Tag Archives: HBG Canada

Review | Boy Nobody, Allen Zadoff

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14740626Allen Zadoff takes the teen-on-a-mission trope to a whole new level in Boy Nobody. The title character is an assassin who works for a mysterious agency. A teenage boy without a past, he is able to slip into the school system, strike a casual friendship with the son or daughter of the target, make the kill and then disappear before anyone connects him to the death. Things get complicated when he falls in love with the daughter of his next target, the mayor of New York City. To make matters worse, he’s been having flashbacks of his life before he became Boy Nobody, which hint that he may have been a victim himself once, and that his current life was forced on him against his will.

Boy Nobody is an action-packed YA thriller and a quick, exciting read. I didn’t expect to like the romance, particularly when I started liking how badass Boy Nobody was as an assassin. But I like Sam — she’s smart and sharp, and able to see through Boy Nobody’s veneer. She calls him out when he’s lying or not standing up for a bullying victim, but she isn’t over the top acerbic either, nor is she by any means perfect. While part of me did wish he would just fulfill his mission already and set to work learning about his own past, another part of me understood why he kept hesitating, and why he began wondering about his orders in general in the first place.

This is the first book in the series, and I can just imagine how exciting the next books will be, as Boy Nobody delves ever deeper into his past and into the organization that sends him on missions. In the meantime, this first book is an exciting ride, a more action-packed, less introspective version of Barry Lyga’s Game series. I particularly love how the romance plays out — the turn it takes is unexpected and, I think, a brave and necessary move. If it were the 90s, I’d say this series would make the perfect TV show. I don’t know if there’s a market for this type of show these days, but as a book series at least, it’s a fantastic read, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

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Thank you to HBG Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review | The Universe versus Alex Woods, Gavin Extence

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15984268I had high hopes for this book. The plot seemed to have just the type of quirkiness I love – seventeen year old Alex Woods had been hit by a meteor at age ten, and his life hasn’t been the same since. He forms a friendship with a curmudgeonly old man, and when the book opens, is caught in a car with 113 grams of marijuana and an urn of ashes. “Yes,” Alex tells the cop who pulls him over. “That was Mr Petersen.”

The Universe versus Alex Woods starts off with a promising beginning. The quote in the previous paragraph is on page 15, and comes only a few pages after Alex explains that the marijuana was indeed for personal use, just not his personal use but rather Mr Petersen’s, and that he hadn’t been resisting arrest, but rather been experiencing an epileptic seizure that may or may not be linked to having been hit by a meteor years ago.

The problem with such an awesome beginning is that the rest of the book has to live up to it, and in the case of Alex Woods, Gavin Extence was unable to maintain the momentum. The rest of the book is a fairly solid coming of age story, but sadly a fairly plodding one. The meteor incident set Alex apart as different and his natural awkwardness made him a social outcast. He is a celebrity of sorts in the scientific world, and he relates most easily with a scientist who is studying the meteor that hit him. An incident with bullies leads to a friendship with Mr Petersen, with whom Alex soon shares a love for Kurt Vonnegut’s books. And that’s when the story begins to plod. On one hand, the story then delves into a complex ethical quandary with no easy answers. On the other hand, the witty edge of the first part of the book begins to dull.

Part of it is that from the beginning, we already have an inkling of how things will turn out, and for most of the book, it simply becomes a matter of getting back to that point. And the story takes its time doing so. Another part is that the meteor incident seems to have been completely forgotten in the second half. What’s the point of having a character who had been hit by a meteor if it ends up not playing a role for most of the book?

Most of all however, it’s a slow book, and not the kind of slow that is savoured. Rather, I found my attention wandering, and I found myself longing for the humour that hooked me in the first few pages. The book does raise important ethical questions, but as the protagonist himself is pretty clear about what he considers the moral choice, much of the narrative tension is gone.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review | Game, Barry Lyga

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0316125873I absolutely loved the concept behind Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers. A teenage son of the world’s most notorious serial killer decides to use his father’s training to hunt serial killers himself, and therefore prove he isn’t like his father. Jasper Dent has the daddy of daddy issues, and it makes for a gripping, emotional read, and a hero/potential anti-hero you can really get behind. There are shades of Dexter Morgan’s in Jazz’s own quest, and kudos to Lyga for fearlessly exploring the darkness within his teenage protagonist.

Game ups the ante by pitting father against son in even more overt ways. Jazz is somewhat more confident in his role as serial killer hunter, but his subconscious keeps torturing him with disturbing memories, and he is still unable to shake off the fear that he is predisposed to ultimately become like his father.

On one hand, Game is a bit of a letdown after the absolutely compelling first volume in the series. It reads more like a traditional thriller, except with a teenage protagonist rather than a hardened professional. Jazz’s character development had always fascinated me more than the mysteries themselves, so oddly enough, I found myself somewhat disappointed by the heightened focus on the mystery in this book.

Connie plays a much larger role in this book, and while I like how important she is in keeping Jazz deeply grounded in his own humanity, while I like that Lyga has a female character who can hold her own as well as the male protagonist can, I thought her part in the story mostly unnecessary and would personally have preferred to instead have had Jazz’s solitude offer us a deeper exploration of his psyche.

That being said, there’s still plenty of dark and twisty Jasper Dent psychology to grip readers. Jazz’s hesitation to have sex with Connie, because he’s afraid it’ll awaken some latent psychosis is reminiscent of Angel’s inability to have sex with Buffy at the risk of losing his soul, and it’s particularly striking within the context of the deeply disturbing, highly sexualized, memories surfacing in Jazz’s subconscious.

As well, as an action packed thriller, it’s a hell of a ride. Particularly in the second half of the book, where my Goodreads profile shows comments such as “Holy crap!” at around the 75% mark, and “OMG what a cliff hanger!” at the very end.

The Jasper Dent books is an audacious, utterly fascinating series, and I can’t wait to see where Lyga takes it next.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.