Category Archives: YA

Review: Dreamology by Lucy Keating

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dreamologyAlice has dreamed of Max for as long as she can remember– in her dreams, they are happy and in love, going on the kind of crazy adventures that can only happen in dreams.

When Alice moves to Boston, though, Max is in her psychology class at her new school! Except this Max seems detached … and he has a girlfriend.

I really enjoyed this one! There were some really great lines, and I especially loved the character of Oliver, one of Alice’s new friends. I loved the dream sequences, and it was fun to tweet with Lucy Keating while I read it too. An interesting concept, though the conflict at the end confused me a little bit. All in all, an enjoyable, light read!

 

Review: Mara Dyer Trilogy by Michelle Hodkin

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mara dyer

This is actually going to be less of a review and more of an introduction, so that I can steer away from spoilers.

First of all, those covers! Gorgeous.

The Mara Dyer trilogy is about a girl who survives the collapse of an abandoned asylum she was exploring with her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister. Shortly after the collapse, her family moves to Florida to start over … only things are getting super weird. Enter Noah Shaw, this cocky British schoolboy who knows he is gorgeous, and things really start to get interesting.

Thrillers aren’t really my thing. But I loved this series.

Mara is a badass. The dialogue is hilarious. The intrigue is intense. And Noah Shaw is … well … Noah Shaw.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘All I want is your happiness. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'”
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I’m just not that big of a person.”

Yes, he’s a little over the top sometimes. (Okay, a lot over the top.) But those over-the-top things are a-ok with me when said in a British accent. I listened to the audio versions of this series, which was narrated by Christy Romano (you know her as Ren Stevens and the voice of Kim Possible), and while a lot of people took issue with her attempt at a male British accent, I was okay with it.

I like that the books were intriguing but not wholly scary. I’m not big into freaking myself out. If you like books that will keep you guessing, dive headfirst into this series.

Review: Noggin by John Corey Whaley

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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a book cover misrepresent the story inside so much as this one. Let’s take a look at it.noggin

What do you expect from this title and cover?

I pictured a Grasshopper Jungle type of story– weird and wild and fast and sort of hard-to-believe-but-I’ll-go-along-for-the-ride, you know?

Not at all. This story was the most emotionally exhausting book I’ve read so far this year. And maybe for ALL of last year too. In fact, I can’t remember a book putting my heart through the meat-grinder quite like this one did since I read The Fault in Our Stars. My gosh. I’m still reeling.

First of all, what’s this book about? Travis Coates is the second person to have a successful head-transplant surgery. When he died, his head was cryogenically preserved while they figured out the procedure– the medical organization he was with suspected they would have a solution within twenty years, though, secretly, neither Travis nor his friends or family thought it would ever work. So, when only five years later, it does work … well, everything is different. Most notably, Travis is still sixteen and in love with his girlfriend Cate … who is now 21 and engaged to someone else.

This book was intense. All the feels. Multiplied exponentially. While I often love to just binge-read through a great story, I couldn’t with this one. I could only handle small doses– an hour of reading here, a half-hour there. And when I finished it today, I just sobbed and sobbed and then took a nap to deaden the feelings.

Noggin was incredible. Layered characters. Meaningful story. Made my head spin and my heart break. This book was so much more than I ever anticipated.

 

 

Review: Calvin by Martine Leavitt

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calvin.jpgSo.

This book is about a boy named Calvin undergoing a schizophrenic break.

He has always had a connection with the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, being that there are so many similarities between his life and the comic strip (including a toy tiger and a girl next door named Suzie), so when Hobbes starts talking to him again at age seventeen, Calvin decides the only way to make it stop is to take a pilgrimage across Lake Erie to meet Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip. If he can make one last strip about a seventeen-year-old Calvin who is “normal,” Calvin will be healed.

And so he heads off.

I loved it. I loved everything about this book: the format (it’s a letter to Bill Watterson and the dialogue is written like a play), the main character (brilliant, brilliant boy; adored Calvin!), the humor, AND the fact that I didn’t know if what I was reading was actually happening in real life or in Calvin’s head. I thought it was so rife with thought-provoking conversation and delightful humor. I read over half of it in one setting and finished it off the next night.

Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will especially love this book, all the references to the comic strip and to Spaceman Spiff, what a great dose of nostalgia. I’m not sure how close it was to describing a real schizophrenic break– it had a tremendously different tone than Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (review), which I read a few months ago.

It was a total delight, one of my favorite reads of 2016 so far. If you read it, let me know! I wanna hear your thoughts– Goodreads is a little split, and it’s hard for me to understand why!

Review: In A World Just Right by Jen Brooks

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I met Jen Brooks during a panel discussion we were both a part of last November, and I was fascinated by the excerpt she read from In A World Just Right. I bought a copy that very night, but I haven’t had a chance to dive in until yesterday. I started it yesterday. I finished it yesterday. I was home sick from work, so I legit just read for eight hours straight.

in a world just rightThis book.

Let me tell you.

The premise is clever: ever since Jonathan went through a traumatic accident at age eight, he’s been a world-maker, that is, he can invent worlds and come and go from them as he pleases. The one he spends the most time in is Kylie-Simms-is-my-girlfriend, where– you guessed it– Kylie Simms is his girlfriend. In real life, that’s not even close to being true. Jonathan is a bit of an outcast, mostly invisible to his classmates.

Fascinating, right?

Things get trickier from there, once the real Kylie Simms starts paying attention to him and Jonathan starts learning the extent of his powers and has to deal with some pretty huge moral decisions. Like, fantastically huge. He really, really wrestles through things, and I loved him for it.

Then things get even trickier. Really.

Let’s just say that this is as close to a YA Inception that I’ve ever read. That’s a good thing– no, a great thing.

About halfway through, I tweeted to Jen that “I can’t figure out how in the world(s) this will end,” and she tweeted back, “Fingers crossed you like where it ends up. :)”

After my eight-hour journey of my mind being blown, I tweeted her, “PERFECT ENDING!”

Not my typical read, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. You guys know I love books that make me think. This book will make you think.

Enjoy!

Review: Underwater by Marisa Reichardt

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It feels like a million years ago that Marisa Reichardt first contacted me– she wanted to interview me for The Sweet Sixteens (interview here). I sent her a PDF copy of Truest, since there weren’t even ARCs at that time. Since then, Marisa has become so dear to me, someone I can go to about all my writer-problems, someone who gets it and is brimming with compassion and empathy.

underwater3Now it was my turn to read her book!

Underwater is Morgan’s story– readers learn in the earliest pages that she was witness to a school shooting and has since been dealing with agoraphobia. Yes, Morgan has not left her family’s apartment in months. Then a new guy moves in next door, and things start to change.

My favorite part of this book was how much I understood what Morgan was going through– the panic, at first, then later, as she begins to venture out (starting with just the welcome mat!), the way she has to sit with so much uncertainty and fear– but how she accommodates to it! I had the distinct thought, “This is exposure therapy. This is also how you treat OCD.” Afterward, I looked it up online, to see if my guesses were right. The sites that I looked at talked specifically about exposure therapy being the best treatment for agoraphobia.

Mind. Blown.

Here I thought we with OCD had the corner on the exposure therapy market! Not so.

Some reviews I read said that the book is a little dark and heavy– but I disagree. Well, time out. Yes, it begins dark and heavy. But it should. We are dealing with PTSD here, people, not a hangnail! But what I loved most about Underwater was how it bent toward the light.

Life like a Rocket

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An update on my life:

I’m reading again. I read two books this week and started a third. Loved Ruta Sepetys’s Salt to the Sea (review) and Anna-Marie McLemore’s The Weight of Feathers (review). I was lucky enough to get an ARC of my friend Addie Zierman’s new book, Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark. I’ve read the first couple chapters, which are brilliant. No surprise there. Addie’s writing knocks me off my feet every time.

My writing group is amazing. It was so good to get together with them this week and really hash out my POV concerns for Salt Novel. I feel really, really good about where we landed. Plus, they are so encouraging. To be honest, in the early stages of writing a novel, I think that’s probably my biggest need: to have people say, We’re interested. We like these characters. Keep going. 

I’m making some changes to my OCD meds. This is maybe a little surprising, since I’ve said before that I don’t like to rock the boat. Problem is, I had some blood work done and the little half-milligram of Risperdal I take each night is probably affecting me in such a way that I need to get off of it long-term. That part is fine to me. I feel like these days I’m using Risperdal more as a sleep aid than as an anti-psychotic. So I suggested to my psychiatrist that maybe I could trade Risperdal in for an actual sleep aid like Trazodone. He agreed. I really can’t sleep without Risperdal (see story below for case in point), but I also know from past experience that I’m suuuuuuuuuper sensitive to Trazodone. We’re working out the kinks. My primary care doctor also recommended that I start taking NAC, an amino acid that has been helpful for people with OCD. The next day, our OCD Twin Cities group was talking about NAC. Then I asked my psychiatrist, and he gave me the thumbs up too. I’ll keep you posted. The nice thing about NAC is that you can pick it up at any old vitamin store, no need for a prescription.

Sleep evades me. I’ve had some problems (read: lots) with sleep lately. I cannot sleep without Risperdal. But I also take 10 mg of melatonin, which is all-natural. Even then, I wake up throughout the night, and in the morning, I don’t feel well-rested. Last night, I gathered up my evening meds, and I thought I felt one pill fall on the floor. I got on my hands and knees looking for it, but couldn’t find anything so I went to bed. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I was restless. I was wakeful. I was up for long periods of time around 1, 2, and 3 am (at which point I started praying for my friends– sometimes when I can’t sleep I wonder if that’s why I’m up. Interestingly, one of my friends told me today that she was up at 3 am, fitful over some things going on. I was praying for her at the same time!). Finally, at 6 am, wide awake but soooo tired, I realized the pill that probably fell was my Risperdal. So I took Risperdal at 6 am and finally got some rest. YUCKO. Thank goodness it’s the weekend!

Except I have to work this weekend. This is historically the hardest couple of days of the year for me– President’s Day and the day before– because we have a wild and crazy large-group overnight event for prospective students on these days. As my personality has shifted into full-on introversion, it’s gotten harder and harder. Think of me.

It’s pretty darn cold in MN. We’ve had it easy so far this year for the most part, but in the last couple days, it’s been downright frigid.

I’m excited about my novel. I really am. I have so many ideas and so much hope. Sometimes all the ideas and all the hope kind of flood me and I get overwhelmed, so I remind myself to put my head down and to SHOW UP and put in the work. I have a really detailed word count spreadsheet, and I’m loving it. Theoretically, if I follow the spreadsheet, I will have a draft finished soon! It’s so good to be back on the island with these characters. They are lovely and cruel and have lots of sharp edges.

One last thing: Girl Scout cookies are destroying me.

How are you, friends? Please comment. I absolutely love hearing from you. Makes me feel less alone!

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Review: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

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salt to the seaI’m not sure whether to say that the paragraph below this is a spoiler or not. It’s not a traditional book spoiler– it’s the historical event this book is based on. But if you want to go into this book completely blind, best to skip it.

Last summer, when Ruta Sepetys was in St. Paul, I had the chance to hear her speak passionately about a bit of nearly-lost history: a ship called the Wilhelm Gustloff that was carrying WWII refugees to safety was torpedoed by the Soviets, and about 9,000 of the 10,000 passengers died. Most of them were children and youth. The Nazis tried to cover it up, so even though more people died than in the sinkings of the Titanic and Lusitania combined, many people don’t know about this tragedy.

Till now.

Ruta Sepetys brings it to life in Salt to the Sea, and it’s wonderful. There is a slow build throughout the story with the climactic event taking up a surprisingly small part of the story. The characters are well-drawn, there are plenty of secrets, and there’s a sweet romance too.

I did think the book wrapped up fast, but that was fine by me. I stayed up late to finish this one, and I was pretty emotionally ragged by the end. Also, it’s been a while since I read Sepetys’s debut Between Shades of Gray, so it took me a looooong time to catch a connection between the two books that was in pretty plain sight. Once I did, it delighted me.

This is one of those books where knowing the historical truth behind the story does nothing to diminish it. It only amplifies, and you hold on for the ride.

This Week Has Been Whoa

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So, I’m sitting here debating how much I want to say, and instead, I think I just need to start.

This week has been wild.

WILD.

emotionalrollercoaster

On Sunday, depression surged up and wrapped its ugly hands around my throat. But I don’t mess around anymore. I called in all the reserves: meds, essential oils, tons of water, vitamins, meeting with my therapist, a chiropractic adjustment. By Wednesday, my world wasn’t ending anymore.

Which is interesting because on Tuesday I talked to my editor about Yes Novel, and she said, “Start over.”

Yeah, you read that right. Start over.

But guess what? That conversation made me so happy. I’m serious. Because I wasn’t feeling good about Yes Novel (haven’t been for a while!) and so to hear my editor say that she wasn’t either meant we were on the same page. That’s such a good feeling. I can’t tell you what a relief it is (and how lucky I feel) to have an editor who is more committed to putting out a good book than to staying on schedule.

Because I’m not afraid of working hard. But I’m terrified of mediocrity.

(More thoughts coming soon about my battle against perfectionism.)

So, I started to re-think Yes Novel and what changes I wanted to make if I started to rebuild it from the foundation up. It needs a lot of work, guys. It made me think of the novel I set aside in November 2014 in order to start writing Yes Novel. It’s a manuscript that I’ve re-visited over the last year more than once. I’ve missed the characters. I’ve missed the island where it takes place. It has more things in the right places than Yes Novel does.

In one fifteen-minute drive home, I’d all but convinced myself I wanted to switch projects again. Again. (Remember this?)

I emailed my editor and asked her to take a look at my old manuscript (let’s call it Ardor Novel), and she agreed.

This morning she emailed that she was excited about the manuscript!!

Does that mean I’ve officially switched from Yes Novel to Ardor Novel?

No. But probably.

And I couldn’t be more excited. Stay tuned to learn more about what has happened in the past year behind the scenes to prepare me for returning to this story.

But for now, please leave a kind comment for this pummeled, anxiety-ridden writer who is currently jacked up on bookish adrenaline. I’m exhausted. But I’m almost shaking with excitement. I could use some cheerleaders!

Review: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

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bone gapThere’s been a lot of buzz about Bone Gap by Laura Ruby, and so I finally purchased the book and read it. It was great.

Bone Gap is the name of the small town where the O’Sullivan boys live on their own, their father dead and their mother having run off. Sean is the big, strong, brilliant one, and Finn is the “spacey” but beautiful one. Roza is the lovely Polish girl who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared from their lives just as fast. The story is mostly told from Finn’s and Roza’s perspectives.

What’s missing from that description is Petey. Priscilla “Petey” is the beekeeper girl that Finn falls for, and she’s my absolute favorite part of this novel, maybe for reasons I can’t quite explain. I’ll try anyway.

Petey is unusual. She’s not traditionally beautiful. She’s brave and feisty and strong and weak. I love her for all those reasons, and so does Finn, and it’s adorable.

Roza is incredible. Total badass Polish heroine.

Sean is strong and broken. I loved him. He frustrated me too.

Finn is lovely, precious, amazing, boyish in the best way. I want to put him in my pocket.

Bone Gap is classified as magical realism. It may or may not surprise you that I loved the realism and could have done without the magical element, though it seems that it works for most readers.

Read this. You will love it.