Monday, May 29, 2017

Review: Riot School by Robert Rayner

Riot School by Robert Rayner
Published August 22, 2016 by Lorimer

Synopsis:
In the middle of the night, five teens break into a small town high school that has been closed by the regional school board. They are there to protest the decision to move them to a big city school and make their little town that much smaller. Led by Bilan, whose experience with the Arab Spring fired a passion to peacefully fight against injustice, the Gang of Five occupy their old school. The local police chief and the town quietly cheer them on. When the school board calls in a big security firm to break up their occupation using any means necessary, including force, the five have to decide how far they will go to show their outrage at having no control over decisions that affect their lives.

This is a novel which picks up on themes drawn from the world around us, and shows how these can play out in the lives of contemporary young people.

Review:
This book had a lot of potential with an interesting and diverse cast of characters. You have Bilan, the articulate and persuasive leader of this group of teens, her boyfriend Arn - angry at his father's incarceration, Grant - son of one of the town's council members, Barlow - the petty teen thief who also seems to be the school's most compassionate person, and Lettie - the homeless teen. With these different characters, there could've been some interesting character arcs but I was left feeling a lot of threads were left unfinished.

I wasn't sure of the purpose of narrative - if the author wanted to encourage students to speak up and have a voice, he wasn't very successful at it. I was left feeling like young people don't really have a voice, and the actions of unsympathetic adults lead to drug abuse and anarchists. And, I find hard to believe that these students, as articulate as they were, wouldn't have been more media savvy in increasing attention for their cause. All in all, this was a frustrating read.

I received a review copy through NetGalley.

Rating: 2 stars

Friday, May 26, 2017

Review: Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler


 
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
Published June 1, 2009 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Synopsis:
"Don't worry, Anna. I'll tell her, okay? Just let me think about the best way to do it."
"Okay."
"Promise me? Promise you won't say anything?"
"Don't worry." I laughed. "It's our secret, right?"

According to her best friend Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy ever day, there's a pretty good chance Anna will find her first summer romance. Anna lightheartedly agrees to the game, but there's something she hasn't told Frankie---she's already had that kind of romance, and it was with Frankie's older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death one year ago.

Beautifully written and emotionally honest, this is a debut novel that explores what it truly means to love someone and what it means to grieve, and ultimately, how to make the most of every single moment this world has to offer.

Review:
The title of this novel is unfortunate because when I first saw it on the (electronic) shelves of my library, it seemed to be a light bit of summer fluff. In actuality, this is a beautifully written rumination on death, grief, and love - romantic, friendship, and familial, as well as a coming of age story, and an ode to the ocean and summers spent by them.

Anna, the narrator, had long loved her male best friend, Matt, big brother to her female best friend, Frankie. On her birthday, the summer before the start of tenth grade, Matt kisses her, and thus begins a whirlwind secret relationship. Matt asks her to keep the relationship quiet, until he can figure out a way to tell Frankie/ Ockler captures the wonder and excitement of a new relationship:
"Does he like me, or was he just messing around? Will it happen again? How do we tell Frankie? Why did he say it’s our secret?"
Unfortunately, Matt dies in a car accident before he can tell Frankie. and Anna struggles with grieving his death and her competing commitments to her two best friends. The following summer, Anna joins Frankie and her parents at their annual beach holiday. It's the family's first trip without Matt, and there are poignant observations of how a family adjusts to a new reality. Simultaneously, boy-crazy Frankie thinks the trip is an excellent opportunity for Anna to lose her "albatross," aka virginity, and Anna's thoughts perfectly capture a teen wrestling with whether or not to reach this milestone:
"The whole idea of losing one’s virginity is kind of ridiculous. To lose something implies carelessness. A mistake that you can fix simply by recovering the lost object, like your cell phone or your glasses. Virginity is more like shedding something than losing it."
The writing is excellent, the dialogue snappy, the observations sharp. The heavy topic is lightened with by Anna's delightful voice, with her dry repartee with boy-crazy Frankie:
“Anna, no one will notice us if we’re wandering around in old-lady clothes. They’ll think we’re pregnant or something.”
“Rather than wanting to get us pregnant?”
“Exactly.”
Additionally, the educator in me appreciates the subtle vocabulary lessons:
“Don’t worry. He already said you can go. You just need to do some — oh, what’s that thing called — envisionation, I think.”
“Envisionation?” I ask.
“You know, where you think about the thing you want and just picture yourself getting it?” “Visualization, Frankie, and it’s not gonna work.”
I really enjoyed this book - this is one where I cried in some moments (and I'm generally not a crier) and laughed out loud in others. Oh and Sam? He makes the perfect summer (book) boyfriend.

Rating: 4 Stars

Friday, May 5, 2017

Review: Long Way Home by Katie McGarry


Long Way Home by Katie McGarry
Published January 31, 2017 by Harlequin Teen

Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Violet has always been expected to sit back and let the boys do all the saving.

It’s the code her father, a member of the Reign of Terror motorcycle club, raised her to live by. Yet when her dad is killed carrying out Terror business, Violet knows it’s up to her to do the saving. To protect herself, and her vulnerable younger brother, she needs to cut all ties with the club—including Chevy, the boy she’s known and loved her whole life.

But when a rival club comes after Violet, exposing old secrets and making new threats, she’s forced to question what she thought she knew about her father, the Reign of Terror, and what she thinks she wants. Which means re-evaluating everything: love, family, friends . . . and forgiveness.

Caught in the crosshairs between loyalty and freedom, Violet must decide whether old friends can be trusted—and if she’s strong enough to be the one person to save them all.

Review:
One of the many pleasures of reading is the opportunity to discover new worlds; that certainly is the case with Katie McGarry's books which has introduced me to life set in rural and small-town Kentucky, certainly different from my childhood spent in metropolitan Los Angeles and adulthood spent in urban Boston and Taipei. I've also learned about how it is to be raised in the foster system (Pushing the Limits), growing up with an drug-addicted parent (Dare You To), street racing and drag racing (Crash Into You), homelessness (Take Me On), and life as a drug dealer (Chasing Impossible). In all of her books, McGarry's protagonists struggle against being defined by their circumstances.

Katie McGarry's Thunder Road series centers around a motorcycle club, and Long Way Home is the third and last book of the series. Though each of the books in the series features strong female characters, both primary and secondary, I have struggled with understanding the Reign of Terror motorcycle club's attitude towards women and the role they play within the club. It's a fraternal organization in a patriarchal society, and while the men portrayed certainly love their female partners, women are literally not allowed a seat at decision-making table. In previous installments in the series, female characters worked around this structure to influence situations they weren't happy with.

Violet is perhaps McGarry's strongest female character yet, one is able to most clearly articulate what she believes is wrong about the structure and advocate for agency in her life. The daughter of a member of the club's leadership team, she blames the club for her father's death. As an insider who has now purposefully placed herself on the outside, this unique vantage point gives her a more insightful perspective of the club. Much of the arc of the novel is the conflict between Violet, her love Chevy, and the club's leader Eli as they struggle to balance the desire to protect out of love, with realizing that protection can be disempowering. At one point, Violet reflects, "I hate his way of caring, though. Hate how he controls. But how can you fully hate someone who does all the stupid things because that’s the way he loves?"

At the same time, Violet is not afraid to call out double-standards: "“Is that what I am? A traitor? When you protect your family, it’s called being an upstanding member of the club, but when I do it, I’m a traitor?”

Because Violet's not afraid to speak the truth and push against what she sees as inherent unfairness, Chevy and Eli also come away with a greater understanding of how to love in a empowering and respectful way. For these reasons, this is my favorite book of the series.

Rating: 4 Stars