For the second year, I signed up to help judge the Nerds Heart YA tournament because:

1. I am a nerd, and
2. I heart YA.

The books I had to decide between were worlds apart this year—one historical fiction and the other a fantasy. 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…

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Alligator Bayou

Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Summary: 14-year-old Calogero is a Sicilian boy who’s lost his mother, so he’s sent to work with other Sicilians in a small Louisiana town during the late 1890s. At that time, Italians weren’t accepted as equals by whites, and being friends with blacks was frowned upon. But that doesn’t stop Calogero from having a crush on a beautiful girl who happens to be black.

What I Loved: This would be an excellent choice for kids who are studying this time period in their history class. Early on, a feeling of what life was like in that world settles into your bones. Kids would learn way more from one good piece of fiction like this than from memorizing important dates and names for weeks on end.

So what I loved most about this book is that it takes an obscure slice of America’s history—how five Italian immigrants were brutally murdered—and serves it up for us to mull over.

The language was spare throughout—not too flowery or overly descriptive, but just enough to get a vivid image across. Here’s a snippet for you, from a scene with Calogero and the girl he has a crush on:

She sets down the lantern glass and puts her hands lightly on my cheeks.

I touch the center of her back at the waist. Just a hint. She moves to me, natural as water running downhill.

What I Didn’t Love: The story gets off to a slow start, or at least slower than I prefer. I didn’t really get a sense that the true stakes were life and death until about halfway through the book. More hinting in the beginning about those high stakes would have helped pique my interest.

But I’m glad I stuck with it and finished.

One more minor issue that tripped up my reading was the way that background information was sometimes delivered through dialogue. In some places, that dialogue came off a little too speech-y for my taste. As in: “Ahem. Now listen to me, while I will tell you everything I know about that topic.”

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
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Evil?

Author: Timothy Carter
Summary: Stu is a gay teen living in a devoutly religious small town. He also summons a demon on occasion to chat. But none of that is why everyone in town hates him. The trouble all started after Stu’s little brother caught Stu in the act of pleasuring himself and announced it at church.

What I Loved: I wish there were more YA books that explore the nature of religion, so I was glad to read such a playful attempt at doing that.

I also loved that what gets Stu in trouble had nothing to do with him being gay. The townspeople were actually surprisingly okay with his orientation—that is, surprising for a small religious town.

What I Didn’t Love: I don’t have a problem with fantasy or absurd storylines. (In fact, I have a fond place in my weird little heart for books like Lips Touch and Pretty Monsters and Jack Tumor.)

But the fantastical twists and turns in this book did not make a believer out of me.

The humor didn’t exactly convert me to fandom, either. Instead of laughing or even smiling at the jokes, I groaned. Like with this one:

I did think I was better than most people in this town. When you’re a gay teenager with a brain among a community that expects God to “Rapture” them at any given moment, you can’t help but feel that way. If that makes me a snob, then say hello to my upturned nostrils!

I like my humor fresh and original. To me, the humor in this book was not either of those things.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
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The Decision

The book that will continue to the next round is…

.
.
.

Alligator Bayou

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

Alligator Bayou: 3/5
Evil?: 2/5

To see how Alligator Bayou fares in the next round of the tournament, keep an eye on There’s a Book for Danielle’s decision.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: I have a track record of loving Printz winners and honor books, and Going Bovine is the 2010 winner.

Summary: 16-year-old Cameron doesn’t care much about anything. But being diagnosed with mad cow disease solves that problem.

Review: Utterly, positively funny. The wit and sarcasm drips off every single page of this book, so much so that I became immune to it after a while. I tend to prefer the brand of funny that hides around the next corner and startles a laugh out of me.

Maybe I would have felt differently if I had started out liking the main character. But he is so incredibly apathetic at the beginning that I didn’t feel compelled to care in return. Then about halfway through, I did start rooting for him.

Because guess what? When Cameron started to care about what was going on around him, I started to care too. And it didn’t hurt that the Don Quixote parallels meant I could relive my English major days.

I enjoyed this book, although it was just alright for me. Could be I wasn’t in the right mood when I read it. Here’s a taste so you can decide whether it’s right for you:

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having “life counselors” tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at? Is there a reason for dodgeball? Pep rallies? Rad soda commercials featuring Parker Day’s smug, fake-tanned face? I ask you.

But back to the best day of my life, Disney, and my near-death experience.

I know what you’re thinking: WTF? Who dies at Disney World? It’s full of spinning teacups and magical princesses and big-assed chipmunks walking around waving like it’s absolutely normal for jumbo-sized stuffed animals to come to life and post for photo ops. Like, seriously.

Your Turn: What brand of funny do you go for?

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Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Fire—My rating: 3.5/5
• When You Reach Me
• Leviathan
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: North of Beautiful
Author: Justina Chen Headley
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: This title was picked by 3 bloggers during Unsung YA Heroes 2010: Biblio File, Write Meg!, and YA Librarian Tales.

Summary: Most people think Terra is beautiful, until they see the port-wine birthmark on her cheek. Surgery won’t remove it, makeup can’t cover it up all the way, and her father certainly won’t let her forget it’s there.

Review: From the first sentence, this story firmly planted me in Terra’s shoes. Terra’s experience will make you realize how focused we are on a single definition of beauty—who has it and who doesn’t. When I was a good ways into the book, I was out at a coffee shop and standing in line. I caught a kid staring at me, and immediately my hand flew to my cheek. There’s no birthmark on my cheek, but the book made me feel for Terra’s situation so completely that for a split second I thought otherwise.

As if dealing with stares and nasty comments from strangers weren’t enough, Terra’s home situation will break your heart. Her dad is verbally abusive and controlling, almost beyond belief. Terra copes well enough by writing him off, but her mom copes by overeating. This subplot, while powerful, felt a little over-the-top at times. In some scenes, Terra’s mom was just a little too pitiful, and I didn’t believe she was really that weak.

The other reason I didn’t connect 100% with this book is the amount of internal dialogue where Terra explains what she’s feeling. When it comes to internal dialogue, I’m in the camp of less is more. Terra would explain the same emotional struggles over and over again, and I found myself skipping over those parts to get to the action.

But the harsh reality of Terra’s struggles kept me grounded in the story, and the romance felt genuine. This was a good read, just not a favorite for me.

Your Turn: Have you ever unintentionally adopted a habit or quirk of the main character’s from the book you’re currently reading? Or “remembered” something that happened to you, when it was actually from the book?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Twenty Boy Summer—My rating: 3/5
• Wintergirls—My rating: 5/5
• Willow
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Shiver
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Heather’s review at Tales of a Capricious Reader was the one that snagged me.

Summary: Every winter, 17-year-old Grace watches the woods behind her house for a wolf with yellow eyes—her wolf.

Review: Love at first sight can be a pesky little thing. Especially when you happen to fall for a guy who’s missing a few key chromosomes. Poor Grace.

I devoured this story of species-crossed lovers. And unlike most stories with alternating points of view, I felt an immediate connection to both Grace and her wolf, Sam.

But it also left me wanting more. Grace’s entire existence was wrapped up in Sam, and she didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of her yearning for him. All-consuming love, I don’t mind. But for me, it’s even more powerful if a girl is her own person with her own dreams and aspirations outside of being with a certain guy/wolf/vampire.

Still, I will be reading more by this author because the writing was engaging. Here’s a taste from the opening:

I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves. They were licking me, biting me, worrying at my body, pressing in. Their huddled bodies blocked what little heat the sun offered. Ice glistened on their ruffs and their breath made opaque shapes that hung in the air around us. The musky smell of their coats made me think of wet dog and burning leaves, pleasant and terrifying. Their tongues melted my skin; their careless teeth ripped at my sleeves and snagged through my hair, pushed against my collarbone, the pulse at my neck.

While we’re on the topic of romance, be sure to check out the latest list of book recommendations over at Flashlight Worthy: The Most Romantic YA Books of All Time.

Your Turn: What makes for a better romance—an eternal love that obliterates all longing save the lovers’ desire to be together? Or a big ol’ mess of two separate people with their own wants and needs who have to figure out how to make it work on top of everything else?

Or, to put it another way:

Or…

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Lament
• Eyes Like Stars
• Fire
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Looking for Alibrandi
Author: Melina Marchetta
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Melina Marchetta is the bomb.

Summary: 17-year-old Josephine Alibrandi is forever in trouble with the nuns at her Catholic school, her grandmother, and her mother. So maybe it’s a good thing her biological father has never wanted to meet her.

Review: I thought it might be good to start with a note I wrote to this book:

Dear Book by One of My Favorite Authors,

I wanted to love you. I wanted to sing your praises like I have for your sisters. But I’m not sure we’re a good fit.

Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed our time together. It’s just that I probably won’t be calling you again.

Can we still be friends? Best,
Kelly

I loved parts of this book, but I didn’t fall in love with it on the whole. In this book as in Marchetta’s others, you can’t beat the romance story lines and the wit.

In general, though, I felt like this book lacked the subtlety that made my heart go pitter-patter while reading Marchetta’s two later novels. A lot of chapters seemed to end with a “moral,” and that wore on me. In addition, some of the dialogue came across as forced. At one point, Josephine apologizes to her mom, and I just couldn’t picture it.

Still, if you are a Marchetta fan—and I wholeheartedly am—you should read this, her first novel. It may not live up to the bar set by her other two novels, but it’s a good read nonetheless. Here, Josephine is sitting on stage at an inter-school event, preparing to deliver a speech:

Seated on my other side was Jacob Coote from Cook High.

Cook High is a public school in the city area. Because it’s the closest school to us, we don’t get on well with them. We think they’re better than them. They think we’re the biggest dags in the world.

When we were young, they would throw things out of their bus windows at us, and in Year 10, on the last day of school, Jacob Coote and about ten of his friends, male and female, blocked both entrances of a lane we cut through to get to our bus stop. Twelve of us were bombarded with eggs and rotten fruit and vegetables. Everyone said that one day we would look back on the occasion and laugh.

Very unlikely.

“What are you going to talk about?” he whispered in my ear.

I moved away, hoping nobody had seen him speaking to me. My friends think he’s gorgeous. His hair is brown, shoulder length, not cut into any particular style, and his eyes are green and they always seem to be laughing at you.

He grinned, and by the way his lips were twitching he looked like he was trying to control a laugh. I knew he recognized me from the lane.

“Didn’t I once squash two eggs against your glasses?” he asked.

“I’m flattered you remember. I tripped over a rubbish can, you know, and cut my hand on some broken glass.”

“Oh, come on. We were suspended for that. We didn’t go to school for six weeks.”

“Very funny. We had six weeks’ holiday after that.”

Your Turn: Have you ever read a book from one of your most favorite authors and not loved it?

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Saving Francesca—My rating: 4/5
• Tomorrow, When The War Began
• Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude Get A Life
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing