Romance Writers of America announced the 2013 RITA finalists. Winners will be announced on July 20th. They have a YA category that has four nominees:
Young Adult Romance Finalists
Bound by Erica O’Rourke
The Farm by Emily McKay
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry
Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher
The author of Incarceron has returned with the start of another series. This is the story of Jake whose father has disappeared. Jake knows his father is dead and blames one person, Venn, the idiosyncratic wealthy man who was his father’s best friend and is Jake’s godfather. So Jake gets himself expelled from his posh Swiss boarding school and sent back to Venn’s home in England. When he gets there, he learns about the mirror that allows people to travel through time. He also finds out that his father is not dead, but lost in time. At Venn’s house, others are arriving. There is a girl from the future with a tie to the mirror, a man from the past who used to own the mirror before it was stolen from him, and a boy tied to the Faerie World and living long past he should have died. All of them have purposes for the mirror, but not everyone will succeed in their dreams.
Fisher is a consummate world builder. Here she has created a decaying but splendid abbey that is located on the border of a vast woods. It is a lonely and wild place, perfect for experiments with time since it seems to be timeless itself. Readers are also invited into a faerie world and on journeys through time where honest depictions of the past offer real insight into places like Victorian England. The mirror is the hub of this complex book, with everyone’s lives revolving around controlling and using it.
Fisher also excels at creating complex characters and she has several in this book. Jake himself is not completely likeable except in his devotion to his father. Everyone has their own personal agendas and reasons for acting. Because she creates characters who have an opportunity to really show how complex they are, the book does slow at times. Yet it is this attention to detail and character that makes her books so intriguingly rich.
Get this in the hands of teens who loved Incarceron. They will enjoy the twists of time travel and revel in the striking characters and vibrant world building. Appropriate for ages 13-16.
Reviewed from ARC received from Dial Books.
Just One Day by Gayle Forman
Allyson has always been the good girl, following her mother’s expectations of her completely. That’s why she’s on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Allyson is the girl who follows the rules, rarely goes out in the evenings with the others, and fades into the background next to her flashier best friend. So when Allyson suggests that they go see an underground performance of Shakespeare and cut out of the tour, it’s very out of character. When she discovers one of the actors, Willem, on their train the next day to London, the two of them just click. Quickly, she and Willem decide to head to Paris together for just one day before they both have to return home. As they travel together, the spark they had on the train becomes something even stronger. So when Willem is gone the next morning, Allyson struggles to figure out what happened even as she returns home and starts college. But the memory of Willem won’t leave her, coloring everything she experiences.
Forman is the author of If I Stay and Where She Went. Here she explores the world of a sheltered teen girl who decides to take a huge risk and break free of her confines if only for just one day. Forman captures the fatigue of travel where one day blurs into the others and the way that tours can dull the wonder of even the most amazing places. She then shows the difference between that way of travel and the travel of discovery and serendipity where your entire being is caught up in experiencing things. Forman writes of Paris and then also the Netherlands with a true affection, creating moments that are splendid and transformational.
Forman’s writing is assured and skilled. Upon opening the novel, the reader knows that the book will be solid. They will be delighted to also find that her writing is romantic and beautiful, truly recreating the experience of falling in love as a teen. She has also created a very compelling teen heroine in Allyson, who struggles mightily with the expectations set upon her. One roots for her to find her way free and also to find her way back to what she lost.
This exceptional teen novel is a whirlwind romantic trip to Europe that will have you wrapped up in its arms much faster than just one day. Appropriate for ages 16-18.
Reviewed from copy received from Dutton.
Stung by Bethany Wiggins
When Fiona wakes up in her bedroom, something is very wrong. All of her clothes are faded and there is dust and trash everywhere. The house has obviously been abandoned for some time. When Fiona looks in the bathroom mirror, she is not looking into her own face. Yes, those are her eyes, but she suddenly has breasts and hips, not the flat thirteen-year-old body she had been expecting to see. She also has a strange tattoo on one hand, a black oval with ten marks around it. Monsters are walking the city, attacking people and others have banded together to fight them off. Fiona recognizes people she knows, but they are not friendly. Chased through the ruined city, Fiona takes shelter in the sewers where she discovers help that comes with a price.
Wiggins has created such a compelling scenario here. It is a story of human hubris, the death of the honeybees, human intervention and eventually the fall of society itself. The details of society’s collapse is told tantalizingly slowly in the novel. Readers learn of things as Fiona’s memories return, and the pieces click into a whole background that is believable and impressive.
Fiona herself is a heroine who will appear immensely to teen readers. She is completely out of place in the world, but through it all shows tremendous grit and determination. The characters around her are equally fully depicted: her romantic interest, younger brother, and various villainous characters. They are complicated enough that it is difficult to tell hero from villain at times, adding to the thrill of the read.
The writing is solidly done with a brisk if not breakneck pacing. This book does not slow down, it simply moves forward from one evil to the next, slowing only for romantic moments that are natural and fully developed.
Get this into the hands of Hunger Games fans who will find the same mix of romance, horror and action here. Appropriate for ages 15-18.
Reviewed from ARC received from Bloomsbury.
The Sin-Eater’s Confession by Ilsa J. Bick
Ben saw what happened to Jimmy. Ben was the only witness except for the murderers who stoned Jimmy to death in the woods. Ben shouldn’t even have been there, not after what Jimmy did to him by taking a sensual photo of him when he was sleeping. But Ben found himself drawn to Jimmy and understood that Jimmy had no one else to turn to. His older brother was dead and his parents could not accept having a son who was suspected of being gay. Ben wasn’t sure that Jimmy is gay, and he was not clear about himself either. What he does know is that Merit, Wisconsin was not an easy place to be gay with prejudice still very evident throughout the community. Ben had to decide what to do about what he witnessed, what to tell the police. Now he has to grapple with the guilt that came from the decisions he made and what he intends to do moving forward.
Bick is the author of the Ashes trilogy and here writes a contemporary teen novel that focuses on several large issues. Issues like parental pressures are huge in Ben’s life where his mother expects him to get into Yale and become a doctor. Ben never goes out, has never dated anyone, and pours all of his energy into school and his part time jobs. The book also covers prejudice and homophobia, along with domestic violence. It’s a lot for a single book to deal with and at times some of the subjects seem to be there more for effect and to make a point than to really be part of the story itself.
The book does suffer from slow pacing in some areas, though the underlying story is taut and almost mesmerizing. Seeing into Ben’s thought process is interesting at first, but there are some layers to it that could have been left off to make the book even stronger.
What Bick really does well here is to create a compelling character in Ben. Jimmy was interesting as well, but it is Ben who really is the soul of the story. Through his eyes and his hindsight, readers are able to see the mistakes that Ben has made, the impossible decisions he has been forced into, and eventually his coming to terms with his own responsibility for what happened. Bick has left large parts of Ben unexplained, which works well. Readers will never be clear about his sexuality, which mirrors the questions about Jimmy as well, placing the reader right in the same place as the bigots in the community. One has to start questioning why it matters so much to label someone.
A harsh and unflinching look at bigotry and one’s personal responsibility in a community, this book asks tough questions and then leaves the answers in the reader’s hands. Appropriate for ages 16-18.
Reviewed from digital galley received from Netgalley and Carolrhoda Books.
The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook by Shaun Tan
This book opens the curtain to Tan’s creative process, allowing readers to view art from stories that have not yet been full formed, art from books that have been completed, and beautiful illustrations that may not be stories at all. The courage this book took to produce is to be applauded. Allowing readers and other artists to see a process of creativity is raw and soul baring.
This book is stellar. One turns the pages slowly, lingering in worlds undreamed of, wondering at ideas, and pausing to allow a particular image to sink in more deeply. It is a journey, specially designed for a young creative to see that mistakes can be joyous, that creation is messy, and that works in progress are breathtaking.
This is a book to get in the hands of teens who enjoy art and writing, for it is a look at the unformed and the just formed. It is a book of pure creativity and the creative process. Beautiful. Haunting. Inspiring. Appropriate for ages 10-18.
Reviewed from copy received from Scholastic.
Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
Standish Treadwell thinks differently than all of the others. He can’t read and can’t write because the letters move around in front of his eyes, but he does come up with amazing thoughts. That’s one of the reasons that he and his best friend Hector get along so well. Hector sees past Standish’s different colored eyes and understands that Standish is really brilliant. So when Hector disappears, Standish is left alone to be bullied. It’s all because Hector went to the other side of the wall and saw what was happening there. It’s a secret that the Motherland doesn’t want anyone to know about, but Standish starts to figure everything out when the Lush family is taken and the Moon Man appears. This dark, violent novel shows us a bleak future where differences are stomped out but as Standish demonstrates are just as vital as they are today.
This is one of those novels that unfolds as you read it, layered and complex. Science fiction set in the 1950s, readers will try to figure out where the book is set and how this happened. Set in a totalitarian regime in what appears to be England where World War II ended very differently, this book is stark and tension filled. Just the illustrations alone with the fly and the rat mark this as an unusual read.
What I found most amazing about this book is that we are not just told that Standish thinks differently than others, we are shown it in his narrative voice. The book is far from linear, journeying almost as a stream of consciousness through the past. Standish will have readers themselves looking at the world through his eyes and what an accomplishment that is!
This book defies description by genre and really is impossible to summarize well. Let me just say that it is powerful, brutal and set in bleakness but never far from hope. Appropriate for ages 15-18.
Reviewed from library copy.
If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch
Released March 26, 2013.
Carey’s mother has been gone for over a month, leaving Carey alone with her little sister, Jenessa. They live in a large woods and sleep in an old camper with no heat. Her mother had left them before, but usually not this long, just long enough to get more meth. But this time, their mother was not the one who came to their camp, a man and woman arrive, claiming that the man is Carey’s father. They take the girls back with them. Carey and Jenessa have never had a hamburger, never watched TV and never really been cared for. Carey was the only reason that Nessa had survived at all, often serving as the only love she had. But now the girls were expected to live with Carey’s father, his wife and their stepsister in their home. It’s a new life filled with challenges that Carey will only be able to accept if she can see the truth of why her mother took her away and also the truth of what she had been forced to do in the woods.
Murdoch has written a book that has a very compelling premise and happily, she is able to make the book about far more than that first bit ripped from the headlines. She writes about the power of music to heal, the ability of family and love to make things right again, but also the agony of betrayal, the ferocious power of abuse, and the building danger of lies. Carey is a heroine who has undergone real tragedy in her life, but here is she far from being a victim. She is instead immensely resourceful, caring and desperate to do what is right for her little sister.
Murdoch also weaves into so much of the book Carey’s connection with nature. It is the place she turns when in distress, moving even to the outdoor courtyard at the high school in order to find solace outdoors. Her love of music in also part of it, having played her music under the open sky for so long. When Murdoch writes of nature, she is part poet, creating a depth in this novel that lifts it to another level.
This story is one of a tough heroine who has to be strong for both herself and her little sister. It is a tale of survival but also one of recovery and honesty. I’d think this one would booktalk extremely well thanks to its strong premise that will nicely tantalize teen readers. Appropriate for ages 15-18.
Reviewed from digital galley received from Macmillan and Netgalley.
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
Released April 2, 2013.
This memoir in graphic novel form details Lucy Knisley’s relationship and ongoing love affair with food throughout her childhood and young adulthood. With each chapter in the book showing an episode in her life that impacted how she related to food, Knisley has penned a book that is not at all about weight watching, but instead the story of how a gourmet is born. The daughter of a chef, Knisley grew up helping out at farm stalls and working at her mother’s catering jobs. She also details how her mother both introduced her to the wonders of food in both taste and the way it can connect people. Each chapter ends with a recipe, showing readers how to create their own sushi or navigate selecting a great cheese.
Knisley’s style is reminiscent of that of Raina Telgemeier with characters who are drawn with an innate humor but also a profound affection. Knisley writes of her relationship with food in particular, but the book is also a love letter to her mother and the impact she had on Knisley throughout her life. I am profoundly grateful for a book about a girl’s relationship with food that does not contain even a moment of weight concern or dieting. Instead it is about finding or creating great food in one’s life.
Funny and delicious, this book is sure to whet the appetite for more books by Knisley. Get it into the hands of teens who enjoyed the books by Telgemeier. Appropriate for ages 14-17.
Reviewed from digital galley received from Macmillan Children’s Publishing.
Waking Brain Cells 