Mittlefehldt

Rafi Mittlefehldt

It Looks Like This starts off downplaying the bully angle and seems like it’s heading in a more subtle direction before veering into severe cyberbully territory. While Mike’s attraction to Sean and the suspicions of their fathers make for a compelling and surprising narrative, the novel does seem fairly standard for LGBT books, depicting a major tragedy rather than featuring LGBT teens in everyday life. While it’s true that one major bullying incident is enough to break someone’s spirit, it’s also important to show how quietly subversive bullying can do the same. That being said, the resolution to the story is realistic and satisfying, without seeming too melodramatic.

The novel is told in first person but Mittlefehldt’s writing creates some distance between Mike and the reader. On one level, it works because it’s implied that this is how Mike feels: misunderstood, a little uncertain about himself, and a little jaded. But this personal tale could be more powerful if those walls were torn down and readers were allowed to know Mike completely.

However, it’s the vivid imagery and descriptive emotional memories that make this book worth reading. The relationship between Mike and his sister Toby is realistically rendered and the lines between teens and adults are clearly drawn. While that black and white division might seem stereotypical throughout the bulk of the story, it makes the resolution that much more powerful. It’s refreshing to see a young adult novel where the characters interact with parents more than peers, even if those family relationships are tense.

Allison-Renner
Allison Renner has worked as a photographer, student teacher, and graphic designer. She is currently a librarian who shares her love of young adult literature with teens in public libraries.

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC, a young adult novel by Sarah Combs, reviewed by Allison Renner

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the-light-fantasticTHE LIGHT FANTASTIC
by Sarah Combs
Candlewick Press, 311 pages

reviewed by Allison Renner

To make a book about school shootings stand out among an influx of young adult books about the topic takes skill and in her new novel The Light Fantastic Combs delivers with detailed characters and a unique premise. Told from several different points of view, the novel covers the span of a few hours across multiple time zones as a new day starts and a nationwide school shooting epidemic begins.

While some of the narrators identify their names and details of their past and present, others are referred to by their state, and are more resistant about sharing their personal stories. But there is some overlap, where details shared by a named narrator are later mentioned in a more anonymous chapter. This creates a delightfully suspenseful uncertainty where the reader isn’t sure who is “good”—an innocent high school student—or who is “bad”—a high school student holding a grudge against classmates.

April, who dwells on tragedies that occurred in her birth month, has hyperthymesia, a condition that allows her to remember every detail about her daily life. She scopes out emergency exits when she’s in public and toes the line of paranoia without quite crossing it, even when she should. Which is why she and her two best friends are in school on April’s birthday, despite it being senior skip day.

April’s best friend, Gavin, thinks and speaks in hashtags, which adds personality and humor to the story, even when he’s crammed in the Lockdown Closet with a physics class. Phoebe, catfished, mocked, and laughed at, is someone who wants to show her classmates that she’s not the stupid girl who will fall for anything.

When the Mastermind, the creator of an online forum for those who have been bullied and publically shamed, reaches out to her, she sees her opportunity for redemption. That’s all the forum is at the start—a place to be heard, to feel welcome, to feel understood. But it grows into something else, a plan that is half-joke, half-“what if?”

With some members dropping out, uncomfortable with the anger bubbling under the Mastermind’s exterior, others decide to stay. And new people, burned by the internet and bullies in one way or another, find him. A few of these chosen victims share their points of view in the book, flashing back to the episodes that broke them, and why they want to show their classmates who they really are.

Sarah Combs

Sarah Combs

Despite centering around school shootings with a lot of details about various shootings and bombings, the book is not especially violent. It focuses more on the teens’ inner lives: what they think about, what they remember, and how they act during a tragedy, whether or not they’re the ones suffering or inflicting it. There aren’t many books that make you feel something deep for “the bad guy”, and even fewer that present all of the characters without initially showing who is the hunter and who is the prey. The method is especially effective in The Light Fantastic, providing suspense, uncertainty, and a ticking clock. As time passes, the anonymous characters have to pick their plan of action. Even the Mastermind is uncertain about his final goal; will all his efforts have been for nothing?

With literature classes across the country studying Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie when the action takes place, the line about how Tom’s father “skipped the light fantastic” becomes a significant thread. The poetic references to the play become tangled up in the turmoil of the teens’ everyday lives. With the added pressure of loaded guns in the hands of teens across the country, this unique portrayal of school shootings is a stand-out read.

Allison-Renner

Allison Renner has worked as a photographer, student teacher, and graphic designer. She is currently a librarian who shares her love of young adult literature with teens in public libraries.

SIGNS OF YOU, a young adult novel by Emily France, reviewed by Rebecca Lee

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Signs-of-You cover; birds against a sunset, young woman with long brown hair in foreground, her hand beneath the sun

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SIGNS OF YOU
by Emily France
Soho Teen, 240 pages

reviewed by Rebecca Lee 

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Books labeled as science fiction and young adult can conjure many stereotypical images; a first kiss awkwardly felt on a playground swing set or a gothic vampire trying to survive an unknown universe. Emily France’s Signs of You defies these stereotypes as it takes on the story of a loss, friendship, and healing.

The novel stars a likeable teenage girl, Riley, who has recently lost her mother in a fatal car accident. She and her three best friends, Jay, Noah, and Kate, all deal with the loss of a loved one and support one another through it. When they stumble upon an ancient cross, however, their relationship with death changes forever. As they take turns wearing the cross necklace, they begin to see the people they lost.

Although much of the novel may seem other-wordly, themes of friendship and coping with loss remain grounded and easy to relate to. Riley and her friends are loyal and help one another move forward in their lives.

After Mom’s funeral, it didn’t take long to get sick of the pity on people’s faces when they saw me, followed by one of those it-sucks-to-be-you hugs. So Jay and I decided we’d do the fist bump handshake at all times.

Each character has his or her own unique personality traits and, together, they all influence Riley’s perception of life and who she will become as an adult. There’s Kate, a country music loving, gum snapping, cynical teenager who, even under her tough exterior, longs to be popular and accepted by her peers; Noah, the peace-keeper, who knows how to safely navigate the group away from conflict; and Jay, Riley’s best guy friend, who she also has a crush on. But, with the territory of best friends, comes the leash of ownership. And as they navigate their own personal demons, the group is forced to reassess how much they really know about each other.

Emily France

Emily France

France details high school social life with accuracy and authenticity. She has a keen eye for the actions and intentions of teenagers and she knows how to write about tough topics. Not only does she take on grief, but she also captures the painful realization that crushes don’t always pan out, the shock that accompanies children when a parent starts dating, and what it’s like to want to be popular. Throughout each conflict France introduces, she brings a sharp and realistic tone.

Every year our school has an annual air band competition among the grades. It is exactly what it sounds like, and exactly as lame. Basically the popular kids run the thing, select who’ll be in each air band, select the songs that will be blasted over the speakers, and then the rest of us get to watch them make asses of themselves as they pretend to be rock stars, but with no props and no talent. It’s ridiculous.  But the fact that Kate has been asked to join means she’s been invited to ditch us and move up in the social ranks.

This feeling of authenticity rings loud and clear throughout the entire book. Although the world they live in may waver from reality as the characters stumble through a darkened fantasy, their feelings are as relatable as a conversation between best friends.

Rebecca-LeeRebecca Lee currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has been published in Existere Journal, Rusty Nail, The Noctua Review, and others. Read more at her website.

LOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY, a young adult novel by Ellen Wittlinger, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Local-Girl-Swept-AwayLOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY
by Ellen Wittlinger
Merit Press, 269 pages

reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Ellen Wittlinger’s Local Girl Swept Away is a gripping story of loss, denial, and deception wrapped up in a page-turning mystery that’s hard to put down. When Lorna is pulled underwater during a storm, her death shakes the community of Providencetown, but no one is more shaken than her best friend Jackie Silva.

Lorna was everything Jackie feels she isn’t: untamed, beautiful, brave, and outgoing—not to mention lucky enough to have had Jackie’s crush, their best friend Finn, as her boyfriend. Jackie is the undisputed number two and it’s something she has accepted about herself. But, with Lorna gone, life becomes confusing and uncertain. Who is she now?

In Lorna’s absence, Jackie slowly builds the strength to rediscover parts of herself she had forgotten. Her love of photography takes on a new fervor and, through the camera lens, she experiences the parts of her life that still hold meaning. Her increased volunteer work at the Jasper Street Arts Center opens doors that she didn’t know could be opened: a chance at getting into her dream school, the Rhode Island Institute of design, and a budding relationship with the talented (and much older) JSAC fellow Cooper Thorne. Most importantly, Jackie finds comfort in her classmate Charlotte, rekindling a friendship long abandoned.

Ellen Wittlinger

Ellen Wittlinger

Through her melancholy, refreshing, and witty voice, Jackie tries to navigate a world without her best friend. Her raw memories of Lorna are so vibrant and colorful that Lorna practically jumps off the page, smiling her wry smile and beckoning the reader to join her in the light-hearted mischief she is so famous for. Wittlinger cunningly uses this framework, Jackie’s engrossing first person narrative, to produce an image of Lorna that slowly and methodically unravels.

As she continues to lament the death of her best friend, Jackie realizes that not everyone sees Lorna as the fantastic girl she once knew. They see her as a completely different person, someone that Jackie doesn’t recognize. Even her friend Charlotte tells her:

“Actually I felt kind of sorry for her. She seemed so needy. She was the queen bee, but she needed you to buzzing around her all the time, telling her how great she was. It was like she was starving and you had to constantly feed her.”

This is the first of many revelations Jackie has about Lorna, challenging her views in ways that she has trouble accepting. When facts about Lorna don’t add up, Jackie begins to question what happened the day of Lorna’s death. The mystery that ensues causes Jackie to abandon everything she thought she knew about her best frien

This is where the book poses a daunting question: How well do we really know someone? Through Jackie’s narrative, Wittlinger draws attention to the fact that our view of others is largely shaped through memory, solidified through emotion and reinforced by perception. We may form an idea of who someone is rather than see them for who they really are. This can lead  to pain, betrayal, and loss. As Jackie narrates:

Yeah, [Lorna] was my fantasy, but I could never deal with the reality of her.

The book teaches us an invaluable lesson, one that is painful to endure and even more painful to come to terms with: people are not always who we think they are. It’s something we have to learn the hard way in life and, picking up a book like this, especially if you are a teen, can, if not spare, than, at least, ease the inevitable heartache to come.

The mystery of Lorna’s death will keep readers at the edge of their seats but it’s the subtle cleverness of the narrative that is most striking. Lorna’s death isn’t just about falling into the breakwater that day. It’s the deconstruction, and the destruction, of the Lorna Jackie thought she knew.

The picture I’d wanted to take was of the person I wanted Lorna to be.The Lorna who would stop moving and wait for me.

Kristie-GadsonKristie Gadson is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in English. But, formalities aside, she knew that children’s books would become her passion when she found herself sneaking into the children’s section of Barnes & Noble well after she turned eighteen. She is a strong advocate for diverse children’s books, and writes diverse children’s book reviews on her blog The Black Sheep Book Review.

THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON by Kelly Barnhill reviewed by Mandy King

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

The-Girl-Who-Drank-the-MoonTHE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON
by Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin Young Readers, 400 pages

reviewed by Mandy King

There’s something compelling about orphan stories and Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon draws on this fascination. When I look back at my favorite childhood books, they all have one thing in common—main characters who are orphaned or abandoned. Barnhill’s story opens and immediately draws the reader in with the tragic, forced abandonment of a baby girl in the forest, an annual sacrifice meant to appease the Witch so that the villagers of the Protectorate may live safely for the next year.

This middle grade fantasy is a story with a magical twist. Baby Luna is not completely abandoned because a good witch saves her. In fact, the kind-hearted witch Xan has been saving the babies of the Protectorate every year and taking them to towns across the forest where they are beloved by their new families. These are the Star Children, so called because, on the journey, Xan feeds them magic from the stars. During the journey with baby Luna, two unusual things occur—one, Xan falls in love with Luna and decides to adopt her as her grandchild, and, two, she accidentally feeds the child from the moon and not the stars, infusing her with powerful magic.

Luna’s story takes another sorrowful turn when her budding magic slowly drains Xan’s magic out of her, aging her prematurely. Xan casts a spell to lock up Luna’s magic until she turns 13, with the hope that it will slow Xan’s aging and give her enough time to teach Luna to control her magic. The repercussions of this decision are far-reaching and emphasize one of the big frustrations of childhood: the inability to make your own decisions.

Barnhill mixes simple prose with beautiful imagery to a masterful effect. In describing baby Luna, she writes, “She was a waterfall of sound, pouring, pouring, pouring. And she never stopped.” Barnhill uses clear language to deftly explore complex ideas. The way she handles death is particularly well done. Luna worries that her grandmother will die and, though it makes her terribly sad, she notes the dead don’t seem to mind being dead since they have moved on to other things. The monster-poet Glerk speaks in riddles about death, hinting that all the world came from The Bog and, when you die, the greatest adventure is to return to it. Perfect for young readers, these notions reassure us that death is a part of living and not to be feared.

Though Luna’s story is central to the overall plot, the book is told from the viewpoint of a multitude of other characters, all of whom are connected by Luna’s arboreal abandonment. There is Antain, a young boy whose life is forever changed by his role in Luna’s kidnapping. Luna’s birth mother, now a madwoman locked in a tower, who taps into her own magic and creates legions of paper birds. And the sinister Sister Ignatia, who feeds off the sorrows of the Protectorate. These storylines enrich rather than compete with Luna’s, layering on top of one another to slowly reveal the truth behind why the babies of the Protectorate are abandoned.

In between these storylines, there are short, italicized chapters from an unknown narrator or, perhaps, narrators, depicting scary stories about the evil deeds of the Witch. At first, these can feel jarring and take you out of the main storyline, but, as more and more appear, these italicized chapters share a universal truth about storytelling: it’s hard to find the truth in any one story. As one of my favorite minor characters, Ethyne, expounds, “Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate.”

My favorite part of The Girl Who Drank the Moon is not the riveting plotline, though it did keep me turning the pages, but, rather, how fondly Barnhill writes of the child/parent relationship. As a new parent myself, her descriptions of how completely baby Luna changes Xan’s household hold a hilarious amount of truth. Luna’s mother never gives up hope she will see her child again, constantly pulling on her magic to draw maps to Luna’s location. And Ehtyne, the character who most embodies this parental love, rallies the villagers and spreads hope because she wants a brighter future for her newborn son.

In the end, it is the strong element of emotional entanglement between parents and children that sets this book apart from the bursting shelves of middle grade fantasy. Barnhill does an excellent job of reminding us that, while sorrow can be a dangerous and overwhelming force, love is an even greater magic.

Mandy-KingMandy King works as a digital marketing strategist, spending most of her days writing and editing content that lives on the web. The best job she ever had was head of the events and marketing program at Boulder Book Store, one of the U.S.’s largest independent bookstores. To her mind, the perfect day starts with a cup of tea and ends with a bag (or two) of new books.

A TYRANNY of PETTICOATS: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls edited by Jessica Spotswood reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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A-Tyranny-of-PetticoatsA TYRANNY of PETTICOATS: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls
edited by Jessica Spotswood
Candlewick Press, 347 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

In her introduction to the anthology, A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers and other Badass Girls, editor and author, Jessica Spotswood, describes her longtime interest in the study of history as something “tactile and ever present,” beyond dates and facts. Spotswood acknowledges the problematic nature of historical writings in the past: “Despite their many contributions, women— especially queer women, women of color, and women with disabilities—have too often been erased from history.” Her acknowledgement captures the spirit of the book; the need to give women authors a chance to fill this absence, and tell the complex stories of young women that mainstream history has forgotten.

Spotswood has collected fifteen authors, including herself, to contribute short stories that reflect the perspectives of girls across different time periods of American history, starting from 1710 and ending in 1968. The collection spans different regions, cultures, classes and linguistic traditions. As a writer, I can imagine the challenges these authors faced to create this wonderful array of stories, to compress the unique historical and regional circumstances into one young woman’s voice, and fulfill her story arc in just twenty or so pages. Other authors have written four hundred-page historical novels that have had difficulty accomplishing this task. Beyond that, how does a writer avoid explanation that bogs down the reader, keeps the story suspenseful, and leaves the reader feeling satisfied, while avoiding emotionally simplistic endings?

This book confronts these challenges and defies expectations. Each story is able to create a complete story arc by dropping the reader into a moment full of danger, possibility, or strife, and lets the protagonist, mostly told in first person point of view, lead the reader through the story. Each author makes a great effort to interweave back-story and context for the historical period into the present action, acclimating us to the environment without giving too much away all at once. This seems standard for any author, but considering how these stories take on the challenge of appealing to different age groups, trying to interest, as well as give, the reader an idea of these young women whose stories have often gone untold, the effort is commendable. While some of the stories sometimes fall in to the trap of explaining too much and slowing the story down, or not giving enough information, leaving the reader floundering a bit, every single author created a voice that made me want to keep reading.

Jessica Spotswood

Jessica Spotswood

These stories’ successes stem not only from the superb storytelling structures and styles, but also from the protagonists themselves. It’s refreshing to learn something with each story about a time and culture one might not be familiar with, and to understand how, in each period, in each place, these young women fight against the constrains of their gender. Being a fan of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as a girl, especially of feisty, strong willed Jo March, I loved experiencing the worlds of these young women, especially women of color that spoke more to my own experiences (as much as I still love Jo).

I appreciated the mixture of realism and magic, and the handling of folklore as a vital way to understand the world for many of the characters. In “The Journey,” a young Inuit woman named Yakone is guided by the red aurora to fulfill her destiny and preserve her village when disaster strikes. In “El Destinos”, three magical Tejana sisters struggle to live typical lives in a newly independent Texas while still carrying out their duties as keepers of other’s fates. “High Stakes” creates a mysterious world in which Klio, an assassin, struggles with her own mythical heritage when pitted against warring magical factions. These magical elements are never treated as fantastical. They are integrated into the way that each young woman sees the world and how the reader experiences the story.

Many of the stories also highlight the struggle that the protagonists have with their society’s expectations of their race and gender. Set in Depression era Washington State, “Hard Times” tells the story of Rose, a homeless youth searching for work. She struggles to keep her charge, Billy, safe while living among men looking to take advantage of her at every turn. In “The Red Raven Ball,” educated, radical Lizzie must rebel against her prominent, wealthy Grandmamma in order to aid the Union in uncovering a Confederate spy in her Washington high society circle. In “The Whole World is Watching”, Jill, a black college student, protests the war in Vietnam at Chicago’s 1968 National Democratic Convention. She battles with her place in the struggle for peace and her own sexual identity in light of her conservative upbringing in rural Tennessee. These women defy expectations, while still being real and relatable.

While all the stories have many elements in common, one theme unites them all—they all end in hope, no matter the outcome. One of my favorite stories (though it was hard to identify just one) is the first story in the collection, “Mother Carey’s Table.” It is told through the wholly unique voice of an escaped slave’s daughter, Jocasta or “Joe,” posing as a young sailor on a pirate ship. Her unexpected description of life at sea, and her realization of what she wants most in life made me devour this story. This line in particular stuck with me long after I’d left it: “There’s no way I could crouch between rows of tobacco now that I’ve felt the foredeck swaying beneath my feet, tasted salt on my lips, and run before the wind in a little sloop under a sky blue enough to make me forget every storm I ever sailed through.” This is an example of what this collection of stories does so beautifully; it brings together stories of young women who, despite being from different time periods, regions, races, classes and cultures, are simply trying to live their most authentic lives, and find hope and conviction under difficult or insurmountable circumstances.

As a reader, diving into an anthology about a subject I am very passionate about, namely historical stories of complex, interesting young women, my challenge was to learn how to read this particular book. My advice is to take your time. Allow each chapter, each character’s voice to envelop you. Inhabit each world for a while, the same way you might if you were reading a four hundred-page novel, because the story is all you get. Reading too quickly will not allow you to get a full sense of each young woman, and it runs the risk of letting the many first person protagonists blur together without truly appreciating their stories. The hardest part of reading this book is leaving behind characters you want to know more of, and wishing you could stay with them just a bit longer. It is a book that, for me, will warrant many return readings.

Leticia-UrietaLeticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA, a young adult novel by Laura Moe, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

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Breakfast-With-NerudaBREAKFAST WITH NERUDA
by Laura Moe
Merit Press, 252 pages

reviewed by Kristie Gadson

At some point in our lives, many of us bury parts of ourselves that we aren’t ready to face. These layers can form over time; from people we’ve encountered, from situations we’ve endured, or from issues we’ve found lodged deep within our psyche. They can protect us, like a shield, from life’s many fluctuations, and they can contribute to a great part of who we are. However, this protection can come at a cost–we can become distant, untouchable, and unreachable to those we love or resist the change we need to grow. In Laura Moe’s debut novel, Breakfast with Neruda, we journey with Michael Flynn as he learns to peel back the layers that have shielded him for so long.

We first meet Michael spending the summer cleaning his school, which serves as the first part of his two-part sentence after detonating his locker in an ill-conceived attempt to destroy his ex-best-friend’s car. Through Moe’s simple, yet, descriptive, writing, we soon realize that being condemned to custodial work and having to repeat his senior year are the least of Michael’s worries.

I go out to my car and count the cash I palmed from locker cleanup…I now have almost twenty-three bucks to last me for the next five days until pay day. If I plan this right I can get some gas, have enough cash left for a drive-thru lunch, and buy a few groceries.

Michael Flynn is homeless, having had to resort to living in his 1982 Ford LTD station wagon, The Blue Whale, because his mother’s hoarding has made his house unlivable. Michael’s journey of self-discovery begins once he meets Shelly Miller, another student sentenced to summer cleanup and the only person able to figure out where he’s living; a secret that no one outside of his family knows about. They both meet nearly every day, as the title implies, over breakfast, Shelly’s treat. What ensues is a relationship that forces Michael to look inward, uncovering who he is underneath all of his secrets.

Michael, of course, begins to fall for Shelly, but isn’t ready to open up to her. Shelly, he learns, isn’t quick to reveal things about herself either. The words they share between them, their sharp quips and comedic musings, are used to hide parts of themselves. They dance around their truths, choosing words carefully so as not to disclose too much. Their stories unfold piece by piece, each layer falling away as they learn to trust one another. A crashing of a family reunion unveils Michael’s hurt over not knowing his father. Their drive to Columbus exposes Shelly’s desire to be loved unconditionally.

However, it’s their love of words that brings them ever closer. Upon finding a book of Pablo Neruda’s selected love poems, they begin to connect on a deeper level. Neruda’s poems become the force that binds them, his words giving life and meaning to their budding love. Slowly, Michael begins to entrust Shelly with the parts of himself he felt necessary to hide and his honesty eventually coaxes Shelly into telling him her troubled past.

I want what I love to continue to live,/and you whom I love and sang above everything else/ to continue to flourish, full flowered…” (Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 89)

While Michael opens himself up to Shelly, he finds it hard to get his mother to tell him anything about his father. He knows that, somewhere beneath the detritus in his house, is the truth his mother kept from him all his life. The mounds of filth plaguing the house represent both Michael’s and his mother’s buried secrets. It’s when Michael finally becomes brave enough to sift through those piles of garbage that he’s able to discover who he really is underneath those layers of trash, and underneath the layers he made for himself.

Moe gives us a wonderfully written, character-driven novel. Her first love is poetry, which comes as no surprise since the narrative reads like one of Pablo Neruda’s poems. Every word feels as if it was carefully chosen to tell Michael’s story, using simple and crisp prose to convey deep and complex themes. Imagery is used only when it needs to be and actions are described as they are. Like a poet, Michael is fully aware of his emotions, and his feelings toward different aspects of his life are presented with such vivid imagery and language that a few choice lines become poetry in and of themselves.

I want to know her fully, to step inside her skin and burrow around. Like a hunter who waits for the fawn to become comfortable enough to let down her guard, I will wait.

Like Michael, I, too, am at a point in my life where I have to peel back my own layers. One of the best things about this book is that I was able to see myself in its characters and, through them, gain insight into my own troubles. This, I believe, is the mark of a great book–one that serves as a lens through which readers can look at themselves.

Breakfast with Neruda is a true journey of the self, taking us deeper with every turn of the page. It shows us that healing can only take place once we dismantle the walls we painstakingly build around ourselves and that our most vulnerable selves might hide our strongest truths.

Kristie-GadsonKristie Gadson is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in English. But, formalities aside, she knew that children’s books would become her passion when she found herself sneaking into the children’s section of Barnes & Noble well after she turned eighteen. She is a strong advocate for diverse children’s books, and writes diverse children’s book reviews on her blog The Black Sheep Book Review.

THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU, a young adult novel by Beth Kephart, reviewed by Rachael Tague

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This-is-the-Story-of-YouTHIS IS THE STORY OF YOU
by Beth Kephart
Chronicle Books, 256 pages

reviewed by Rachael Tague

When I sat down to read Beth Kephart’s newest novel, This Is the Story of You, its title and cover art caught my attention—personal, serene, then chaotic. I read the first line of chapter one—Blue, for example—and fell in love with the writing. A quarter of the way through the book, I adored each character, and connected with Mira, the narrator and protagonist. Kephart’s mesmerizing writing, wonderful characters, and themes of strength and endurance thrilled me from beginning to end.

Mira Banul is “medium everything—blond, built, smart.” She lives on Haven, where “We were six miles long by one-half mile…We were The Isolates. We were one bridge and a few good rules away from normal. We were causal bohemians, expert scavengers, cool.” Haven, a tiny island on the East coast, is a vacation destination in the summer. At the end of the season, the year-rounders return to their school in a refurbished bank and rule the island after-hours.

Mira’s best friends, Eva and Deni, have done everything together for as long as they can remember. They work together, study together, compete together, and explore together. And when Shift, a new student, joins their small senior class of 2016, his budding affection for Eva looks like the most dramatic event the trio will face this school year. When Mira goes home, however, she doesn’t have time to worry about Eva’s love life. Mira lives in her late aunt’s cottage on the beach with her mother, Mickey, and her little brother, Jasper-Lee, who has a rare disease called Hunter syndrome. Mickey, working four jobs, can barely make ends meet, and, on top of that, Mickey and Jasper-Lee must travel to the mainland every week for an Elaprase drip, Jasper-Lee’s best chance at survival. During Mickey and Jasper-Lee’s weekly trip the storm hits.

Beth-Kephart

Beth Kephart

When this mother-of-all-storms smashes Haven to bits, the community watches as their homes, belongings, and friends disappear. Mira must rely on instinct, basic storm survival training, and Old Carmen, the mysterious woman who disappears during vacation season and reappears only to fish and keep to herself during the winter. This Is the Story of You, however, is not your basic dystopian or apocalyptic Young Adult fantasy. To the contrary, it stands out as a bright spot against so many common plots and characters in contemporary YA fiction.

This story isn’t about high school hook-ups, saving the world against all odds, corrupt governments, or scientific experiments gone wrong. While there is certainly a place for these plots in all literature, the characters in Kephart’s story are real people, surviving real life, with real problems in the here and now. When her home is destroyed, Mira’s clothes get stiff, salty, and sandy. She lives in muck, and the reader can feel it. She’s not concerned with the next boy she’ll kiss but with the well-being of her brilliant little brother, her hard-working mother, her best friends, and her community at large.

Through it all, Mira learns about herself, her home, and the island she loves. She commits to survival for her family’s sake and grows as a daughter, sister, friend, and human being. This book’s language and characters refreshed my YA palate, and I recommend it to readers, young and old, who appreciate stories with characters and plots of depth and integrity. Kephart’s engaging characters and vivid scenery are described almost lyrically. Readers who love the experimental writing style of The Book Thief will find much to love in this novel. Short chapters, poetic language, snappy dialogue, and flowing story punctuated with bursts of italics— This Is the Story of You will not disappoint any reader who enjoys powerfully poetic prose. The novel showcases real life, the power of nature, and the power of people in the midst of disaster.

Rachael-TagueRachael Tague grew up in the Indianapolis area and is a recent graduate of Cedarville University, where she studied English and Creative Writing . Her creative nonfiction and book reviews appear or are forthcoming in The MacGuffin and in Cleaver Magazine.

A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON, a YA novel by Samantha Mabry, reviewed by Allison Renner

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A-Fierce-and-Subtle-PoisonA FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON
by Samantha Mabry
Algonquin Young Readers, 278 pages

reviewed by Allison Renner

Everywhere we go we are surrounded by stories. Stories about people and places, stories that are told and retold until they are so shrouded in mystery, no one remembers the origin, and no one is brave enough to discover the truth. Like Samantha Mabry’s legend of the poisonous girl.

Lucas Knight and his father come to Puerto Rico every summer from Houston, Texas. Lucas’s father transforms abandoned, historical buildings into extravagant resorts, while Lucas is content to find trouble with his friends—at least until he’s old enough to take over his father’s business.

The island is populated with legends of curses and witches, which Lucas believes despite his father telling him not to. Lucas’s mother was Puerto Rican and told him her fair share of myths before she disappeared. He and his friends build on the myths they hear, spinning their own versions until they don’t remember what’s supposedly true.

This much is common knowledge: there is a house where a scientist lives. A white man. He was married to a Puerto Rican woman, but traveled often for work, leaving his wife alone. Here the myths begin, with a wife who is driven mad by loneliness, or cursed, or bitter. She disappears, and the whole island dreams about the daughter she left behind; a poisonous girl with green skin who lives in a shuttered house, surrounded by plants that kill.

Samantha Mabry

Samantha Mabry

The alleged curse doesn’t keep Lucas from the closed-off house. He throws wishes over the courtyard walls and believes that his friend saw the green-skinned girl. He wishes and believes until he’s too old for that type of story, when real girls come into his life and occupy his thoughts. Until one of those girls disappears. Other girls have disappeared before, but those cases have been linked to the ocean currents or the curse. When a tourist goes missing, the case gets attention—from the American news outlets, and from Lucas. After the object of his affection disappears, Lucas is determined to find out what is happening to these girls, even if no one else can.

The highlight of the book is Mabry’s descriptions of the setting and folklore. The imagery inside is as gorgeous and unique as the cover portrays. She paints Puerto Rico’s landscape with vivid colors and populates it with townspeople that come alive with their heritage.

On the side of the road, multicolored birds perched on fallen trees, and if I listened hard
enough I could hear the tiny tree frogs croaking out a sound that was impossibly loud for
creatures their size.

Lucas, as a character, however, feels underdeveloped, coming across, instead, like a stereotypical, entitled rich kid. While Mabry sets up a compelling backstory, she doesn’t follow through to allow readers to empathize and stay with Lucas on his quest to get to the root of the legend. Lucas remains passive, taking a backseat to the curse. And the poisonous girl doesn’t get an opportunity to share her side of things, which could have brought the curse to life and propelled the story in a different direction.

If you’ve previously stayed away from books based on legends because they tend to be more supernatural, then A Fierce and Subtle Poison is the book for you. The legend is central to the story, but it never pushes the book into the realm of the supernatural or fantastical. It toes the line of magical realism, with some mystery thrown in for good measure. The book will do wonders to satiate wanderlust and readers will fall in love with Mabry’s beautiful imagery even if it falls short at delivering an entirely fulfilling story.

Allison-Renner

Allison Renner has worked as a photographer, student teacher, and graphic designer. She is currently a librarian who shares her love of young adult literature with teens in public libraries.

SEEING OFF THE JOHNS, a young adult novel by Rene S. Perez II reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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Seeing-Off-the-JohnsSEEING OFF THE JOHNS
by Rene S. Perez II
Cinco Puntos Press, 220 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

In the Texas town of Greenton, the talented few become mythical figures in the eyes of the locals, leaving those outside the spotlight to contemplate where they stand in the scheme of small town life. This could be a familiar story about growing up in someone else’s shadow, but, in this case, Seeing Off the Johns explores what happens in the aftermath of disaster; the loss of young life on the cusp of greatness.

Jon Robison and John Mejia, or “the Johns,” as the Greentonites call them, are two high school sports stars who receive scholarships to play baseball for the University of Texas at Austin. The day they prepare to leave town is met with celebration and sadness as they two young men sever ties and move on from the place that nurtured and worshipped them. On the way to Austin to move into their dorm rooms, the Johns’ tire blows out on the highway, killing them both in the crash.

Their end is the novel’s beginning. It seeks to tell the legend of the Johns versus the reality of them, and how they affected the individual lives of those who both loved and envied them their success. Concepcion “Chon” Gonzalez resents John Mejia for the attention he received playing sports and for dating his longtime crush, Araceli Monsevais. Araceli attempts to build an identity beyond being John Mejia’s girlfriend. Both characters are thrown back together during their senior year of high school, under the watchful eyes of a town still grieving their loss.

At the beginning the book, the communal point of view of the town sets the emotional tone, but as the school year progresses, the point of view settles primarily with Chon. He grapples with the new opportunity he might have to be with Araceli and the guilt at pursuing her so soon after John Mejia’s death. The voice, which in any other story might feel heavy-handed, is cynical, razor sharp, and real, revealing Chon’s deepest thoughts. This voice deals with his present life, but also widens the story’s scope, allowing the reader to see around Chon’s hyper focused, teenage attraction to Araceli and into the feelings at war inside him. He isn’t special but he wants a bigger life than the one he leads in Greenton.

One of these moments occurs when Chon thinks of starting his senior year:

Going to high school, Chon had learned over the last three years, was like living in Greenton-once you know where everyone is going to be at any given time of day, they would be there forever, like animatronic animals at an amusement park standing at the ready for their next performance to a group of children who actually believe they’re actually living, breathing beings with the free will to step off their tracks and quit their dancing bear show to start a new life where no one throws popcorn at them and everyone they meet doesn’t expect a performance and is willing to leave them in peace.

For Chon, his future in Greenton is bleak. Though he is a decent student, he foresees Araceli moving on to college while he stays in Greenton, continuing to work at the Pachanga gas station with his middle aged, bitter co-worker Ana in a continual ritual of opening and closing the store and waiting on people who never see the real him as they pass through. Throughout the school year, he spends time with Henry and Araceli. She quits the cheerleading squad and rekindles her friendship with him.

Rene S. Perez II

Rene S. Perez II

Perez captures the cramped feeling of a small town in each scene, as they drive in Chon’s car up and down the few streets in town, attending football games and high school parties and living on the periphery of the minutiae of small town life. The sense of place, and it’s stranglehold on the characters, is palpable. Araceli says, “it was like purgatory, but smaller.” Throughout the book, there is always a sense of waiting for life after Greenton to begin.

As Araceli and Chon grow closer, they face the town’s disapproval of their relationship, a betrayal of John Mejia’s memory, and soon understand the choices they need to make as graduation approaches. Listening to Bob Schneider on the car radio as they slow dance in the Pachanga parking lot, Araceli realizes how Chon has helped her to heal, and Chon realizes how much she means to him.

Ultimately, the story is Chon’s, Araceli’s, and the individuals who, without the excuse of their limitations, have to understand their life after the Johns are gone. We watch as they grapple with what to do with this freedom and how they realize a life in which their collective memories remain, even while the town’s memory of the Johns fades away.

In the end, memory and the bonds forged in the midst of tragedy remain strong. The story comes full circle, projecting into Chon’s future as he remembers Araceli, the Johns, and what he owes them, telling his grandchildren “the story of how he became who he is.”

Leticia-Urieta

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

BURN BABY BURN, a young adult novel by Meg Medina reviewed by Rachael Tague

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Burn-Baby-BurnBURN BABY BURN
by Meg Medina
Candlewick Press, 305 pages

reviewed by Rachael Tague

New York City is one of my favorite places to visit. I adore Broadway, Times Square, and ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza. But thirty-some years ago, the Big Apple was not the magical tourist attraction it is today, especially if you had “the wrong skin color or a last name like López.” Disco, dancing, free love, and women’s rights typically define 1970’s America, but, for Nora López, New York City in 1977 means arson, looting, serial murders, a struggling mother, and an increasingly dangerous brother. In Burn Baby Burn, acclaimed children’s and young adult author Meg Medina presents a strong female protagonist in one of New York City’s most tumultuous years.

Nora should be able to look forward to college, boys, and an all-night dance party with her best friend Kathleen to celebrate their eighteenth birthdays. She should be care-free, dancing to Parliament, Heatwave, the Ramones, Donna Summer, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. Instead, she’s worried about police brutality, scorching summer temperatures, and navigating the dangerous suburbs of NYC as an attractive young Latina in a sea of sickos and psychos like Sergio, the drug dealer in the basement who harasses her and corrupts her younger brother.

Nora feels responsible for her mother’s naiveté, her brother’s violence, her father’s neglect, and her own future, but she hides her problems, afraid to embarrass her family or burden her friends. So while her already broken family continues to crumble, she buys a new pair of Sassoon jeans, fixes her hair, and wears a velvet necklace in 100 degree weather to hide the bruises inflicted by her brother. Her friend, Kathleen, and Pablo, the cute new college boy at work, can only guess at her hardships. But what’s the point of daydreaming about friends and boyfriends and an easy life when the city is literally burning down and a serial killer is on the loose, stalking young couples who stay out too late?

When a lightning strike causes a city-wide blackout and throws New York into a panic, Nora witnesses something that forces her to make a choice: trust her friends, take a chance, and admit her hardships? Or dig in her heels and tough it out alone? Her decision will affect her family, her friends, and her future.

This fictitious story of a young woman finding strength and freedom among chaos is set amid true historical events in New York City. As Medina explains, “the city was on the brink of bankruptcy, race relations were tense, and crime had ballooned.” At the same time, disco and dancing reigned, and women’s rights activists, like Stiller in the book, fought relentlessly for their rights. The 1970’s offer the perfect backdrop of political and societal upheaval to tell Nora’s story. Through the turmoil, she remains “beautiful in the face of fear.”

Nora’s struggle to overcome her circumstances drives the narrative. Through an unpredictable but believable plot, her endurance and boldness as she confronts drug dealers, sexism, and racism feels strikingly real. Even if some of the descriptions of the seventies are a tad heavy-handed at times, they are helpful for the many young adults who will, no doubt, enjoy this book for years to come.

Nora’s voice itself is burdened but laced with optimism. She can reminisce on a rough past, pick out the bright spots, and look to the future with hope.

“We walk along the ocean up to our ankles. Little kids build sand castles all around us, just the way we used to…By tomorrow, maybe all their hard work will be gone, but they don’t seem to mind. They’ll do it all again if they have to.”

Meg Medina

Meg Medina

Medina’s passion for connecting cultures shines, particularly through Nora’s language. Her mother struggles to learn English, and it frustrates Nora, but Nora continues to translate for her mima and talk with her in a way that makes her comfortable. And when Nora learns the new employee, who goes by Paulie, is actually named Pablo, she embraces his Latino name in solidarity. “He says Colombia in knee-buckling, perfect español. Right there, I know I’ll never call him Paulie.” This harmony of cultures and languages sings throughout the book, drawing readers from several backgrounds into one coherent story.

Anchored by true moments in history, Medina tells a story that proves that progress is not easy on any level, personal to national. While women march for freedom, Nora thunders forward in her own life, coming of age under seemingly impossible conditions and finding strength within herself and in her friends to take a stand for herself and for what is right. Despite towering hardships, Nora, much like the city around her, “stubbornly thrives.”

Rachael-TagueRachael Tague grew up in the Indianapolis area and is currently studying English and Creative Writing at Cedarville University. She is an editorial intern for Cleaver Magazine.

THE GIRL IN THE WELL IS ME, a middle years novel by Karen Rivers, reviewed by Rebecca Lee

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The-Girl-in-the-Well-is-Me-.jpgTHE GIRL IN THE WELL IS ME
Karen Rivers
Algonquin Young Readers, 218 pages

Reviewed by Rebecca Lee

We’ve all experienced the feeling of being stuck. Whether it’s situational or emotional, sometimes it feels like there is no getting out of the dark tunnel that lies ahead. In The Girl In The Well Is Me by Karen Rivers, the main character, Kammie, is literally stuck in a cold, dark, tunnel with no way out.

At eleven years old, Kammie is focused on the insular universe that inhabits a middle-schooler. She is concerned with popularity, fitting in with the Mandy and Kandy’s in her class, and making the right impression in her new school. When the reader first meets Kammie, she has just moved from New Jersey to Texas and wants a completely new start. It is only toward the end that the reader finds out why she needs such a drastic new beginning.

Karen Rivers does a superb job with metaphor in her current middle grade novel. Every other page is decorated with a metaphor so colorful and real that the reader is instantly transported out of the well.

“The well is an animal that’s holding me in its throat, thinking about swallowing me down all the way. I pat its wall. “Please don’t hurt me,” I say.”

Children often get lost in their own thoughts. The well preserves the inner thoughts of Kammie in a shadowy prison filled with projected imagination. They come alive, almost as if they are illuminated by the well, so that she can better see what she has faced.

A dark sense of dread threads its way throughout the book. The reader wonders if Kammie is going to make it out of the well, and, also, if she’s going to make it out of the life that she was born into. With a backstory involving the deadly combination of a sensitive girl with an unusual family, the tension builds with every memory Kammie shares.

“My dad went to jail on June 6. I know that it was June 6 because it was my birthday and that’s the kind of detail you don’t forget.”

The other details that Kammie can’t forget are peppered throughout the novel. They jump out at different times and are so unforgettable that it’s hard not to startle. While at first we see an average girl trying her hardest to fit in with a group of mean middle school girls, upon second glance we see an intricate and complex girl starting her journey through self exploration.

As for the other middle school girls whom she is desperately trying to impress, the exclusion and the initiation tests Kammie must pass feel heartbreakingly true. Although she tries for friendship from all different angles, the girls remain uninterested and ultimately damaging. Their response is chillingly familiar to anyone who went to middle school.

“Sooooorry, but we’re all full. Like, you know, we have a blonde. A brunette. And a redhead.”

Karen Rivers

Karen Rivers

Although the book is set in one, unmovable position, the story shifts throughout time, giving the book an acrobatic feel. As Kammie thinks back on her life, we catch glimpses of memories that made her who she is today. In addition to focusing on life with her brother and single mom, she also projects into the future, wondering what her life will be like in the days and years to come. Through the imagination of a child—at one point she fantasizes that one of her mother’s several cats will come to rescue her—the reader follows Kammie along on her path to freedom. Her hope rarely dwindles.

Throughout the book, the reader uncovers the truth about Kammie and her family. Poverty, relocation, and depression haunt them in between the lines of each page, regardless of the up-beat vocabulary and dialect Kammie chooses to use. It is because of this language (a smattering of OMG and ‘like’s) that Karen Rivers is able to dive so seamlessly into the darker themes of growing up. Without Kammy’s airy disposition, the entire tone would shift, making the book more suitable for an older audience. Since there are quite a few middle schoolers dealing with depression, poverty, and exclusion, it is important that she’s able to fit those themes into her book carefully, yet authentically.

Because of the tone and persistence of Kammie, the reader never loses faith that, although times may seem impossibly tough, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Rebecca-LeeRebecca Lee currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has been published in Existere Journal, Rusty Nail, The Noctua Review, and others. Her flash fiction story “Mouse Meat” will appear in Issue 13 of Cleaver. Read more at her website.

A 52-HERTZ WHALE, a YA novel by Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman, reviewed by Kristie Gadson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

52-Hertz-WhaleA 52-HERTZ WHALE
by Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman
Carolrhoda Lab, 197 pages

reviewed by Kristie Gadson

When a humpback whale becomes separated from its pod, it emits a unique song in an effort to find its way back to its loved ones. When certain people experience feelings of isolation, they seek companionship through indirect social interaction.

Bill Sommer and Natalie Haney Tilghman’s A 52-Hertz Whale explores the nature of loneliness through a series of email correspondences, all between people with little else in common other than the desire for understanding. From the conversations of these starkly different people springs a series of beautiful, if uncanny, friendships. A 52 Hertz-Whale reveals that some of the most meaningful relationships can be forged even when the only thing we have in common is the fear of being alone.

Fourteen-year-old James Turner (“[email protected]”) sends his first email after discovering that his adopted humpback whale, Salt, was separated from its migratory pod. Recent film graduate Darren Olmstead (“[email protected]”) receives the long email detailing James’ efforts to uncover the lost whale’s whereabouts, and a plea for Darren’s assistance. What a kid from a middle school social skills class wants with the guy who volunteered to film their final video project is beyond Darren, but he figures there’s not much to lose in responding. He replies with his condolences and finds James in his inbox again the next day; the beginning of a year-long correspondence.

When Darren offers to call the boy, James declines, preferring the comfort that a computer screen provides. From a medium where the individual is in full control of his or her own identity comes a sincere candidness that stems from the urge to find someone —anyone —who will listen. James is direct about his reasons for reaching out, and Darren soon takes a shine to the whale-obsessed boy. From there, both of their stories unfold.

The structure and style of their emails denotes their polar-opposite personalities, while reflecting shifting states of mind within the narrative. In the beginning James’ writing is formal and scholarly, not an ounce of slang or playful language to be seen, which speaks volumes about his social awkwardness. Darren’s writing is humorous and doesn’t take itself too seriously, even when commenting on stressful situations. He doesn’t know how to process the grief plaguing his own life.

[email protected]: “Now, I don’t know much (okay, anything) about girls…It all just sort of makes me wonder: Is it worth it to like someone so much if there is a chance of ending up alone again anyway?
Sincerely,
James Turner 

P.S. Any Netflix recommendations?

—

[email protected]: Hey there James Jamerson (real guy, actually, you can look him up),
Not sure what you’re into as far as movies. I bet you’d dig Whale Rider. It’s an Australian flick, I think. Check it out…
Peace in the Entire East,
D-Dog

Over time, the subtle changes in their writing reflect the changes in their lives. Darren’s scattered thoughts become more focused and James relaxes his speech with words he’s learned from Darren and the Urban Dictionary. They come to confide in one another, seeing in the other the hope they needed for themselves. James admires Darren’s bravery in carving a path for himself despite his setbacks. Darren is inspired by James’ choice in doing what he loves despite being bullied and ostracized because of it. For them loneliness isn’t just a bonding agent, it’s a means of healing.

Natalie Haney Tilghman

Natalie Haney Tilghman

The book, however, is comprised of more than just the contents of James and Darren’s personal subject lines. Marine researcher Peter Brammer (“[email protected]”) emails the office’s maintenance man about struggles with his father’s death and the brief reappearance of his estranged sister. James’ classmate Sophia Lucca ([email protected]) emails her flighty friend, Sarah, about her frustrations with her mother’s budding relationship in the wake of her own father’s death. There are also minor interactions between people with at least two degrees of separation from the world of our two main characters. Each dialogue is unique and serves to convey the idea that people from different walks of life can find common ground in their feelings of solitude.

The epistolary nature of email represents the individual’s need for companionship and this story couldn’t have been told any other way. Every character has his or her own style of writing that lends itself to a distinct voice—from Sarah’s shorthand text speech to Darren’s own humorous but thoughtful ramblings. In the end everyone’s story isn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow. Nothing is set in stone, leaving readers with the feeling that things could get better or worse for any of these people. Emails can only reflect the present. We can appreciate how far each person has come through the connections they formed.

Bill Sommer

Bill Sommer

Reading the book, I felt that I was just as isolated as the characters were—a young woman peeking into the lives of fictional characters she had absolutely nothing in common with. I came equipped with my own hardships, my own struggles, my own insecurities; but therein lies the point. My isolation as a reader, combined with my own fears of being alone, makes me no different than Darren or James, than Sophia or Peter. I connected with each of them until the final turn of the page, as if I had known them for longer than the time it took to get from one cover to the next.

It’s said there is a lone whale that roams the North Pacific, the only known whale to emit sound on a fifty-two-hertz frequency, equivalent to a tuba’s lowest note. It’s suspected to be a hybrid of a blue whale and another species, swimming in complete isolation as its calls go unanswered. This means that two animals with little else in common other than swimming in the same ocean came together to create a singular specimen with no desire to beach itself, despite being called “the world’s loneliest whale.” Yet it embodies the connection between two unlikely beings: proof there’s still hope for connection amidst the loneliness.

A 52-Hertz Whale gives readers the opportunity to come to terms with, and ultimately accept, their loneliness. The novel takes one of our greatest fears and subtly, powerfully, makes us witness the lasting bonds that can be forged from it.

Kristie-GadsonKristie Gadson is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in English. But, formalities aside, she knew that children’s books would become her passion when she found herself sneaking into the children’s section of Barnes & Noble well after she turned eighteen. She is a strong advocate for diverse children’s books, and writes diverse children’s book reviews on her blog The Black Sheep Book Review.
 

OUT OF DARKNESS by Ashley Hope Pérez reviewed by Leticia Urieta

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Out-of-DarknessOUT OF DARKNESS
by Ashley Hope Pérez
Carolrhoda LAB, 402 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

Out of Darkness is broken into parts: before the disaster and after. This compelling novel is rooted in history, and the book begins with the aftermath of the 1937 New London school explosion in East Texas and a town reeling from disaster. Volunteers move debris, collect the severed limbs of school children, and build caskets for the dead. The narrative voice embodies the horror, the grief, and the growing need for someone to blame. This is how the story begins, with a sense of impending doom, and this feeling of dread pervades the rest of the novel, the “before”, leading up to the “after.”

The story encompasses a school year, oscillating between the third person points of view of a family hoping to make a new start. Naomi Vargas moves to New London from San Antonio with her twin brother and Sister, Beto and Cari, to live with their father, her stepfather, Henry Smith. From the beginning, the rules are clear; no Spanish at school or around town; watch where you go; attend church revivals and socialize with the locals. New London is an oil town, a white town, and Naomi is immediately aware of how she doesn’t fit. Henry changes her siblings’ names to Robbie and Carrie Smith and expects her to keep his house, get to know the church wives, and learn how to cook proper southern food and biscuits, not tortillas. Each short vignette is set in one perspective at a time. And the hopes and fears of this new life are revealed.

Naomi fears living with Henry, the stepfather who has sexually abused her as a child, and being responsible for her twin siblings now that her mother, Estella, is gone. She hears Henry’s promises, the born again song and dance that he performs, but is constantly triggered by his presence. Henry is filled with self-righteousness, that this is God’s plan for his redemption from a life of drinking and sin. Beto, the sensitive, quiet twin, loves the new encyclopedias he gets to read at the new white school, and the childhood wonders of a new place, and new possibilities.

Each perspective lets the reader see the family’s story from a different angle, in brief flashes of scene that cut to the essence of each character, so that, even though the sections are short, the reader can connect to them. Each maintains its internal language patterns and embodies how each character sees themselves and others. One perspective that is infrequent, but important, is “the Gang,” representing the perspective of the teenagers of the town. They reveal the deep prejudice inherent in their upbringing, in the way they and their parents view the “Mexican Girl,” and their underlying curiosity about Naomi. All of these perspectives center around her and the book becomes largely her story.

Ashley Hope Pérez

Ashley Hope Pérez

Naomi feels isolated from the community. All the houses in the oil camp look the same and the place reeks of runoff from the derricks. Even her own brother and sister force her to become protective of her memories. They beg for her attention and seek details of their mother that Naomi wishes to keep to herself. For her, the wood by the Sabine River is her only solace. She retreats there when she is teased at school, when the grocer Mr. Turner tells her that Mexicans can’t shop in his store, or when Henry drinks and becomes explosive, threatening the relative peace they have cultivated. The woods become her sanctuary and it is in her perspective that the contrast between the woods and the town is most evident. The way she sheds her fears and sees the trees, river, and rocks where she sits as separate from the life she leads gives the reader a glimpse of her interior world.

It is here, in the woods, that she meets Wash, an industrious African American boy who lives in Egypt Town, the segregated community where the black families live. Wash, or James Washington Fuller, as his parents call him, is the son of their school’s principal. He, too, feels the heavy weight of expectation. Each job he does around town must go towards his college fund. And his parents expect that he will conduct himself properly, especially with white people, so that he will be a “credit to his race.” From the moment that Wash sees Naomi, his world is changed, and from then on, he makes it his mission to entertain and care for her siblings, teaching them to fish in the river and build things, just to get close to her. His caring, flirtatious nature draws Naomi in, and the woods become their place, where their relationship is allowed to exist beyond prying eyes. In a hollow tree, they explore their love and desire for one another, planning clandestine meetings to be alone. As their love grows, their lives become inextricably linked, and their sections are marked with “Naomi and Wash,” as their perspectives merge.

The novel lulls the reader into a false sense of hope that the story can end well for Naomi. She becomes close with some of the families in their church and is able to find a semblance of peace in the secluded nature of her romance with Wash. Their growing love engulfs and protects them from the prejudices and intrusions of a town bent on tearing them a part.

This hope is punctured again and again by Naomi’s setbacks. She lives with the fear of Henry’s advances as he decides that he would like to take her for a wife, the weight of preserving the memory of her mother to the twins who never knew her, and having to find her place in an East Texas oil town where she is unwanted, unable to merge with the African American community and pushed away from the white majority because of her Mexican ethnicity. As her fear of Henry grows, she and Wash devise a plan to leave the strictures of a society tying them down, to take the twins and go where no one can follow. With each dip into misfortune, the reader is reminded that the story can only end one way, in disaster.

After the school explosion from a gas leak, Naomi and Wash must confront the horrors of grief and a town on the rampage, itching for someone to blame. Wash makes a convenient target, a young black man who, as the white men of the town see it, has invaded the white spaces, doing odd jobs around the school and being seen with the Smith children. The vitriol of their attacks fills one with dread until the end.

This is a story that, while fictional, reflects the heritage of a time in our collective histories that many would like to forget, when racism, hatred and violence were natural pieces woven into the fabric of the American South. The ending is traumatic, and the book in general could be considered triggering to those who have experienced extreme violence or rape. One could make a case that the ending is too violent, too unbelievable for modern readers to relate to, and therefore the rest of the book loses its merit because in the end there is no hope. Yet, when reading the recent news that twelve year old Tamir Rice, gunned down in a park as he played, will receive no justice, that no one will be held accountable for his death, and that the people whose job it is to see that justice is done spent more time criminalizing him than the police who murdered him, this novel, set eighty years ago, does not seem like fiction. Though the characters are part of the author’s imagination, they reflect the best and worst of people and how they come together or are driven apart by tragedy.

In the epilogue, an adult Beto decides that he must tell the true story of what happened in the year his family lived in New London, and how they lost everything, including the right to represent themselves truthfully. In a rare authorial intrusion, the author pleads with the audience: “He needs you reader. All he asks is that you take the story up and carry it for a while.” It is a story that stays with you, and, as much as the reader would like to return to the seclusion of Naomi’s woods and the hollow tree where the ugliness of life cannot intrude, it leaves a heaviness inside you that is not easily shed. We have seen the consequences of blocking out the darkness and leaving these stories untold. With this novel, Ashley Hope Pérez attempts to bring those stories to light.

Leticia-Urieta

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

 

BREATH TO BREATH by Craig Lew reviewed by Heather Leah Huddleston

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Breath-to-BreathBREATH TO BREATH
by Craig Lew
Little Pickle Press, 432 pages

reviewed by Heather Leah Huddleston

Seventeen-year-old William has been dealt a bad hand in life. Raised for as long as he can remember by his grandparents, Gramps dies and G’ma can’t take care of him, so William is shipped from Kansas to California to live with his estranged father. He has no real memories of his mother, except the fictionalized ones he makes up for his friends. And there’s this: he has a history of violence; he nearly killed someone in Kansas.

The novel unfolds like both a mystery and a coming-of-age story as he tries to come to an understanding of who he really is. Though violence seems to follow him, we learn that the violence has a reason; he saves a girl from being raped; he saves a boy from being beaten by bullies; he saves himself after being finger raped by the captain of the football team. Within the gray area surrounding all the violence lies the question: is there ever a time when violence is okay? Or at least understandable?

William’s sleep is haunted by nightmares of whales being hacked to death by faceless people and his waking moments are haunted by the vision of a four-year-old boy, Patches, who both reveals himself to William and hides from him just as quickly. On their initial meeting, the boy tells William that he is being sexually abused and, each time William catches a glimpse of the boy’s red shirt or hears his familiar giggle, he chases him in order to help him. The more William asks questions about him around the neighborhood, however, the less the boy seems to exist. And then there’s the mysterious blue-eyed dog that guides him, not only to Patches, but, to other people who need his help.

Craig Lew

Craig Lew

All these clues lead William to answers to questions he didn’t even realize he had—answers about who he really is and what happened to him. Ultimately, the dog leads William to the house where he believes Patches lives, the same place where he discovers that everything around him is familiar: the yellow sofa, the Persian rug, the lion’s foot claw table. His memories start to resurface, not like breadcrumbs, but like a tidal wave.

Patches isn’t a boy at all, but young William’s dog his mother forces him to abandon as a child, the same dog that guides present-day William. And the abused boy who haunts William’s periphery—well, it is William himself…the wounded boy begging to be heard, saved, and healed.

With the truth, William knows what he has to do; resort to the violence he knows in order to save his own life and the lives of others. Dubbed a hero by those around him, he starts to realize that violence wasn’t, and isn’t, the answer. He made a mistake. He knows the truth now; the darkness is within him because of what happened to him and it may never go away. But so is the light.

Throughout the book, William’s friend/girlfriend leads him to understand that he is an empath—that he feels and senses things more deeply than most—and that he has natural healing abilities. His empathic abilities allow him to forgive his father and even have compassion for his mother. William must face (and accept) his own darkness in order to fully become the healer he is. Awareness leads to understanding leads to the powerful act of choosing. Though the darkness surrounds him, it’s a guide that leads him to the truth of his own story, so then he can choose: compassion or revenge; holding his breath or exhaling; living or dying.

Breathing only happens
here and now. But breathing
is my decision.

And I decide to
breathe.

The novel in verse is Craig Lew’s debut for young adults. Verse can be a tricky form; its sparsity requires attention with every single word. Each one holds weight, importance, and purpose. And Lew does very well with this, especially considering the topics at hand: repressed memories, childhood sexual abuse, rape, even the fact that William is a natural-born healer. These topics, like the verse form, require that the reader pay attention.

William’s strong voice is solid from page one, mixed with all the confusion, anger, and hope of a kid who is trying to make sense of his own life. William’s character builds along with the increasing tension in the novel and this, along with the present-tense narrative, causes the reader to experience what happens to William intimately, as if we are right there with him.

There are potentially triggering moments in this story, especially for those who have experienced trauma themselves, and the story should be offered to those with trauma in their past with care. These “acts,” things that people would normally close their eyes to, are exposed here. And the author—and ultimately all victims of sexual abuse—offers these details because they are necessary, to not only shed light on the horrors that happen to victims, but, also, to show how strong these individuals are to survive and, ultimately, choose to live.

The miraculous aspect of this novel is that it is inspired by the true story of healer, William Lewis, who actually lived through these horrific events. The first book in a trilogy, the story of this man’s life will continue to unfold every November through 2017.

Intense, visceral, raw, and healing, this novel, simply put, is about a survivor, but, also, about the choices one makes to move past survival into fully embracing life, with all its ugliness and beauty, which oftentimes live side by side.

Heather-Leah-HuddlestonHeather Leah Huddleston earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. When she’s not writing her own stories, or guiding others to theirs, you can find her on a yoga mat, dancing through life barefooted, listening to music (mostly heavy metal), or cuddling a furry friend, all in the name of the wonder-filled world of story.

 

A BLIND GUIDE TO STINKVILLE by Beth Vrabel reviewed by Mandy King

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A blind guide to stinkvilleA BLIND GUIDE TO STINKVILLE
by Beth Vrabel
Sky Pony Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing Inc., 288 pages

reviewed by Mandy King

A Blind Guide to Stinkville is a story told through the fuzzy vision of 11-year-old Alice, whose albinism and near blindness give her the perspective to uncover hidden stories of the people in her new town. The genius of Vrabel’s approach is that the reader meets the other characters through nuances of feelings and impressions rather than stark physical descriptions. The book is not a page-turner plot-wise and there are no major catastrophes; instead the novel peers beneath the superficial to reveal important lessons about what it means to be a member of small town community.

Despite the fact that Alice has to use a magnifying glass to read a book a few inches from her face, she is the only person in the story who truly sees what is going on around her. Initially, Alice thinks her new hometown of Sinkville, aka “Stinkville,” is a horrible place dominated by the terrible smell emanating from the local paper-mill. It’s nothing like where she grew up in Seattle.

However, as Alice reveals the stories of the townspeople, Stinkville becomes a much less stinky place. Alice finds the beauty buried beneath the surface of Stinkville —like her brother’s crush on a local girl, or the fact that the owner of the diner and the mayor of the town are in love with one another, or just the deliciousness of a specially made PB&J milkshake at the diner. These observations are given voice in an essay contest to showcase the town’s success stories, which Alice seizes as the perfect platform to ask questions about the town’s history and its inhabitants. It is clear the author has a love for small towns and their quirks. Home is where the heart is, even if it smells like rotten eggs.

Perhaps the best lesson for young people in the book is one that Alice keeps telling herself: “Be your own advocate.” Previously, Alice’s albinism and near-blindness forced her to rely on others, but, in her new town, Alice uses her cane and sheer will-power to explore. Alice’s story reminds us that we are strongest when we believe in ourselves. And Alice’s aptitude for getting people to reveal themselves helps the reader realize that being different is a strength rather than a weakness.

A Blind Guide to Stinkville takes the common approach of using the struggles of the main character to sketch out the characters of a town where everyone is fighting their own battles. Through Alice’s daily first person narrative we learn about Alice’s family and the townspeople, and gradually Alice’s albinism becomes just one of many issues that people struggle with in the book. We witness her mom’s battle with depression, old Mr. Hamlin’s fight with his son about being put into a nursing home, and a young girl’s attempt to hide her dyslexia. At first it felt like too many issues packed into one book, but the more I stepped back, the more I realized that Vrabel shows us what real life is like—an often uncomfortable jumble of hard-to-talk about topics.

Beth Vrabel

Beth Vrabel

Though Vrabel’s choice to contrast Alice’s freedom in her former home with her initial helplessness in Stinkville feels a bit unrealistic at times, it serves to illustrate Alice’s dependence upon her family. The reader easily perceives that Alice was hindered very little by her disability in her former home of Seattle, which does dramatize the difficulties Alice faces as an albino in her new town. If this were an adult novel, Alice’s ability to see the truths around her despite her blindness might feel contrived. However, the shifted approach of an albino character presents this trope in a manner accessible to younger readers.

At its heart, A Blind Guide to Stinkville is an homage to small towns and a reminder that everyone is fighting his or her own battles. The town and its characters come to life with Alice’s colorful and intuitive descriptions. This book is perfect for a classroom library or for any young reader who feels like an outsider. Vrabel does a fine job showing us that Alice’s disability is one facet of who she is and not a crippling condition controlling her life.

Mandy-KingMandy King works as a digital marketing strategist, spending most of her days writing and editing content that lives on the web. The best job she ever had was head of the events and marketing program at Boulder Book Store, one of the U.S.’s largest independent bookstores. To her mind, the perfect day starts with a cup of tea and ends with a bag (or two) of new books.

THE DEVIL AND WINNIE FLYNN by Micol Ostow and David Ostow reviewed by Rachael Tague

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The-Devil-and-Winnie-FlynnTHE DEVIL AND WINNIE FLYNN
by Micol Ostow
illustrated by David Ostow
Soho Teen, 326 pages

reviewed by Rachael Tague

I don’t like to be scared. I can’t stand that chill-in-the-air, breath-on-my-neck, sweat-in-my-palm terror that comes with horror stories. The last time I tried to read a scary book, I was twelve, and I flipped to the epilogue before I was halfway through to relieve the tension. That’s the only time I’ve ever read the end of a book without reading everything in between. But if I had the option to stop in the middle of The Devil and Winnie Flynn, I would have given up during the séance in the criminal ward of an abandoned insane asylum. As it was, I had to shut the book, take a breath, and reorient myself to reality before I could continue with this creepy tale.

Brother-Sister duo Micol and David Ostow (So Punk Rock (and Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother)) team up for the second time to write and illustrate The Devil and Winnie Flynn, packing the pages with ghostly spirits, exorcisms, demons, psychics, and all manner of haunted locations, its characters seeking communion with the dead and the damned. Cleverly twisting the paranormal with mystery and pop culture, the Ostows invite their readers into Winnie Flynn’s haunted adventures.

When her mother commits suicide, Winnie Flynn meets her long-lost Aunt Maggie, “the creator, director, and producer of the Fantastic, Fearsome USTM series.” Her life becomes “a family-tragedy-turned-last-minute internship in television—in reality television!—smack-dab dead center in America’s armpit.” Winnie relocates from Portland, Oregon to a shady motel in her late mother’s home state of New Jersey. From their headquarters in Asbury Park, the cast and crew are within driving distance of spirit-filled destinations like Overlook Insane Asylum, Ghost Boy Bridge, the Pine Barrens, and the Devils portal. Their goal: to hunt down the famed New Jersey Devil, a creature Winnie believes is a myth.

Micol-Ostow

Micol Ostow

The Fantastic, Fearsome team knows Winnie is not cut out to be a Production Assistant, having no experience with television or the paranormal apart from a secret obsession with horror movies, “even though that’s: 1) an acute understatement, and 2) our dirty little secret, Lu. Yours and mine, kind of our thing.” Winnie’s friend Lucia is the recipient of Winnie’s letter-style journal, where she records her intern experiences: “I brought the journal you gave me this past birthday with me…even if you won’t see these pages, at least, if I keep writing, I won’t be completely alone.”

The ongoing letter format, the snippets of the Fantastic, Fearsome script, and graphic novel-like illustrations of the crew’s storyboards and destinations lend an experimental feel to the novel, propelling the reader through the book. It’s always a bit of relief to unexpectedly come across a page with giant text or pictures, something to break the horror, look at, and enjoy. It allows the reader to watch other characters interact outside of Winnie’s thoughts and influence.

Winnie’s experiences with Fantastic, Fearsome challenge her doubts about the paranormal and make her question her own abilities and family history. Not only must she navigate typical teenage love triangles, mean girls, friendships, and jealousy, she must cope with the loss of her mother and her relocation to unfamiliar territory. There’s also the small matter of the Devil himself, who, Winnie discovers, is more closely linked with her family than she—or the reader—ever could have imagined. All the while, Winnie’s strong voice, somehow managing to remain upbeat despite her circumstances, shines through the mirk and mire of her creepy life:

See, what you have to understand about the Jersey Devil, Lu, is that it’s this weird kind of dinosaur-ish creature. At least in all the imagery I’ve seen…And while, yeah, I definitely would not want this creepy, raptor-like thing springing out at me on a dark and lonely night, it still doesn’t really hold its own. It pales in comparison to something like, you know, a zombie or a werewolf or even the ghost of someone you once knew and loved.

Bottom line: he’s kind of goofy, the Devil.

David-Ostow

David Ostow

Winnie often uses humor to counteract her fearsome environment, mocking horror clichés and comparing her experiences with ridiculous movies she’s seen, while at the same time trying and mostly failing to maintain her disbelief in the paranormal. I enjoyed her awkward humor and demeanor, made possible by the freedom she has to voice her true thoughts to Lucia in her private journal. My only complaint about Winnie’s letters is when she tells her best friend information and stories Lucia already knows. Winnie retells the history of her mother’s suicide and funeral and talks about the good ol’ times with Lucia, bookending these memories with phrases like, “you know this already, Lu.” These bits of narrative are clearly for the reader’s sake, not for Lucia’s. Also, Winnie addresses Lucia by name over and over throughout the book, each time a nudging reminder that, hey, this is a letter, this is a journal, don’t forget.

Apart from that, though, I’m glad I didn’t revert to my twelve-year-old self and stop in the middle of the book. If I had given up during that creepy séance, I would have missed Winnie’s growth as she explores this new and powerful realm. She discovers truths about her abilities and character, learns to analyze others’ actions and better understand their motives and histories. She figures out how to rely on her friends and trust her instincts when the world shakes beneath her feet (both literally and figuratively).

As someone who normally avoids everything with a potential to scare me, I probably missed half of the dozens of horror references throughout the book, but I didn’t feel like I missed the story of Winnie Flynn. Balancing somewhere between terrifying and comedic, romantic and awkward, graphic novel and epistolary tale, The Devil and Winnie Flynn lures readers into its magically haunted domain through the eyes of a girl who has experienced heart-ache and hurt, yet manages to trudge on and find the power within herself to live and thrive in a crazy world.

Rachael-TagueRachael Tague grew up in the Indianapolis area and is currently studying English and Creative Writing at Cedarville University. She is an editorial intern for Cleaver Magazine.

INK AND ASHES by Valynne E. Maetani reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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Ink-and-ashesINK AND ASHES
by Valynne E. Maetani
Tu Books, 380 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

Valynne E. Maetani’s debut novel, Ink and Ashes, begins with the narrator Claire’s eerie statement: “I stared at my pink walls, wishing away the smell of death. I imagined the wispy smoke snaking its way through the narrow spaces around my closed door, the tendrils prying at tucked away memories.” This observation cements her voice as protagonist, a mixture of sensitivity, uncertainty, and fierceness. As the smell of incense wafts up to her room – part of a ritual to honor her father since his passing ten years ago – she struggles to reconcile memories of her father with what she later discovers about him. And it’s this powerful voice that leads us through a heart-pounding narrative journey, exploring the nebulous nature of memory and trauma.

At seventeen, Claire deals with the typical issues of a teenage girl: homework, relationships with boys, and overprotective parents. Still, her life is colored by the loss of her father. Looking back through his old journal, Claire discovers a mysterious letter from her father addressed to her stepdad George, whom she believed her father had never met before. Suddenly, the stable life she thought she knew is thrown into doubt. Claire must reconcile the memories and ideas of her father with a new and haunting legacy.

From the moment of her discovery, Claire embarks on a mission to learn more about her father’s past, his suspicious cause of death, and whether he was the upstanding man she believed him to be. Meanwhile, her locker is broken into at school and Claire’s anxiety rises as she notices a black SUV following her around. On top of these worries, Claire is forced to come to terms with her feelings for her best friend Forrest. He is always on hand to comfort and defend her, keeping Claire from retreating into herself when her thoughts get jumbled or anxiety takes over.

The overprotective group of boys around her – her two brothers, Forrest, and their friends Nicholas and Fed – are the foundation of the relationships in this story. They crowd around in her times of need, acting, as they call themselves, as the Axis Powers. Banding together even amongst the in-fighting that ensues between brothers and sisters, they are determined to keep each other well and safe. Drawn into Claire’s scheme to learn more about her father, they become equally determined to uncover the truth, whether they are ready for it or not.

As she becomes more and more embroiled in the mystery of her family’s past, Claire’s physical space and her strong narrative voice establish the mounting tension. We are hyper aware of the claustrophobia she feels when surrounded by all the men in her life. Each time a new detail of her father’s past is revealed, Maetani describes her breath. When Claire is almost killed by her mysterious pursuer in a car accident, the way she sees shadows and empty spaces reflects her fear and trauma.

Valynne-E.-Maetani

Valynne E. Maetani

Claire is aware of her body and the space she occupies, always ensuring that space is protected. In the moments when her space is invaded or her safety threatened, Claire’s martial arts training kicks in, and she is ready and willing to defend herself and her loved ones. Even in the tender moments between Claire and Forrest, exploring one another’s bodies through expressions of love, the narrative is complicated by her mingled enjoyment and worry about their relationship; a refreshing look within a young adult genre that can sometimes depict female protagonists as up for anything.

The mystery evolves, guided by Claire’s point of view. Though there are details that hint at what might be coming, we receive information as Claire does, and so our view is just as limited, spurring the story on to unravel the mystery at the end. We watch the action unfold through the eyes of someone who practices Japanese customs in her family but who also feels largely disconnected from Japanese culture and language, further establishing that all Claire thinks she knows and understands is thrown into doubt. The deeper she digs, the more Claire questions what her father might have been capable of.

In an attempt to create a subtext for the action and give a new layer to Claire’s emotions growing up without a father, Maetani weaves letters from Claire to her dead father throughout parts of the narrative. Her one sided conversation reveals her burgeoning hopes and her insecurities, allowing us to feel her loss more acutely. However, as the action picks up towards the end of the book, the letters are not present, calling into question whether they were necessary at all. It is already clear through Claire’s point of view that her attempts to understand her father are also attempts to gain a better understanding of herself.

In her first novel, Maetani has created a well-drawn and empathetic character and a mystery that keeps us reading. Although the narrative drags a little in the beginning and some of the dialogue can sometimes feel forced or unnatural, once the story finds its stride, we’re hooked. The stakes are high for Claire and her family, and that feeling never dissipates. It is a book that asks the reader to reexamine our understanding of family loyalty and forgiveness. No matter how much we try to pack it away, the past will always have a bearing on the present. This is a novel that provokes laughs, quickens the pulse, and makes the reader feel deeply for its heroine. Maetani is definitely an author to watch for in the future.

Leticia-UrietaLeticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

ARE YOU SEEING ME? by Darren Groth reviewed by Allison Renner

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are-you-seeing-meARE YOU SEEING ME?
by Darren Groth
Orca Book Publishers, 278 pages

reviewed by Allison Renner

Books are often seen as a respite from everyday life and road trip books can be an even greater escape. They let you travel without having to go through airport security or get stuck in a strange city’s traffic. Darren Groth’s Are You Seeing Me? takes readers from an Australian airport to several stops in Canada and the United States, journeying alongside nineteen-year-old Justine and her twin brother, Perry.

The trip is a big undertaking, but it’s meant to be a send-off, a farewell to the lives the twins have always known. Justine and Perry’s father died a year ago and, since then, Justine has been Perry’s caregiver. Before his death, their father secured Perry, who has autism, a spot at an independent living facility. Justine is conflicted: Perry says he wants to move away; her boyfriend wants to move in; and she can finally live a life without caring for a brother with disabilities. But she doesn’t really mind taking care of Perry, and worries that he’ll forget about her as he establishes his own independent life. She knows how to prevent his behaviors (sometimes!), how to calm him down, and how to explain his condition to others with a rehearsed speech. She promised their father that she’d take care of Perry, but is she doing that by letting him go off on his own?

Justine doesn’t know that Perry had promised their father something similar. Perry wants to take care of his sister by making an important discovery, something that will make them rich, so he and his sister can live in comfort. He hates worrying Justine, hates feeling like a burden, so he decides that independent living is the best choice for them both. If only he can find a way to show Justine she needs to be alone on a trip where they are together every minute of every day.

Darren Groth, photo by Wendy Fraser

Darren Groth

Groth’s vibrant descriptions of setting shine. He sends readers staring out across the desolate lake with the twins, then packed like sardines alongside them in the crowded Pike Place Fish Market. Even the highway pit stops and hotel stays are painted with vivid, film-like details.

As the twins travel to see the Canadian sea monster that has captured Perry’s fascination and visit the world famous fish-throwing shop in Seattle, tensions rise beneath the surface. Wanting time to say goodbye to Perry, Justine has asked her boyfriend not to call her for the duration of the trip. Perry doesn’t know what’s going on with his sister, only that he hates to see her cry. He tries to distract her with his two passions: lighthearted Jackie Chan movies and endless somber information about earthquakes. But Justine has a secret plan, something she kept under wraps as much to protect Perry as to keep herself from being pestered by his incessant questions. They have an opportunity to meet their mother, who left when the twins were four, but who has been writing letters to Justine.

Grounding one another in the present, the twins ask, “Are you seeing me?” The question repeats itself, but the twins keep seeing limited projections of the other, not their true thoughts and desires. Justine and Perry are portrayed, perhaps, a bit too sweetly, with conflicts barely ruffling the surface of their relationship. While it would have been interesting to see a bit more upheaval in the plot, it is true to Justine’s personality not to dig beneath the emotional surface while quickly settling major conflicts.

The book’s narration alternates between the twins. Justine is very matter-of-fact, intent on caring for her brother the best she can. Though she’s neurotypical, Justine rarely shows emotion, choosing, instead, to hide behind humor and sarcasm. Sections told from Perry’s point of view show how deeply he understands the basic human emotions Justine so deftly hides.

The struggles of autism are also portrayed realistically throughout the story. Justine distracts Perry from crowds and other triggers, and Perry explains his own coping devices, like thinking of himself as Jackie Chan when it’s time to complete a difficult task. Familiarity grounds Perry. When he finds himself in a strange place without his sister, the difference in his behavior is enlightening.

Though it’s classified as a young adult book, Are You Seeing Me? will appeal to readers of all ages because of its depth of story. Groth deftly and sensitively addresses the issues of living with autism, but the book’s focus and strength is in the complex but touching relationship between siblings.

Allison-Renner

Allison Renner has worked as a photographer, student teacher, and graphic designer. She is currently a librarian who shares her love of young adult literature with teens in public libraries.

A HOUSE MADE OF STARS by Tawnysha Greene reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

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a-house-made-of-starsA HOUSE MADE OF STARS
by Tawnysha Greene
Burlesque Press, 189 pages, 2015.

reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

In the very first scene of A House Made of Stars, Tawnysha Greene’s debut novel, the ten-year-old narrator and her sister are awakened by their mother, who spirits them to a darkened bathroom where all three sit in the bathtub, towels piled over them, while the house shakes with thuds so loud even the narrator’s deaf sister can feel their vibrations. Their mother tells them it’s a game. She tells them they’re practicing for earthquakes. But even at ten, the narrator knows it’s not nature’s rage they need to fear. It’s their father’s.

Greene’s voice in this novel is pitch perfect, an eerie and convincing combination of innocence and prescience. The hard-of-hearing narrator is homeschooled and isolated; her mother believes public schools will not teach “Godly things.” Yet her understanding of their family dynamic and her father’s mental illness are intuitive and profound. Without adult labels or filters, we see his depression, his paranoia, his moments of happy, expansive mania that can change in an instant to brutal  outbursts, and the scars he carries from his own violent childhood. We see her mother’s hapless attempts to keep the family safe and fed continually thwarted by her father’s whims. After the family loses their home and moves in with relatives, the children go hungry while Daddy spends his money on lottery tickets. Mama already knows not to question his choices. The girls learn it, too, in a particularly brutal fashion.

While the scenes of violence against children are harrowing and at times hard to read, A House Made of Stars also has moments of beauty and hope. There is a timeless, quiet feeling to the story, especially when the two girls are alone with their mother, that makes it feel almost as if it is taking place in a long-ago world. Despite her inability or unwillingness to protect the children, we sense Mama’s love for them. It is her mother’s stories of the stars and the myths behind them that help sustain the narrator, as well as the letters she writes to her cousin, describing what is happening with her family. Later, when the family are on the road, the narrator leaves these notes hidden along the way, both memoir and cries for help.

tawnysha-greene

Tawnysha Greene

At so many points during A House Made of Stars, we find ourselves sensing the danger these girls are in, wishing we could intervene. At so many points, their life seems to be changing for the better–their father’s sister offers money and a safe place to stay, their father sells his van, their grandmother takes Mama and the two girls to live with her when she learns Mama is going to have another baby–but something, either Daddy or Mama’s stubborn submission to him–always pushes them away from safety. A poignant and telling moment comes when the girls’ grandmother is reading stories about Biblical women  from one of Mama’s books. She finds some of the pages stapled together and wonders why Mama has cut off access to these stories. The stories Mama didn’t want the girls to read–Esther, Jael, Deborah–were about strong, independent women. This ties back to an earlier scene in which Mama walks out of a church because a woman is going to speak. Her fundamentalist beliefs compel her to follow her husband, even when she knows he is wrong.

The narrator, fortunately, hears those stories from her grandmother, and in the end she becomes her own heroine, making a brave and risky decision to act when her father’s recklessness leads the family into a truly desperate place. While the ending leaves the narrator’s future open, we know her well enough to believe that she is a survivor and will find a safe haven for her sister and herself.

Tawnysha Greene has published short fiction in an impressive range of journals, including PANK, Bellingham Review, Bartleby Snopes, Monkeybicycle, decomP, elimae, Bluestem Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. She teaches writing at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. A House Made of Stars is her first novel, but she is working on a sequel, and that’s good news for all of us who want to want to know what comes next for her courageous and compelling young protagonist.

kathryn-kulpa

Kathryn Kulpa is the author of Pleasant Drugs, a short story collection, and Who’s the Skirt?, a microfiction chapbook. She is flash fiction editor at Cleaver and has published work recently in Smokelong Quarterly, The Flexible Persona, Carbon Culture Review, and Litro.

SURVIVING SANTIAGO by Lyn Miller-Lachmann reviewed by Leticia Urieta

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Surviving-SantiagoSURVIVING SANTIAGO
by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Running Press Teens, 312 pages

reviewed by Leticia Urieta

Many authors employ a tried-and-true formula for young adult novels with a female protagonist: girl is displaced for a period of time to live with a relative or parental figure from whom they feel disconnected, girl meets love interest, and adventure ensues. Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s Surviving Santiago, the sequel to her first novel Gringolandia, meets these expectations with the inclusion of some of these tropes: the displacement to another country, the disconnected parent, the dangerous love interest and the naïve teenage girl, but the novel partially subverts this formula. It explores complicated relationships and the self-empowerment that occurs when one accepts people for who they are.

Christina “Tina” Aguilar is sent off to her homeland of Santiago, Chile for the summer at the insistence of her estranged father, Marcelo. It’s been eight years since she has returned to Chile after Marcelo was imprisoned by Pinochet’s dictatorship for his work with the Socialist underground. Tina leaves her friends and newly remarried mother in Madison, Wisconsin to stay with Marcelo and her Tia Ileana, her aunt and her father’s caretaker. Tina hopes that this will be a chance to reconnect with Marcelo, but he spends all of his time working on his political radio show and drowning his past trauma in alcohol. As the weeks pass, Tina’s boredom and frustration grow. She feels disconnected from her native city, which feels unfamiliar since her family immigrated to the US, and from Marcelo, who she constantly compares to her “old Papá.” He oscillates between hostile and comatose from alcohol abuse. She admits: “maybe now that Papá knows how much I love him, it will be enough to save him.”

On an outing in town, Tina meets and connects with a young, handsome courier, Frankie. They bond over their love of Metallica and their shared experiences with alcoholic fathers. The more Marcelo protests their relationship, the more connected she feels to Frankie. When the political climate in Santiago heats up, Tina begins to wonder if people around her are withholding information and if Frankie is who he claims.

Lyn-Miller-Lachmann

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

The physical descriptions of Santiago acclimate the reader to the uncertain economic and political climate of the time and emphasize Tina’s feelings of displacement. The Santiago Tina knows has changed, and, while it seems safer, Tina is unsure how to act in her native country. She feels like a stranger. As the repression of the Pinochet dictatorship weakens, the author introduces the changing political landscape through the descriptions of the graffiti in the neighborhood where Tina’s father lives: “The graffiti in black on the walls reads ‘nunca mas’-never again.” And the city center places Tina in a world of changing economic progress. Some sections of the city represent the capitalist progress with “wide avenues” and “high-rises with plate-glass windows.” Others represent the poverty that still occurs. To add to the feeling of uncertainty, Tina constantly describes the thick smog of Santiago, which obscures her view of the city and makes it hard to breathe. It is through this descriptive landscape that we understand Tina’s view of the city and how she sees herself in it.

While the author seeks to tackle an important time in Chilean history, Tina’s development and personality appear disjointed, largely focused on her relationship with her father and Frankie. Despite espousing ideas of feminism to the men in her life, she lacks any interests beyond superficial ones: music, smoking weed, and spending time with Frankie. While these are real concerns for the average teenage girl, it is disappointing to see her first person narrative voice linger on the sidelines. Tina is a passive observer of the action rather than a young woman engaging in the development of her personal identity.

It isn’t until the end of the novel, when the dangerous stakes of her father’s political activities rise to a breaking point, that her voice matures. But it begs the question of what could have been if Miller-Lachmann focused more on the full development of her protagonist from a displaced immigrant’s perspective rather than the historical accuracies after her time spent in Chile in the 1980’s.

The most convincing point of development for Tina is her mingled disgust and pity for her father during his drunken stupors. She begins to feel empathy for his pain and wonders about the tortures he must have endured in prison. Despite how much she reviles his drinking, she doesn’t want him to die and hopes that he will be able to heal himself.

Tina’s voice develops over the course of the novel from apathetic and naïve about the things that are happening around her to fiercely protective of herself and her father. In this historical novel set against the backdrop of a country attempting to heal from political turmoil in a fledgling democracy, Surviving Santiago is a story about a young woman’s relentless hope for the best in others despite their shortcomings. It is a novel about letting go of old hopes in order to form new relationships and remake new lives. By the end, Tina admits that, while she is in Santiago, she and her father must be “the way we are now and not the way we used to be.” Tina discovers that there is always more than one side to someone, and that the only way to fully heal is to accept things as they are instead of dwelling on what could have been.

Leticia-Urieta

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Texas State University. She won Agnes Scott’s Academy of American Poet’s prize in 2009 and her work has appeared in Cleaver, the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, and Blackheart. Leticia lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two dogs. She is using her love of Texas history and passion for research to write a historical novel about the role of Mexican soldaderas in Texas’ war with Mexico.

 

THE TRAVELS OF DANIEL ASCHER by Déborah Lévy-Bertherat reviewed by Melissa M. Firman

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

The-Travels-of-Daniel-AscherTHE TRAVELS OF DANIEL ASCHER
by Déborah Lévy-Bertherat
translated by Adriana Hunter
Other Press, 189 pages

reviewed by Melissa M. Firman

How well do we really know the people we love? What happens when the family stories and personal histories we’ve grown up believing turn out to be fiction—or, at best, a version of the truth?

These are the questions explored in The Travels of Daniel Ascher, the debut novel of Déborah Lévy-Bertherat. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter, this is a quick, fast-paced read where much happens in this story-within-a-story novel.

Hélène, a 20 year old archaeologist living in Paris, is a typical university student; she’s exploring her new city, falling in love with Guillaume, and occasionally babysitting a young neighbor boy. Among the few people she knows in Paris is her great-uncle, Daniel Roche, a famous author. His books, written under the pseudonym H.R. Sanders, are bestselling literary travel adventures with dashes of fantasy and mystery. (Think Harry Potter.)

Great-uncle Daniel has always been somewhat of an enigma. Living in such close proximity to him (Hélène rents a room in the same building) draws her more closely into his mysterious world. Doing so offers her an opportunity to learn the truth beneath what she has been told and believed about her family for her entire life. And Hélène’s boyfriend Guillaume, who happens to be an ardent fanboy of Daniel’s work, is more than happy to spend time with Hélène if it means getting closer to his idol.

Among the most puzzling aspects of Daniel’s life for Hélène are some unexplained spaces in the family tree and Daniel’s long, mysterious absences when he is reportedly traveling to remote corners of the globe. Between her observations of Daniel’s life and reflections on his decisions, there are flashbacks to family gatherings from her childhood.

“When Daniel did attend big family meals, he always sat at the children’s table, far away from the adults. The kids begged him to tell stories, and he would embark on hare-brained tales of adventure, rolling his eyes, mimicking voices, accents, and animal calls, describing fantastical situations, stringing together puns and suddenly roaring with laughter when no one could quite see why.”

Like Daniel Roche/H.R. Sanders’ best-selling adventure series about a mysterious world traveler, The Travels of Daniel Ascher is also part fairytale, part mystery, and part coming-of-age young adult story. It is about stories, and the layers those stories reveal to us, and those that are kept hidden.

As Hélène digs deeper to put the pieces of her family’s life together, she explores one of the hardest aspects we all face when emerging into adulthood: learning our personal histories and accepting the truth of who those we love really are. Déborah Lévy-Bertherat examines this universal struggle beautifully through Hélène’s eyes.

“Perhaps that was what becoming an adult was, emerging from the clouds, leaving behind the sweet half-light of childhood, coming out into the blinding clarity of a truth you haven’t asked to know.”

Like Hélène and those around her, this is Daniel’s struggle, too, given his free spirited nature and childlike approach to life. How the answers present themselves for both of these characters–who are more alike than they ever realize–is for the reader to uncover, as well.  The answers to what we need to learn about ourselves and those walking beside us on life’s journey might be right in front of us or await us elsewhere in this vast, mysterious, discovery-laden world.

Melissa-M.-Firman-Melissa M. Firman is a writer of blog posts, creative nonfiction, short stories, book reviews, nonprofit communication pieces, and a book-in-progress. Her work has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Philadelphia Review of Books’ poetry blog, and more. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Melissa and her husband currently reside in Pittsburgh with their teenage twins. Connect with her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheFirmanGroup or via her website at www.melissafirman.com.

 

THE BOOK OF LANEY by Myfanwy Collins reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

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book-of-laneyTHE BOOK OF LANEY
by Myfanwy Collins
Lacewing Books, 200 pages

reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

When terrible acts of violence occur—as they do all too often in America—our thoughts naturally turn to the victims and their families. But what about the families of those who commit violent crimes? What if someone you grew up with was a school shooter, a terrorist, a mass murderer?

That’s the reality fifteen-year-old Laney is living. Her brother West and his friend Mark, two high school outcasts, boarded a school bus armed with machetes, knives, guns, and homemade bombs. Six people died; twelve were wounded. Mark blew himself up, but West made his way home to kill his mother, and he would have killed Laney, too, if police hadn’t stopped him. Left with the wreckage her brother left behind, Laney feels completely alone, unwanted, even hated. Her father died when she was young, and her mother’s boyfriend is only interested in leaving the state as soon as possible. Strangers phone the house with death threats. This is her only identity now: the killer’s sister.

The Book of Laney is a young adult novel about facing the worst things the world can hand out and learning how to heal. Laney is sent to the northern Adirondacks to live with her grandmother, a mysterious and solitary woman who lives in a remote cabin. At first, Laney thinks she’s hit the trifecta of teenage girl awfulness: no internet, no cell phones, and NO SHOWER. Laney’s grandmother seems a cold and forbidding woman who, when she’s not lecturing Laney about chores (many) and boys (none), is killing bunnies for dinner.

At first, Laney can only think about escape, but she finds compensations in living off the grid. Unplugged from the media, she’s not constantly bombarded by reminders of her brother’s crime, and she finds herself enjoying the quiet, solitary days and closeness to nature. Marshall, the local boy who drives her to school, is another inducement to stay. “I wanted him to know my secrets, and I wanted to know his,” Laney thinks. “I wanted to write on him like he was a yearbook.”

Myfanwy Collins

Myfanwy Collins

Laney’s first-person narration establishes a realistic and sympathetic teen voice, but The Book of Laney goes beyond the typical young adult “problem” novel and into a mystical, timeless place that feels more like magical realism. After West’s crime, Laney begins experiencing visions in which she sees events from the past as if they are happening to her. Through these visions, she comes to understand her brother’s pain and her mother’s decisions, and she learns the truth about her father’s death and her grandmother’s choice to live in isolation.

Collins is also the author of an adult novel, Echolocation, and a flash fiction collection, I Am Holding Your Hand. The Book of Laney, her first young adult novel, is a lyrical, original story about the legacy of violence, the importance of empathy, and the possibility of redemption. It’s a short novel, but one that leaves a deep impression, with characters and places I know I’ll want to revisit.  In brief, poetic touches, Collins paints a landscape of icy beauty and takes Laney from a scared, empty girl to a young woman ready to reclaim her identity and her life.

kathryn-kulpaKathryn Kulpa is the author of the story collection Pleasant Drugs, a winner of the Mid-List Press First Series Award in short fiction. Her short stories and flash fiction have also been published in Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers, the Six-Word Memoir anthology series and in Camroc Press Review, Literary Orphans, Monkeybicycle, Superstition Review, Metazen, Florida Review, and other journals.

WHERE YOU END by Anna Pellicioli reviewed by Allison Renner

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where-you-endWHERE YOU END
by Anna Pellicioli
Flux, 299 pages

reviewed by Allison Renner

The trends of paranormal characters and dystopian worlds have played out in young adult fiction, and just in time for Anna Pellicioli to step in. Her debut, Where You End, is a riveting work of contemporary fiction that will captivate an audience of both teens and adults.

According to the blurb on the back cover, Pellicioli’s book is about a girl getting over a passionate first love. The Library of Congress summary on the copyright page would have us believe it’s about a girl who is blackmailed when she ruins a museum sculpture. Yes, Where You End is about heartbreak and blackmail, but it’s not the best way to summarize the story. The book doesn’t have a simple, common problem to solve with a few dramatic encounters or wrap up neatly with a life lesson. There’s more depth than that.

A seventeen-year-old photographer, Miriam, is caught in emotional turmoil after seeing her ex-boyfriend with a new girl through the lens of her camera. Desperate to do something, anything, Miriam pushes a Picasso statue in the Hirshhorn Museum off its base. It falls and Miriam runs, glancing back to make sure she hasn’t been seen. But a witness follows Miriam to her next destination and asks Miriam to take photos for her, in return for her silence. Miriam gets sucked into the blackmailer’s world and learns that you can’t always know the whole of a person if you’re only on the periphery of his or her life.

Miriam’s voice is rich and real. She acts on her feelings, without thinking, but she can’t always comprehend these feelings. She pushes the Picasso sculpture because she can’t process her heartbreak and the betrayal of seeing her ex with someone new. She isolates herself from her parents and friends because she can’t share any of the stress of her problems, which only makes everyone focus on her even more. To cope, she escapes into her photography, going out late at night to take photos to help her get back to sleep.

Miriam has ended her relationship with her first love and all of her other relationships are changing: a childhood friend suddenly sees her in a different light; her parents don’t understand her need for privacy; her guidance counselor doesn’t think she’s living up to her full potential. Miriam struggles to come to terms with it all while being on the cusp of graduation, feeling that exhilaration of the whole world being hers for the taking. Miriam’s future hinges on the blackmailer keeping quiet — if Miriam is discovered as being the culprit of the museum vandalism, her chances of greatness in the art world will be destroyed.

The dialogue, both internal and spoken, rings true. Pellicioli knows teenagers and shows it in her writing. She also knows Washington, D.C., the story’s setting, which gives it an added dimension of vivid realism. Pellicioli takes readers to the National Mall, up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and around the streets of D.C. at night. Her deft writing makes the almost-three-hundred-page book breeze by, but there is also poetic beauty in her words.

The storyline of the museum vandalism never garners much attention and fails to achieve a satisfying resolution, ending with an open question of the consequences for Miriam. This vague ending is disappointing because it is set up as such a high stakes situation. Elliot, Miriam’s first love, plays a very minor role in the book. He only shows up in a couple of scenes, and is not given the importance one would expect considering Miriam’s implied heartbreak.

While the two main points mentioned in the book’s summary aren’t explored to their fullest potential, the unexpected secondary stories of blackmail and of changing friendships are well-developed and wrapped up neatly by the end of the book. It’s refreshing to read a young adult book with a unique voice that doesn’t focus on romance and that demonstrates how teenage girls can have interests beyond love and social life. Pellicioli is as much of an artist as her character, giving us snapshots of Miriam’s world through her words.

Allison-Renner

Allison Renner has worked as a photographer, student teacher, and graphic designer. She is currently a librarian who shares her love of young adult literature with teens in public libraries.

 

DR. RADWAY’S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT by Beth Kephart reviewed by Michelle Fost

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DrRadway

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DR. RADWAY’S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT
by Beth Kephart
illustrated by William Sulit
New City Community Press, 190 pages

Reviewed by Michelle Fost

When I lived in Philadelphia, I sensed its history underfoot. One pleasure of Beth Kephart’s lively new historical Philadelphia novel is the strong fit of the writer’s project and the story she tells. In Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent, Kephart looks at material from the past that we might consider lost to us and demonstrates how traces of that past stay with us through research and writing. In her story of William Quinn in 1870’s Philadelphia, too, much has been lost. As fourteen-year-old William goes in search of what has been taken from his family and as he thinks about what he is missing (including a murdered brother and a father in prison), we see that a great deal of what is loved can be recovered. William internalizes his brother Francis’s voice and can imagine what Francis would say to him at an important moment. Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent shines as a novel about grief itself, suggesting that in thinking about what we miss, we keep what’s missing alive.

Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent opens with a haunting image. In a story William recalls his brother telling him, two best friends drowned while one was trying to rescue the other. When the boys were found, they were still clinging to each other. There are many misfortunes and instances of hard luck in the novel. Sometimes having enough food requires petty thievery (something Francis was good at). Many of the characters, particularly William and his best friend Career, behave much like the two drowned boys. They have an impulse to help each other, to reach out and be generous to the people around them. This is a world in which petty thieves are good-natured and kind while some of the folks in power (especially an octopus-faced cop) are corrupt, bad souls. By the end of the novel, we’ll get an alternate version of the two friends who help each other, where magnanimous gestures are successful.

Irresistible to William is Francis’s excitement in rooting for the rower Max Schmitt in a race on the Schuylkill River. The brothers glimpse an artist on the banks of the river painting while the race is on. The artist is probably Thomas Eakins, who did paint Max Schmitt racing as well as other scenes of Philadelphia’s history. Even though much of our story takes place in the shadows of the world of the bright, open Schuylkill race, the characters aspire to the greatness of an athlete such as Schmitt. William’s friend speaks the words of his hero—his boss and the editor at the Public Ledger, George Childs—as though the words themselves are both guide and good luck charm: Industry. Temperance. Frugality.

Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent includes illustrations by William Sulit, Kephart’s husband, that are a great addition. The novel’s target audience is young adult (I can imagine it being read in a classroom) but is enjoyable for older readers also. William buys the potion of the novel’s title, one of several such colorfully named elixirs he sees advertised in the Ledger. It’s a sham that might work its magic for William simply because of the strength of his desire. He wants, most of all, for it to help his mother. I liked the pile up of historical artifacts and scenes, I liked the sounds of the names of things Kephart brought into her story—“the flangers, fitters, riveters, carters, chippers, caulkers coming in” and so on—that give this story that begins in a hard scrabble moment in a boy’s life in old Bush Hill a feeling of abundance.

 

Michelle-Fost

Michelle Fost is a writer living in Toronto. Her fiction has appeared in Geist Magazine and The Painted Bride Quarterly. Her book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Boston Phoenix Literary Section.