Title: Sweethearts
Author: Sara Zarr
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: Nicole at Linus’s Blanket highly recommended it, and I needed a good read for my summer beach vacation (now in progress, yay!).

Summary: Jennifer and Cameron were each other’s only childhood friend, but then Cameron disappeared without saying goodbye. By high school, Jennifer has become Jenna, landed a cute boyfriend, and has lots of friends. So why does she feel like a fraud?

Review: From the title and the cover (must. bake. cookies. now.), I thought this would be a light little romance, possibly with large amounts of baked goods. Yum.

I was off base, though strangely not on the baked goods front. But this bittersweet story is worth every bite. And I’m not usually into bittersweet chocolate let alone books, so trust me on this.

On the writing side, I liked how Zarr dropped unnecessary words in dialogue, especially with one character’s speech, to make it sharper. In this snippet, it’s the character who’s speaking first:

“I could just see from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn’t need me coming along and messing it up.”

“Don’t say that,” I said quickly. Then: “You were never a part of what I wanted to forget.”

“Nice of you to say, but I know it’s not true.”

I knew what he was thinking, could see that he’d been carrying around the same burden all those years as me.

Now I’m interested in reading Zarr’s first book, Story of a Girl, and excited about her 2009 release, Once Was Lost.

Your Turn: Have you read any of these 3 Zarr titles? Which was your favorite?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks—My rating: 5/5
• Story of a Girl
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Audience Pick!

Title: Ghost World
Author: Daniel Clowes
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Enid and Becky have been best friends forever and do everything together. They’re graduating from high school, so Enid is thinking of moving away to college but Becky doesn’t want her to go.

Review: This has been my favorite graphic novel so far, although I haven’t read very many yet. In the movie adaptation, I wish they had stuck to the book a bit more because the book was (of course) much better.

I loved Enid’s snarky commentary, but the last couple of chapters were the most satisfying because you start to see what’s really going on with Enid. I wish there had been a couple more hints of that earlier on because the beginning chapters seemed to wander a bit. Or it could be that I just missed them.

If you haven’t read any graphic novels before, this would be a great one to start with.

How do you think the movie compares to the book?

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As a judge for the first round of the Nerds Heart YA tournament, I had the tough task of deciding which of these two books advance to the next round. I’ll start with reviews of each one, but if you can’t bear the suspense any longer feel free to skip to the end of this post for the decision!

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The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine

Author: April Lurie
Category: Fiction, Young Adult

Summary: After Dylan’s mom moved out, his dad threw himself into work and his older brother threw himself into pot. Dylan’s the glue holding the household together, but when his best friend Angie doesn’t see him that way and Dylan gets picked up by the cops, how much longer can the glue hold up?

What I Loved: The engrossing story made me immediately care about Dylan and what he was going through. This is how it starts:

I can tell you from experience that a jail cell is not a place you’d like to visit.

I loved the humor throughout. It was funny without trying too hard to be clever, so it felt like I was reading about a real kid and his problems. Here’s one part of a scene with Dylan’s older brother Randy and his stoner friends Headbone, Nick, and Moser. Moser has a bit of a hygiene issue and refuses to shower.

Suddenly Nick says, “Shut up, Headbone! Don’t you see what’s going on here?”

Headbone looks confused. “No…what? Ohhhh.”

Now Moser gets it too. He shakes his head, and I pray to God the white stuff in his hair is dandruff and not larvae.

I also genuinely thought a couple of the subplots could go either way, which made for a fun read.

What I Didn’t Love: As the story lines started to wrap up, that understated humor seemed to drop away when it was most needed. So the emotional scenes sometimes felt overly sentimental to me. Also with the ending, I thought the characters tended to be a little too forthcoming with how they really felt—not necessarily realistic.

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Leftovers

Author: Laura Wiess
Category: Fiction, Young Adult

Summary: Best friends Blair and Ardith have done something wrong, something very wrong. After you hear their story, will you understand?

What I Loved: This book takes a chance, and I will always love a gutsy story that pushes the boundaries of what is “right” and acceptable. The main risk in my eyes was the prevalent use of second person voice. (More on that in a bit.)

The book also had a few gems that made me stop and think for a bit, like this one after one of the girls was teased at school:

So you…get busy writing your name in your notebook. Homeroom ends in seven minutes and if you drag it out, you can make your preoccupation with penmanship last just about that long. You stare at the page. Your name is a lone bottle floating on an ocean of blue-lined paper. You frown and erase the small, cramped letters. The words disappear but the impression remains and there’s nothing you can do about that.

What I Didn’t Love: The second person voice was off-putting. I guess it was intended to make you feel like you’re part of the story so you connect to the events and can understand the main characters’ actions. But for me, it was constantly jarring, throwing me out of the story and introducing a distance so I couldn’t fully connect with the main characters.

Here’s another snippet to help you decide if this is the book for you. I’m curious to know what you think after reading it.

When your mother finally makes partner in a prestigious law firm, she decides it’s time to buy one of the big, new McMansions across town. She says you need a new house because you’ve outgrown your current one, a cozy cape in a mostly blue-collar neighborhood, but that’s not really true, because besides you and your parents, the only other living thing in the house is your old golden retriever Wendy Darling, and she doesn’t take up much space. She’s slept in your room for the last fourteen years, first in your bed, but now on her orthopedic mattress next to your bed.

You don’t want to move and say so, but nobody cares.

Probably because of this distance, a little ways in, the girls’ stories started to feel melodramatic and even a bit whiny.

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The Decision

The book that will continue to the next round is…

.
.
.

The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine!

If you’re a numbers sort of person, here’s the ratings breakdown:

Dylan: 3.5/5
Leftovers: 3/5

To see how Dylan fares in the next round of the tournament, keep an eye on Stephanie’s Confessions of a Book-a-holic for her decision.

Title: Feeling Sorry for Celia
Author: Jaclyn Moriarty
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: I saw this one on the shelf at the library and realized it’s a novel in letters. I’ve never read an epistolary YA novel, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Summary: Elizabeth Clarry’s best friend just ran away to join the circus, and her absentee father suddenly wants to spend quality time with her. So when Elizabeth’s English teacher starts a pen pal program with another school, she has a lot to say.

Review: I had a blast reading this hilarious book. Here’s a little snippet for you:

Mum,

I’m going to run over to Saxon Walker’s place and we’re going to train [for the 10K] together. He’s a guy from my school who catches my bus. He lives on Foxall Road. His mother’s the local councilor so you probably met her when you did your rollerblading protest.

Love,
Elizabeth

***

Elizabeth!!!

Who is this Saxon Walker? Is he Carolyn Walker’s son?

If he is, his mother is a demon from hell! Whatever you do, stay out of their house. If you see her in the distance, don’t smile at her. Just scowl.

Love,
Mum

***

Mum,

It’s too late. Saxon and I went for a run together and then he invited me back to his place for coffee.

His mother was quite polite for a demon from hell and she gave me a piece of carrot cake. I didn’t scowl at her at all. You always said before that I should smile and say thank you to my friends’ mothers. You are giving me confused and contradictory messages.

Love,
Elizabeth

So after this book and Jellicoe Road and Saving Francesca, I’ve decided I want to become Australian. They’re a funny lot. Or if they won’t have me, I would settle for being British like the marvelous Jenny Valentine. (btw, if you know anything about the process for changing one’s nationality, please let me know!)

This book was a perfect depiction of the push/pull a teenage girl feels between letting herself get excited about something (like a cute boy paying attention to her) and thinking she’s not good enough for it.

And the ending was brilliant.

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Title: Savvy
Author: Ingrid Law
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: This interview with Ingrid Law at Maw Books Blog piqued my interest, and the first line of the book made me want to read more.

Summary: Mibs Beaumont is about to turn 13 and get her very own savvy. She can’t wait to see whether her special ability will be the type to move mountains or brew up a storm, or a different talent altogether. But when Poppa gets hurt, Mibs doesn’t get the birthday celebration she was expecting.

Review: Here’s that first line that reeled me in:

When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.

I’m happy to report that the rest of the book was just as engrossing.

My two favorite parts:

• Vibrant characters—Not a single character was a dud. They were all so unique and real to me, even given the supernatural elements of the story.
• Fun language—Mibs’s way of speaking was fun and young without straying into the Land of Sickeningly Cute.

Here’s the first full paragraph to give you a feel for Mibs’s voice:

When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it. I had liked living down south on the edge of land, next to the pushing-pulling waves. I had liked it with a mighty kind of liking, so moving had been hard—hard like the pavement the first time I fell off my pink two-wheeler and my palms burned like fire from all of the hurt just under the skin. But it was plain that Fish could live nowhere near or nearby or next to or close to or on or around any largish bodies of water. Water had a way of triggering my brother and making ordinary, everyday weather take a frightening turn for the worse.

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