Review: 'Poison'

POISON
By Bridget Zinn
Fantasy
March 2013
Hyperion
ISBN: 978-1423153412

Talk about starting a book off with a great hook. Sixteen-year-old Kyra is a fugitive, a master potion maker who failed in her attempt to assassinate the princess, her former best friend. Following an attempt to sneak into her old home, shared with two other master potioners, she decides that she has no choice but to seek out Arlo, the master of thieves for help in finding Princess Ariana, who is now in hiding. Arlo literally sells her a pig in a poke.

The story then switches into a teen version of “It Happened One Night”, with Kyra running into a handsome young man named Fred. Fred’s dog, a wolf-like creature, and Kyra’s pig, which Fred names Rosie, immediately bond. Kyra keeps getting distracted about her mission because of Fred’s green eyes.

Halfway through, it is disclosed that Kyra has visions, she is a witch who is trying to deny her power and it is because of a vision involving the princess that she is trying to kill her former friend. Other revelations come throughout the story, most of which are not surprises.

Despite the premise, the novel is sweet. The tone is completely different after Fred, a prince of a guy, strolls onto the scene. Both the more serious tone of the opening scenes and the subsequent romp that follows would entertain middle school girls, who are not as likely as a certain older reader to get irritated with the lengthy introduction to Fred that was supposed to be a “meet cute” scene. Older tweens may be entertained, but it's probably too young for high school, despite the heroine’s age.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

In Progress: 'The Rivals'

Daisy Whitney's first YA novel, The Mockingbirds, was a terrific novel on many levels: Alex attends a private school where adults look the other way when wrongs are committed. When she is date-raped, she discovers there is a vigilante group on campus, the Mockingbirds, that stands up for students who have been harmed.

The novel dealt with date rape, with victims not being believed, with friends and strangers sticking up for doing right by victims and with teens knowing what the right thing to do is, even if the adults around them do not. All of this was done in a fast-moving plot with complex characters to care about in a believable set-up.

The follow-up novel, The Rivals, deepens the stakes when Alex, now head of the Mockingbirds, is told about a possible prescription drug abuse ring. Students may be doping up to try to win a competition.

The complexity of the situation includes Alex not sure about who to tell what, including her fellow Mockingbirds and friends, as well as who to believe as she starts to ask questions. Early on, the who-to-trust aspect and how it affects justice is brought up as Alex wonders what's going on:

For a second, it strikes me as odd that two students here are so worried they'd be implicated that they'd come to me for help. But then again, maybe that's the point -- maybe they are the nameless victims we're supposed to protect. Maybe they're the ones who could get hurt by what's happening. But even so, I have to make sure I'm not being played.

Layers of deception will have to be unwrapped before this novel is done, methinks. So far, The Rivals is another winner.

Review: 'Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone'

AMELIA ANNE IS DEAD AND GONE
By Kat Rosenfield
YA contemporary
July 2012
Dutton Books
ISBN: 978-0-525-42389-8                                                                                   

Becca has always known she isn't meant for her dump of a small town. The last year has been somewhat better because of time with her boyfriend, James, a dropout who grieves for his mother after he watched her die from cancer. On the night she graduates as salutatorian, they have sex in the back of his pickup out on the fields, under the stars. Then he dumps her. But James soon calls, unsure if they've broken up. He knows she's going to leave him at summer's end anyway but he is a lonely, James Dean-type. Maybe they need each other still.

That same night, their small town is rocked by the discovery of the body of a dead young woman out on the road near the site of where James parked his truck. And the real story of Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone unfolds.

In lyrical, layered writing, Kat Rosenfield writes about Becca's town, her home life, her relationship with James and how the investigation into how the mystery woman died plays out. The ramifications of assumptions and what people think they know about each other are devastating. Becca, in particular, shows both the benefits of knowing so many people in a small locale and the drawbacks to the same. Becca displays both perseverance and folly, wisdom and flightiness. In short chapters spaced out between Becca's story, the reader learns about the dead woman and what led to her death.

This is sophisticated writing replete with lyricism, layers and language. It is not, however, flowery. The first F bomb comes on page 7 in this realistic depiction of teens embarking on adulthood. Becca shares two bottles of wine with her unhappy mother one night and boozes it up the rest of the summer. For older teens and adults, this is a deeply affecting story told well.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Grave Mercy'

GRAVE MERCY                                                                  
By Robin LaFevers
YA fiction
April 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0-62834-9

Ismae escapes the prototypical fate worse than death – an arranged marriage to a brute – when he sees her scars that mark her as a daughter of Death in medieval Brittany. She is sent via an underground railroad of priests and herbwitches that still worship the old gods to a convent, where she is trained in the arts of the poisoner, the assassin and the courtesan to serve Mortrain, or Death.

After some minor successes, circumstances force the abbess to send her to court to serve the teenage duchess by keeping an eye on the royal bastard brother. Duval is neck-deep in intrigue that surrounds the orphaned duchess and as many attempts to marry her off as Elizabeth I juggled two hundred years later.

The questions of trusting him as an ally and potential lover fit well within the plot, which balances historical fiction with the palace intrigue and battle maneuvers (not shown but discussed), romance with the attraction Ismae and Duval feel for each other, and high fantasy as Ismae comes into her heritage as the daughter of Death.

What follows may be seen as spoilers by some:

Review: 'Under the Mesquite'

UNDER THE MESQUITE

By Guadalupe Garcia McCall

YA Novel in verse

September 2011                                                                         

Lee & Low Books

ISBN: 978-1600604293

Lupita is the oldest child in a growing family of Mexican-Americans who love each other very much. Even so, she feels her bond with her beloved mother is the closest of all. To prove this, she searches through her mother's purse to find a small, wizened brown thing. It is her umbilical cord. Her Mami saved it.

So begins Guadalupe Garcia McCall's debut book, a novel in free verse that describes Lupita's coming of age. The verses include the longing for Mexico even as their family puts down roots (and plants roses bushes amid which a stubborn mesquite thrives) in Texas, Lupita's discovery of drama class and poetry, and her mother's cancer.

Review: 'Revolution'

REVOLUTION
By Jennifer Donnelly
YA Novel
October 2010
Delacorte Press
ISBN: 978-0-385-73763-0

Andi Alpers is one of a group of very smart, very talented, very privileged teens at a private school in Brooklyn. They begin their days self-medicating to dull the pain of being very smart, very talented and very privileged.

However, Andi, a promising musician, has real pain. She watched her little brother die in the street and she knows it was her fault.