Tag Archives: YA

Review | Someone Else’s Life, Katie Dale

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When seventeen-year-old Rosie’s mother Trudie dies of Huntington’s disease, Rosie’s fear of having inherited this genetic condition leads her to a startling revelation — Trudie isn’t her real mother. Rosie decides to travel to America to find her birth mother. Katie Dale’s Someone Else’s Life is a heart-breaking, emotional read.

I had no idea what Huntington’s disease is, but from this book, I feel for whoever suffers from this condition, or is a caretaker for one who does. Rosie drops out of school to be a full-time caretaker for Trudie — a brave, selfless decision that nonetheless leads to an immensely difficult task for anyone, let alone a teenaged girl. One character mistakes Trudie’s condition for alcoholism, and while that character was sympathetic about it, I can’t even imagine how horrible it must be to watch your mother dying of a disease and having people judge her as an addict.

Rosie’s decision to find her birth mother leads to other lives being upended, and other difficult decisions that have to be made. The narrative switches between Rosie’s perspective and another’s, who isn’t identified until about halfway through the book, and both viewpoints are differentiated by their typeface. I won’t reveal who it is, as that would be a spoiler. For the first few chapters, I thought it was all from Rosie’s viewpoint, which made it confusing and made Rosie’s situation seem even worse than it already is.

To be honest, as the story progressed, I found myself being drawn more to the other narrator’s story. There were points when I was so sympathetic to the other narrator that I hated Rosie, and had to remind myself of how much she went through taking care of Trudie. I was also so pulled into this other narrator’s story that I cried. Twice. I knew this book was going to be emotional (it’s about Huntington’s disease and a search for a birth mom), but I didn’t really expect it to affect me much. My mistake. I got caught up and I got emotional, and not for the reasons I expected to either. It’s that kind of book.

Review | Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

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To be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit of YA fatigue lately. I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, I have read quite a few really good YA books, and to be honest, I wish we had this much variety available when I was younger. That being said, it feels like wherever I turn, there’s the Next Big YA Series coming out, the one perfect for fans of Hunger Games. After a while, even the well-written ones start to sound the same to me — yet another dystopian world, yet another kick-ass heroine, yet love triangle, and so on. Full respect to the writers who create these stories and to the readers who love them, but I, at least, need a break.

So when my sister brought home Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures, finished it (all 563 pages!) in a single day, and suggested I read it, I was hesitant. Beyond my YA fatigue, there’s also a movie version coming out, so I was expecting to soon be overwhelmed by online buzz. Still, I figured I might as well give it a try. And I am so glad I did.

Beautiful Creatures is a brilliant Southern gothic — atmospheric, romantic, and haunting. I love that Garcia and Stohl tell the story from the guy’s perspective, and that there is no love triangle. I especially love that, while the focus of the story is the romance, there is an entire world beyond the love story, and the characters’ actions have significance far beyond their relationship. From the first chapter, I felt myself drawn into this world, and I wanted to find out more. The book did strike me as long, but the story is fascinating. It’s also really scary — I can definitely imagine it playing out well on screen, and I can just picture myself covering my eyes in the theatre.

When Lena Duchannes moves into the mysterious Ravenwood house in the small Southern town of Gatlin, Ethan Wate recognizes her from his dreams and is immediately drawn to her. Her family is cursed. They are Casters (they can cast spells), and while other Casters can choose their destiny, each Duchannes is Claimed at the age of 16 by either Light or Dark. As a powerful Natural Caster, Lena is a prize to both the Light and the Dark, and a prophecy later in the book reveals exactly how significant she is. Ethan is an ordinary boy, but he’s determined to protect Lena from the Dark as much as he can. At the very least, he fights to protect her from the other kids in school who have labelled Lena a witch simply because her uncle is the town recluse.

Beautiful Creatures has romance, but more than that, it has curses, ghosts, mystery, and, well, very real emotions. I love how, even though Lena has to deal with Dark Casters and curses, one of her major concerns is how to have a normal teenaged life before she is Claimed. Like an ordinary teenager, she just wants to have a good time at the school dance and to face a school day without being teased. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, she is invited to a party by the popular girls in her class. Lena knows they are under a spell by another Caster, but she pleads with her uncle to let her go anyway: “I want to go to a party I’m invited to. I mean, I know it’s all Ridley [casting a spell], but is it wrong if I don’t care?” As Ethan notes, “She wants to be part of all this, even if it wasn’t real.” How sad is that, and how much can we all relate to it?

Speaking of Ridley, I found myself very fascinated by her character. A childhood friend of Lena’s, she was Claimed by Dark at 16 and is now no longer welcome to her own family. She seems genuinely pained by this rejection, which makes me wonder if being Claimed as a Dark Caster makes one as absolutely evil as everyone seems to think. I love that Garcia and Stohl made her character a bit ambiguous; in her own way, she appears just as vulnerable as Lena, and I’d love to find out more of her thoughts.

The secondary characters in this book were also fascinating. I love Amma and Macon, both mentor figures who seem to have exciting pasts of their own. I also love Ethan’s best friend Link, the comic relief who I hope may be able to get through to Ridley. Finally, I love how much of this book revolves around a library — the town librarian works at a Caster library on bank holidays, and that just seems like such a magical, fascinating place.

Beautiful Creatures is such a fascinating book, and I can only begin to imagine where Garcia and Stohl will take the rest of the series!

Review | A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness

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I read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness because of this blog review. I enjoyed Ness’s Knife of Never Letting Go, but as I wrote in my comment to that post, I thought of Monster as just a children’s horror story. The jacket cover just said the monster “wanted the truth,” which I thought could mean practically anything. So, while I admired the art, I had no interest in reading it.

Then I find out it’s about a boy  whose mom is dying of cancer and whose dad has another family in a different country. Far from being a simple haunted house (monster-infested house?) story, Monster is about a monster who forces the boy to face the truth of his situation. What is that truth? You’ll have to read the book to find out. But it’s a truth that definitely, painfully, hit home for me.

I was an emotional mess reading Monster, and I mean that in a good way. It was cathartic, and in a way, I almost wished I’d had a monster like Conor’s, who told me such stories. A bit of personal background: my mother died of cancer last year. Conor’s pain, his anger, his denial — his experiences just felt very immediate. To be honest, I don’t know how this book will affect you. I won’t say anything as pat as that we’ve all experience loss in some form or other, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, the experience of loss is never generic. The book jacket calls the story “darkly mischievous and painfully funny.” I didn’t see the humour, but perhaps, in a few years, I will. My point isn’t that the book isn’t funny, but that it’s so intensely personal that I think it will touch each of us differently. That’s not something I can say for many books.

I was immediately struck by Conor’s first encounter with the monster:

Then the monster paused again.

You really aren’t afraid, are you?

“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”

Of course not. Conor has something much more horrible to fear, something much more difficult to fight. There’s a focus that comes with tragedy, a loss of anxiety that isn’t so much courage as it is the realization that, when all is said and done, some monsters are really very minor.

The monster says that he will tell Conor three stories, after which Conor must tell him a fourth: the truth about the nightmare that has haunted Conor for months and that scares him much more than this monster could. I loved the monster’s stories. They had a fairy tale quality, but they also touched on specific aspects of Conor’s life. Like Conor, I wanted to control the way the stories went, and like Conor, I was shocked or thrilled or dismayed at the twists. I’m over twice Conor’s age, yet I had very similar reactions to the monster’s tales. Some situations are just too big, too frightening to handle, and the reality that, even in fantasy, we don’t always get what we want, is painful regardless of age.

Monster goes far beyond the monster’s tales. The scenes of Conor’s real life are even more powerful. As he faces bullies, as he shuts himself away from a former friend, as he repeatedly insists his mom will be cured by her treatments — everything is just raw and immediate and all too relatable. Even Conor’s fear of talking about his nightmare struck home. How often do we cling to denial because admitting something might make it true? The scene where the monster, gently yet insistently, forces him to acknowledge the truth… Amazing.

Monster is gut-wrenching, emotional, even painful. It’s also beautiful, tender, and moving. I don’t mean to make it sound like a heavy, depressing book. Nor do I want to sound cheesy, but it is uplifting. Ness never gets maudlin. The writing is masterfully subtle, and therefore connects even more deeply. Whatever your experience with loss, this book will connect with that part of you.

After one of the monster’s stories, Conor demands to know what he was supposed to learn from it.

You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?

It laughed louder and louder again, until the ground was shaking and it felt like the sky itself might tumble down…

“I don’t understand. Who’s the good guy here?”

There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.

Conor shook his head. “That’s a terrible story. And a cheat.”

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.

Indeed.