Book Review - "Along for the Ride" by Sarah Dessen

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I'm a pretty big Sarah Dessen fan. I read her blog every day and it's quite possible that she is the reason I became a teen librarian. Anyway, Along for the Ride is her latest and I bought it at a bookstore the day it came out.

It's the summer before Auden heads off to college at Defriesne, a prestigious university assumed to be not too far away from her hometown in North Carolina. She planned to spend it at her home -- she's been living with her mom, a well-known and well-admired professor at the U since her parent's divorce -- prepping for her fall classes, but an email from her dad's new wife and new mother changes everything. Auden opts out of the expected and enters the unexpected -- moving into her dad's beachside house in Colby with the stepmom and new little sister, Thisbe.

An insomniac looking to explore her temporary hometown, Auden keeps running into Eli, who she learns is a former biker who hasn't been riding since the accident that killed his best friend. They strike up the kind of friendship only two insomniacs can have -- meeting nightly at the Gas/Gro, then letting the evening take them to whatever's open that late. But then something more develops (a Sarah Dessen book is not complete without a romance) as Eli leads Auden to do all those thing she missed by being an overworked brainiac in high school.

But a person can't just change overnight (pun not intended). When a familiar scenario startles Auden in her new environs, she reverts back to her old ways, distancing herself from the one person she'd become real close with in Colby. But there's still time left in the summer for things to change, and a beachside fake prom.

Like all of Sarah Dessen's books, this one offers a world you wouldn't mind stepping into, that's familiar to your own, but somehow a little better.

* * * *
Four out of five stars

RIYL: Susan Colasanti, Sara Zarr, Elizabeth Scott, contemporary realistic fiction

Trio of Book Reviews!

Intensely Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
It's the summer before Alice's last year of high school, and it starts off just like all the others, with the gang hanging out at Mark Stedmeister's pool. But this summer turns out to be full of surprises, both exhilarating, challenging, and devastating. Alice's cousin Carol is getting married in Chicago, which just happens to be where Patrick is starting school (at MY alma mater, the University of Chicago), so Alice visits him on campus. Lester busts out of town for a week, allowing Alice and her friends to stay at his place, and of course, this doesn't go exactly as planned. And at the end of the summer, something happens that no one expected, that changes the gang forever. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does it again with the latest Alice book, a compulsively readable book for fans of the series, and one that could certainly pique interest for those that don't know every detail about Alice McKinley...yet. YA FIC NAY

Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti
Watching the evening news, do you ever wonder about the grisly lead stories, the ones where a seemingly normal person does something you can't even comprehend. Do you wonder, who was this person, and what kind of family did he/she have? Well, this is one of those ripped-from-the-headlines stories, told from the perspective of the headline-maker's daughter, Jordan. Jordan's parents have been divorced for awhile. Her mother runs a bed and breakfast, and her dad's your average eye doctor... until he meets Gayle. Jordan notices that her dad's become completely unlike himself ever since he met Gayle, and not in a good way. Gayle has taken his life by storm, and Jordan's unsettled. As his behavior becomes more erratic, one wild, stormy night changes everything. Jordan's life will never be the same. Fans of Deb Caletti's other work will appreciate her realistic, nuanced take on a story like this -- though it's not my personal favorite of hers. Recommended also to fans of Sarah Dessen's books. YA FIC CAL

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
I'd been hearing a lot of buzz about this one, so I devoured it last night watching the Red Sox-Yankees game. Thirteen year old Kyra has grown up in an isolated, polygamist community, where no one questions the authority of the Prophet, even as he leads his community's members to do what anyone else would consider, horrible, reproachable things. But Kyra has recently started to come into her own, first when Joshua, a guy around her age, shows interest in her, and in her trips to the library bookmobile. (Her community had a cleansing years ago when they burned every book there, except for the Bible.) She has passing thoughts about wanting to leave, but they become more serious when the Prophet comes to visit her family. She has been chosen to marry Hyrum, her sixty year old uncle. The rest of the book oscillates between Kyra thinking she can escape, and realizing how difficult, and potentially suicidal it could be. The gripping end will keep you on the edge of your seat, or at the very least, up past your bedtime. The writing is spare, at times poetic, and completely true to the thirteen year old narrator. Recommended for those who read Sister Wife and are fascinated by the reality of polygamous compounds existing in certain areas of the United States right now. YA FIC WIL

Book Review - The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

If you liked The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks but weren't totally intrigued by the covers of E. Lockhart's other books, try them anyway! I'll admit I found the covers of the Ruby Oliver books a little girly for my taste, but over the weekend, I took the plunge and found out I have a new favorite author = E. Lockhart.

Sometimes, it's a good idea to make a list of things. Like, when you're going to the grocery store and you don't want to forget an item. Or, let's say you are packing for a trip and want to remember underwear. But if you're going to make a list of every boy you've ever had feelings for, liked, kissed, etc..., well, Ruby Oliver might advise you to, um, NOT.

You see, Ruby made such a list, of more than a dozen guys, from the guy she liked in early elementary school, to the guy who once grabbed her boob at the movies, to her most recent boyfriend--now, her ex, Jackson. But her list somehow got into the hands of a former friend, and now everyone at Tate Prep has their idea of what the names on the list mean, and they have a new name for Ruby Oliver, and it isn't a nice one. So you can imagine why Ruby might be having panic attacks in the bathroom, and why she might want to go to a shrink twice a week.

The Boyfriend List is a hilarious book-- two parts Georgia Nicolson, one part Megan McCafferty, one part John Green -- that makes you think about who your friends, and boyfriend(s) really are. It's also spawned two sequels: The Boy Book and the upcoming Treasure Map of Boys.

* * * *
(four out of five stars)

Book Review - Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film About the Grapes of Wrath by Steven Goldman

Sometimes, all you need for a great book are some hilarious characters, funny yet plausible scenarios, and potty humor. That's what Steven Goldman's first novel, Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film About the Grapes of Wrath offers, and it was more than enough to keep me cracking up on the train. Mitchell Wells is a kind of cute, kind of nerdy, guy who passes most of his time with his baseball jock best friend David, his constantly flirting with older guys sister Carrie, and Carrie's best friend M.C. But everything's kind of thrown for a loop when David comes out to Mitchell. What does it mean?

We never really get into what it means for anyone besides Mitchell because, let's face it, Mitchell's just a little bit hung up on his own problems. Like, when will the class hottie Danielle ever notice him. And if he's really going to get into trouble for the Claymation film supposedly about "The Grapes of Wrath" that he, in classic last-minute fashion, turned in for his English class in place of the paper. (Let's just say he never got past the first few pages of the Steinbeck classic, but that the film is hi-larious.)

This breezy, funny novel will hold appeal for fans of John Green, Barry Lyga, and Tim Tharp. (Also, yes, the cover is kind of lame, but the book is NOT!)

* * * 1/2
(three and a half/five stars)

Book Review - The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christoper Paul Curtis

I had the amazing opportunity to hear Christopher Paul Curtis speak last Friday; he gave the annual Zena Sutherland lecture at the Chicago Public Library. Sitting in the audience, I realized I was maybe the only one there who hadn't read any of his books. So I rectified that immediately, reading his first novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 in one sitting yesterday.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret -- historical fiction can be funny and casual and anecdotal all at the same time. In some ways, the beginning of the book reminded me of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You've got your main character, Kenny (read: Greg), being somewhat tortured and threatened by his big brother, Byron (read: Rodrick). The author completely sucks you into the world of these characters (1963 Flint, Michigan) by showing you their day-t0-day life, whether its toiling in school, snowball fights, or dinosaur wars. The real heart of the book is explored more in its second half, which follows the weird Watson family as they pile into their car and head south, to Birmingham, Alabama. And it's there that Kenny really starts to grow up. His mom told him and Byron that things were different down south for African-Americans, but it doesn't fully hit him until he hears the sound. A bomb hitting a church full of African-American children. What happens next is something only a very deft writer can accomplish, but it's the lump-in-your-throat kind of ending that really tugs at your heartstrings, the same way the beginning had you laughing out loud.

Christopher Paul Curtis was awarded the Newbery Honor, as well as the Coretta Scott King honor, for this, his first book, and it's easy to see why.

Recommended to: fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, anyone who's interested in learning more about the 1960s, and fans of Walter Dean Myers and Jacqueline Woodson

Book Review - If I Stay by Gayle Forman

It's rare that a tearjerker is this good, but that's a testament to what Gayle Forman achieved with this book, If I Stay, her second novel. Mia's a high school senior, an accomplished cellist, and the girlfriend of the lead singer/guitarist of the band Rising Star that's just gotten their huge break. A tiny snow storm--okay, a snowflake-- in Oregon means a day off from school, which gets Mia, her mom, her dad, and her younger brother Teddy out of the house. They're on the way to Mia's parent's friend's house when absolute tragedy strikes. In an instant, Mia's mom and dad are deceased, her brother is injured and Mia--well, Mia's suddenly an on-looker, looking down on this horrible scene and trying to understand what just happened. Is she dead? Is she alive?

It turns out that Mia is in fact in a coma, hanging on the precipice between life and death, and it also turns out that it's her decision: if she stays. Does she want to stay in a world that took away her incredible mother and father?

As Mia shares, in that perfect, anecdotal story kind of way, more about her family and her life, you start to realize everything she's lost, and I'm probably not alone in saying, it hits you in a very real place. Her parents are unique, idiosyncratic people, and their absence will make life enormously hard for Mia, if she chooses it.

I don't want to give away the ending, but I hope it's clear at this point how much I absolutely loved this book. Good luck finding it on the shelf. It made its debut on the NYTimes Bestseller list, and you can make your holds online.