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.

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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…

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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.

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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!)

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Title: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print
Author: Renni Browne, Dave King
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Summary: Two seasoned editors teach you how to apply their editing techniques to your own work.

Review: I learned a ton from this book, and I want to read more like it.

Each chapter focuses on a different element of fiction—point of view, dialogue, voice, and so on. The authors provide examples to demonstrate their point, which I found incredibly helpful, even though I didn’t always see what they were trying to teach in every example. (I plan to read it again, and maybe more will sink in the second time.)

And as a lover of checklists for anything and everything, of course I adored the little checklists at the end of each chapter. They are handy reminders of all the points raised in the chapter, and I know they will help jog my memory when I go back them later. After the checklists are exercises to practice your new knowledge.

My only disappointment with the book was the chapter on voice, where the checklist and exercises were absent:

Realistically, we can’t really come up with a list of things to watch for as you improve your voice—there are no rules to becoming an individual.

Boo. Maybe they’re right, but boo.

Aside from that one minor cop-out, this book is brilliant!

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