Realistic

Review: If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

April 30, 2013 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 9 Comments

By Emily Murdoch
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: March 26, 2013
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction
Source: Netgalley

There are some things you can’t leave behind…

A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down.

Goodreads Summary

I read more books about kidnappings and Stockholm Syndrome from the end of 2012 and into the very beginning of 2013 than I think I have in the previous ten years combined, so I was particularly interested in this when I saw it. Most of what I read has featured older teens with some kind of ongoing contact with their kidnappers, none who were family. If You Find Me was about younger kids and began with parental abduction and I have to say, it blew every other story right out of the water. This was such a gripping journey for these girls that it’s one I won’t forget for a long time.

For all intents and purposes, all teenage Carey has known is barely scratching out a life in a disgusting box of a trailer in the middle of the woods with her mother and little sister Jenessa. There’s no school, barely ever any contact with other people and barely any food that she doesn’t forage for but she’s so inured to the situation, Carey doesn’t expect she’ll ever have anything else. Then after her mother disappears for months, a strange man and woman appear, claiming the girls have been abandoned, he’s their father and he’s taking them home.

I read this a bit ago but it’s been a hard review for me to write. As a mom, Carey and Nessa’s story had me twisted in knots – it was painful for me to let the characters tell their story and not feel like there was something I should or could have done. My parental instinct to do something was sitting up and yelling at me and that almost never happens when I read. I can hardly believe this is Murdoch’s first book.

For the obvious reasons, Carey and Nessa initially have a lot of trouble fitting in at their new home. They have a big house and hundreds of things to learn to fit in with people. Fortunately, their dad married a wonderful woman who pre-loved them before they even came home and was willing to help, especially initially with sweet Nessa.

I can’t say enough about how much I loved Carey. She was so incredibly strong, mostly for all of the saddest reasons. No fifteen year-old girl should have to do the things she did or be a mother to her little sister. She had the most beautiful bond with Nessa, it brought tears to my eyes more than once. Many times it looked like Nessa had run to Carey for comfort, but the sisters were obviously getting it from each other as they always had. When Nessa developed a bond with Melissa, Carey could have been jealous, but she was happy that her sister was finally becoming “normal.”

Murdoch added a step sister for the girls that I thought about dinging my grade for, but ultimately she didn’t weigh that much against the rest of the book. I expected any step sister suddenly dealing with the sudden return of two beloved girls who had been missing would feel some jealousy and anger, but Delaney was a classic over the top mean girl. Sure, she provided conflict, but in such a unique and well-crafted story, she felt completely out of place. I didn’t like her sudden change later in the story either. I had no idea why it happened, so I didn’t believe it. She was just a character that I could have done without.

The ending is shocking and I love Murdoch for going there with it. It suited the tone of the rest of the book – the desolation, pain, hope and fear – and while I saw it coming, my heart still lurched when Carey told her story. If You Find Me was such a revelation, Murdoch has gone on my must-buy list.

My Rating: A

Filed Under: *A Rating, 2013 Contemporary Challenge, 2013 Debut Author Challenge, 2013 Ebook Challenge, 2013 Standalone Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Realistic, Young Adult Tagged With: Emily Murdoch

Review: The Lonely by Tara Brown

April 15, 2013 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 12 Comments

By Tara Brown

Published: February 2, 2013
Genre: New Adult Realistic Fiction
Source: Purchased

The truth is subjective to what the lonely lets in.

Emalyn Spicer has lived with it for a long time. She thinks it goes back further than her memories do. She knows it goes back further than the OCD.

When she arrives at college, her OCD’s and the lonely refuse to let her have her wish to be normal.

When she meets Sebastian and starts to fall for him, she lets herself believe it’s possible to outrun the things chasing her from the past. But how to you get away from the things inside of you? How do you run from yourself?

Just as she gives up and succumbs to the lonely, the unthinkable happens. She finds herself once again trapped in the dark, once again held against her will.

This time she meets the lonely head on. In the darkest corners of her mind, she discovers there is more to her world than she ever imagined. She discovers that the lonely was there for her, protecting her from herself and her secrets.

How far would you go to find yourself?

This is a dark and captivating novel, tread lightly.

Goodreads Summary

I first read The Lonely right after it came out and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t something I’d purchased thinking I’d review it for the blog. It has some uncomfortable material which is a little weird, so I let it go. I liked it enough to re-read it last night though, so I finally decided to share it. I will say there’s not really angst involved, but there’s dysfunction everywhere – but that’s part of what made it so compelling to me.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: *B Rating, 2013 Ebook Challenge, 2013 New Adult Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Contemporary/Romance, New Adult, Realistic Tagged With: Tara Brown

Special Feature: Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

January 8, 2013 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 22 Comments

By Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: January 15, 2013
Genre: Realistic Young Adult
Source: Netgalley – Itching for Books Blog Tour

Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, just the two of them against the world. But now her mom is gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, bringing home the next stepfather. Anna is left on her own—until she discovers that she can make boys her family. From Desmond to Joey, Todd to Sam, Anna learns that if you give boys what they want, you can get what you need. But the price is high—the other kids make fun of her; the girls call her a slut. Anna’s new friend, Toy, seems to have found a way around the loneliness, but Toy has her own secrets that even Anna can’t know.

Then comes Sam. When Anna actually meets a boy who is more than just useful, whose family eats dinner together, laughs, and tells stories, the truth about love becomes clear. And she finally learns how it feels to have something to lose—and something to offer.

Goodreads Summary

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“I want to go back to the tell-me-again times when I slept in her bed and we were everything together. When I was everything to her. Everything she needed.”
Anna

“And then he hugs me. Really hugs me. Like he thinks that there’s only one of me and I’m special and I’m enough for him. Like he doesn’t need anything else. Like he was alone and then I came along.”
Anna

About the author:

By day, Erica Scheidt is a marketing consultant and for some years had her own PR agency specializing in video games. She now works part-time for a non-profit organization, while also serving on the board of directors of ISIS, a 10-year-old non-profit focused on sexual literacy. As a teenager, Erica studied writing with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jim Carroll at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. In 2007, she was nominated by Rick Moody for the Best New American Voices anthology and in 2008 received an MA in creative writing at University of California, Davis. Erica is a longtime volunteer at 826 Valencia, working with teenage writers who are crafting their own stories, and is passionate about writing by teens and for teens. She lives in San Francisco.

Bio courtesy of Macmillan

Find Erica Lorraine Scheidt:

Website | Blog | Twitter | Tumblr | Goodreads

Erica’s plans for 2013 (besides writing!):
826 Valencia
Teen Center Writers’ Workshop

*Just a little note – I was scheduled to review Uses for Boys and wanted to, would have if I could have. This is a difficult, painful book and I just couldn’t find my way through it. It’s a very realistic portrayal of a girl who begins her pubescent (and some pre) life having learned that she’s not worth loving, that her body is just an object that she’s rather dispassionate about. Her mother ceased being interested in her once she herself started to attract men, so that’s the image of “worth” Anna had and sexual abuse was seen as exciting and proof that she wasn’t alone. Anna’s narration has a flat affect and it’s pitch perfect but it may also be a little off-putting if you aren’t expecting it – it’s one of the reasons I’m so torn about not being able to fully review this but after several tries, I just couldn’t get past a couple of blocks of mine. I suspect this would have been a B for me.

Barbara BlueGreen Sig

Filed Under: Realistic, Special Event, Young Adult Tagged With: Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Cold Light: A Novel

October 2, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 6 Comments

By Jenn Ashworth

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication Date: October 2, 2012
Genre: Realistic Contemporary (some young adult content)
Source: Edelweiss

I’m sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There’s Chloe’s parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It’s ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they’ve finally chosen a memorial-a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he’s started to dig.

You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I’m the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.

This is the tale of two fourteen-year-old girls, best friends, and one terrible summer when lies, secrets, jealousy, and perversion ended in tragedy more tangled and evil than a tight-knit community can possibly believe.

Goodreads Summary

For me, the only thing worse than reading a book I want to chuck against a wall is reading one I can’t seem to put down because I’m waiting for something, anything to happen, the entire time feeling like the author has put one over on me. This is a book I’m not ever going to get. I must lack the emotional depth, some obscure college degree or maybe the cultural background to fully appreciate what’s going on because obviously, there’s something happening. I just don’t get it.

Cold Light flips back and forth between the present and past as Laura revisits the events surrounding the death of her best friend Chloe ten years earlier. As ground is being broken for a memorial on the tenth anniversary of her suicide, another body is found and it’s all broadcast on live television. Emma, the third in Chloe and Laura’s friendship, has kept reluctant, hostile contact with Laura and as the news coverage continues through the night, they sit drinking and sharing painful secrets about Chloe and the things that happened the year they were fourteen.

In just a handful of months, their small English town was terrorized by a flasher-slash-molester going after teenage girls; a young man with Down’s Syndrome went missing; Chloe and her much older boyfriend Carl started a relationship with serious consequences and Laura and Chloe had a massive blowout followed by a tentative truce. Nothing can top what happened that winter though: Chloe and Carl, forbidden to see each other, committed suicide by drowning themselves in a local lake. A rose is named after Chloe, the town mourns – in her death, she is more beloved than she ever could have been in life, her love story impossibly romantic.

None of the main characters were particularly likable. Chloe is selfish, narcissistic, a liar and manipulative while cultivating an image of a pretty blonde angel. She chose Laura and Emma as friends because she could control them and play them off of each other and they did exactly that. Laura is needy, whiny, moody and obsessively jealous over Chloe. Emma is a coarse sycophant who’s obviously been damaged and can’t wait to take Laura’s spot with Chloe. Carl, Chloe’s much older boyfriend is a jerk to everyone, violent and obviously a perv, going after a fourteen-year-old. The descriptions about how everyone smelled were enough to make me queasy. Sweat, cigarettes, wet towels, dirty hair, dirty underwear, greasy lipstick – on and on. Nobody ever smelled good or had good skin. By the end I think I understood why I wasn’t supposed to like anyone, that there was a point to be made about all of us having a degree and depth of ugliness you can’t see on the surface. But then again, maybe I just didn’t get it.

As disturbing, uneasy and like an outsider this book made me feel, I still couldn’t put it down, which is why it gets a middling grade instead of a really low one. Each page I turned I kept thinking would be my last, then something would happen and I’d think, “just a few more.” The story has a train wreck quality to it – every encounter these people have with each other, you can almost feel the clock ticking down. When Laura’s with her parents, there’s an air of resigned hopelessness between them all. The reporter on-scene Terry, with his trademark pink shirts, is a grotesque parody of the veneered, shellacked anchorman. The one normal, likable character that I felt any sympathy for was the character whose body was found.

My Summary: I’m a little at a loss about what my final thoughts are. I know it’s possible to hate all the characters but love the book but I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. The ending threw me off a bit too – it really did emphasize that people aren’t who you think they are. My advice: read the other reviews too and decide based on all the information. I’m still not sure if I just didn’t get it.

My Rating: C

Filed Under: *C Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Realistic, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Jenn Ashworth

Pretty Amy

May 15, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 6 Comments

By Lisa Burstein

Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Publication Date: May 15, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction (mature themes)
Source: Netgalley

Amy is fine living in the shadows of beautiful Lila and uber-cool Cassie, because at least she’s somewhat beautiful and uber-cool by association. But when their dates stand them up for prom, and the girls take matters into their own hands—earning them a night in jail outfitted in satin, stilettos, and Spanx—Amy discovers even a prom spent in handcuffs might be better than the humiliating “rehabilitation techniques” now filling up her summer. Worse, with Lila and Cassie parentally banned, Amy feels like she has nothing—like she is nothing.

Navigating unlikely alliances with her new coworker, two very different boys, and possibly even her parents, Amy struggles to decide if it’s worth being a best friend when it makes you a public enemy. Bringing readers along on an often hilarious and heartwarming journey, Amy finds that maybe getting a life only happens once you think your life is over.

Goodreads Summary

This book is sort of the literary equivalent of a tin of Altoids – a little unassuming and cute on the outside while what’s on the inside is occasionally intense enough to make your eyes cross.

Amy’s senior prom was a bust – an actual police bust. When her friend Lila’s boyfriend and the blind dates they’d arranged for Amy and friend Cassie skipped out on them, Lila broke into Brian’s house and found bags of pot. At the time it seemed reasonable to show the guys how mad they were by stealing some of the marijuana but after getting caught by the cops with it in the car, it was the worst thing they could have ever done. All three girls have been charged with possession and possession with intent to sell.

To keep out of jail – or at least avoid a longer jail sentence – Amy has to spend the summer doing what her attorney and her mother tell her to do. Stubborn, sarcastic and occasionally obnoxious, Amy doesn’t help her own case, sending herself into just about every kind of intervention program I’ve ever seen plus a weird one that was new to me.

Do you remember in high school the kids that just seemed to blend into the background? They didn’t belong to any clique, weren’t really good or bad kids, kids you’d make fun of or ignore. They were just…there. That’s what Amy’s always felt she was until Lila and Cassie became friends with her and even if they were a slightly bad influence, they put her in a “pretty people” group and it was worth it. Now that they’re all in trouble, they’ve been forbidden to talk to each other and Amy’s floundering around, trying to form her own identity.

Amy’s mother is something close to certifiably insane or maybe she’s just possessed by a demon. She’s horrible to Amy, taking every sarcastic crack she makes, twisting it as truth then disciplining her for it with some over-the-top punishment. I wasn’t sure if the intention was for me to laugh at the crazy things she did or not but I swung from being angry to uncomfortable and the mom in me was a little nauseated sometimes. I could see why Amy had issues and incredibly low self-esteem. I was annoyed that her dad was given the clichéd role as the absentee overworked parent who generally was unaware of what was going on. I wish he’d have been more present in Amy’s life considering how crazy his wife was.

But. For a girl who claims she’s a nobody with no personality without someone to prop her up, she’s one stubborn, snarky girl who doesn’t run away when a cute guy offers her a ride and can defend herself with a baseball bat. But. She lets her mother run all over her, she’s sullen, self-destructive and she purposely baits people who are trying to help her. The girl was all over the map. I felt horrible for her because I really felt her struggle and understood some of her reactions – and laughed at some of them – but then she’d go too far and I wondered why she had to be written that way. Having said all of that, Amy’s feelings were very raw and sad, bordering on hysterical sometimes. Her feelings of hopelessness really got to me.

The secondary characters bring some lighthearted relief to the story. Amy’s attorney who likes to tell horrible off-color jokes, her well-meaning co-worker Connor, her hippie counselor Daniel and even her pet bird AJ all add a little weird reprieve every now and then. There’s a little romance and intrigue between Amy and Aaron, the blind date who stood her up at prom and Joe, the boy next door that stopped hanging out with her when she hooked up with Lila and Cassie.

My Summary: Burstein has a beautiful writing style that made this surprisingly easy to read despite the subject – once I started I didn’t put it down, anxious to see what was coming next for Amy. This is no light story – there are some mature themes, the humor can be dark and a couple of characters could use a taste of their own medicine. Sometimes the story feels uncomfortably depressing and realistic, a little scary and will hit on the emotions of anyone who’s ever felt like they’d been ignored or made to feel worthless.

My Rating: B+

Filed Under: *B Rating, Debut Author Challenge, New Adult Challenge, Realistic, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Lisa Burstein

Forbidden

June 9, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 4 Comments

By Tabitha Suzuma

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: June 28, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction
Source: Publisher

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives–and the way they understand each other so completely–has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

Goodreads Summary

Teenage siblings Lochan and Maya Whitely are desperately trying to take care of their younger brothers and sister and keep them all under the radar of the Government Services agency they fear will split them up and put them into separate foster homes. Their boozy mother is more interested in her married boyfriend and his family than her own and can usually only be made to feel guilty enough to pay the bills and show up once in a while to con the youngest two children into thinking she still cares about them all.

The cracks in their family unit widen as middle brother Kit turns thirteen and starts openly rebelling against Lochan’s authority and youngest siblings Tiffin and Willa start becoming more observant about what they’re missing and what’s wrong in the house. Lochan’s social anxiety and depression worsen daily and when he thinks he sees Maya, the one person who’s always brought him peace, slipping away, he’s paralyzed. She pulls him back from a nearly literal psychological cliff by reminding him of how close they’ve always been, more friends than brother and sister and wrangling time away from the other kids for them to relax and for him to sleep. Then, and during some other stolen moments soon after, they both start to realize that they’ve always had each other and wonder if it’s wrong to want happiness with the person they love more than anyone else.

I was in knots with this book from the start. I didn’t know if I wanted to pick it up and even after reading a glowing review I didn’t know if I wanted it. Once I downloaded it and started, there were many times when I told myself for my own good I needed to put it down because I was getting too upset and when I finished, I barely slept that night and even days later I was still feeling unsettled by it.

While the obvious hot button in the story is incest, it wasn’t really the trigger in the story for me. I never thought this was salacious or dirty – if I never see that V.C. Andrews book mentioned anywhere near this, I’ll be happy. This is likely less explicit than most YA novels that have sexual content, but in the context of incest it may make some readers more uncomfortable. I’ll put the extent of Maya and Lochan’s sexual relationship behind some white text for anyone who wants to know before they choose whether or not to read this:

Maya and Lochan start with above the waist touching and at that point both are conflicted and stop. It isn’t until Lochan has a breakdown that Maya sleeps with him for comfort and then there is more topless touching, eventual full nudity and one final act of hurried intercourse that’s not erotic and it ends in an a horrifying event.

What made this book heartbreaking and in some way the idea of the incest storyline with Maya less of a central theme was Lochan’s horrible psychological state. The story is told in alternating perspectives between Maya and Lochan so you can see his deterioration from both sides. I never had the feeling that he was thinking how pitiful his life was, only that he felt he was failing everyone who’d ever counted on him. He’d been the father figure in the house for so long but at least his mother had generally been physically in the house (there were even very creepy indications that his own mother thought it was fine to flaunt her sexuality with him). Now she’s all but gone and living with her boyfriend, he’s old enough that his teachers were pressuring him about college and classes, Kit’s acting out and Maya’s thinking about dating. He can barely even physically function and mentally he’s somewhere between a fetal position and an incandescent rage most of the time.

It was horrible being in his head reading his despair and then switching to Maya’s and reading her watching him crumble. This really is why I didn’t agree much with the part of the synopsis that said this was about two people falling in love – Lochan and Maya already loved each other deeply, it’s just that in their need to rescue each other they fixated on something they could have for themselves that gave them peace and hope for escape. Simple love, obsession, fear and hope were all tangled together.

My Summary: Even knowing a story like this couldn’t have any sort of fairytale ending I was absolutely devastated by what happened. I’ve cried happy tears at a book’s end and I’ve cried some sad tears mid-book when a character I love does something awful to another character I love on the way to their happy ending. This just wrecked me for the day and for days afterwards. I was joking with someone that when I don’t like the end of a book I just rewrite it in my head – I hated the end of this book, yet it’s seared in my head and I can’t rewrite it. This book isn’t for everyone but if you can see past the subject matter this is an amazingly powerful story.

My Rating: A