Title: ghostgirl
Author: Tonya Hurley
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Summary: Charlotte Usher feels invisible at school. Then one day, she becomes invisible—or rather, dead. Unfortunately for her, dying doesn’t mean she’s done with high school.

Stopped on Page: 85
Why I Stopped: I found myself skimming just to get the plot points, so I figured I should call it a day with this one. I didn’t really care about the main character, and the style of writing was getting on my nerves a little. I’m having trouble pinpointing exactly why that is, although I have a couple ideas. No better way to learn how to write than to study what you do and don’t like, so here goes…

Here’s an example from when Charlotte is trying to sign up for cheerleader tryouts. Adverbs are in bold.

As she started writing the “C,” she was tapped harshly on the shoulder. Charlotte stopped writing and turned to see who was interrupting her first task of the day—no, of her new life—and then saw a line of girls who had been “camped out” all night waiting to sign up. The gathering resembled less of a tryout than a casting call.

The obnoxious candidate looked her over from head to toe, grabbed the pen, and simultaneously wrote her name in and Charlotte off. She then opened her hand and let the pen mercilessly drop the length of the string.

Charlotte watched the pen sway against the wall like a hanged man.

None of those adverbs are necessary. And since I’m trying to learn how to tighten up my own writing, they screamed at me to notice their total lack of value. (Also, why the quotation marks around “camped out”? Does that mean they didn’t actually camp out? Is this a euphemism for something?)

I think it was also the metaphors and similes throughout that got to me. From the above excerpt, we have: a casting call, a hanged man. The first doesn’t really add anything to the description that we don’t already get from knowing that they camped out. The second seems a bit much, and I don’t actually get it. Why is the pen the doomed one? It seems odd to describe the pen in such detail when we should be hearing about how Charlotte’s feeling. Maybe it was little things like this that made it hard for me to connect to her as a character.

Then here’s an example from later, when the characters are picking science lab partners:

The classmates turned toward each other, pointing to friends across the room, some were screaming and jumping up and down as if they’d “made it through to Hollywood” on American Idol.

Really? This reaction for picking lab partners? (And again with the quotation marks! Ack!)

Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Title: Prom
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: High school senior Ashley Hannigan has 0% interest in going to the prom. But after a teacher is busted for stealing the prom committee’s money and the head of the committee (who just so happens to be her best friend) begs for help, Ashley finds herself trying to pull together a dance she doesn’t even care about.

Review: While I enjoy Anderson’s historical fiction (Chains, Fever 1793), I’ve now come to the conclusion that I prefer her modern setting novels. Speak is one of my all-time favorite YA novels, and I loved loved loved this book too.

Prom was a quick, fun read, but don’t take that to mean it’s superficial. It’s a sweet story but set in the real world for once—a real world where kids go through metal detectors to get to school. Girls like Ashley are out there, and a lot of them. She’s smart and funny, but she doesn’t have a magical power or a perfect face or even a terribly dysfunctional family. She’s real, true. And her story was an absolute treat to read.

Here’s a little taste of Ashley’s story for you:

Second period, English 12: American Literary Connections, Basic, was a waste. Mr. Fugal yelled at us for not reading this poem by Langston Hughes. It was about a bird.

I liked Fugal at the beginning of the year, but he lost me when he made us read The Old Man and the Sea. Birds! Fish! Why couldn’t we read about people?

Since nobody knew the stupid bird poem, Fugal told us to take out our persuasive essay outlines. Persuasive essay? Not even the kids who paid attention had a clue what he was talking about. Fugal exploded.

Then the first miracle happened.

A fire drill.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Title: Dead Is the New Black
Author: Marlene Perez
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2.5/5
Summary: High school junior Daisy Giordano goes undercover on the cheerleading squad to solve the mystery of who’s attacking teenage girls all around town.

Review: This is a quote from the back cover:

“Dead Is the New Black equals Veronica Mars plus Buffy the Vampire Slayer…” —Nancy Holder, author of Pretty Little Devils

Trust me, this book was nothing like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sure, there were vampires involved, but this book is missing pretty much everything else Buffy had—the depth of character development, the brilliant plotting, the laugh-out-loud humor.

I know this book was supposed to be funny, but I guess it just wasn’t my style of humor. I also didn’t believe the hot-and-cold about the main love interest. It seemed arbitrary and manufactured to add tension.

In the end, this was an okay read. Not horrible, but also not great.

So that means my search for BtVS in YA form continues…

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Title: Shug
Author: Jenny Han
Category: Fiction, Middle-Grade
Rating: 2/5
Summary: 12-year-old Annemarie is about to start junior high and suddenly starts seeing a friend in a new way. Why can’t everything stay the same?

Review: I picked this up on a whim at the library. (Okay, I admit it. I was hungry and the cover looked yummy.)

I wasn’t impressed. The main character is 12 years old, but she doesn’t sound it. Sometimes the way she spoke sounded like a grown-up to me. This made it hard for me to connect to her as a character.

It felt like the heavy stuff with the parents kind of came out of nowhere. We know the dad is rarely around, but that storyline picked up some crazy steam fast. It didn’t feel genuine to me. The resolution of that storyline was a little too optimistic to seem genuine, too.

And this is petty, but all the dropped Gs from just about every character annoyed the crap out of me—darlin’ and gettin’ and speakin’. Enough already.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Title: Cracked Up to Be
Author: Courtney Summers
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: High school senior Parker Fadley has it all—a perfect boyfriend, perfect grades, perfect control over her cheerleading squad. But something horrible happens, and it might be her fault. And her whole perfect world comes crashing down.

Review: I got this book free through the LibraryThing early reviewers program, so I didn’t have high expectations. Because if a publisher is pawning off free advance copies to book geeks like me, how good could it be?

Oh, how wrong I was. This book is excellent.

Parker is a perfectionist grappling with the fact that she made a mistake, and a big one at that. So of course she freaks out. And that freaking out, that pain, is delicious in a way. Delicious because the author completely and utterly captured the anxiety and sick logic of a perfectionist.

But Parker’s not just a messed up girl. She’s also wicked funny and sarcastic! Ah, to have the gift of the quick comeback. I so envy her for that.

I’m glad I gave this book a chance, even though it was free. It was well worth it. (And I know I need to rethink my prejudice against free books. It’s really not fair to them!)

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon