Category Archives: Contemporary

Review: The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Historical, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

The Walled City by Ryan GraudinThe Walled City
Ryan Graudin
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published on September 8, 2015

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About The Walled City
DAI, trying to escape a haunting past, traffics drugs for the most ruthless kingpin in the Walled City. But in order to find the key to his freedom, he needs help from someone with the power to be invisible….

JIN hides under the radar, afraid the wild street gangs will discover her biggest secret: Jin passes as a boy to stay safe. Still, every chance she gets, she searches for her lost sister….

MEI YEE has been trapped in a brothel for the past two years, dreaming of getting out while watching the girls who try fail one by one. She’s about to give up, when one day she sees an unexpected face at her window…..

My Review
You know how once in a while a book blows you away? This is one of those books for me. It wasn’t even one specific moment, it was like, the way all the pieces merged together as a story. I immediately connected with the characters. The setting intrigued me from even before I picked up the book. I’d heard Ryan Graudin speak at Read Up Greenville in 2016 and her description of the real place that inspired this story had me hooked. The real place, a stacked slum of a city, an area just over 6.5 acres, housed 33,000 people. Like… I can’t even get my head around that, really.

I think I read The Walled City in just over 24 hours, which is pretty unusual for me these days! It kept me on the edge of my seat. It made me hope harder than any book I’ve read this year. I loved it, and I would read it again, recommend it to others, shout it from the rooftops.

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, I think the fact that the setting is based on a real place will make this an interesting read. Fans of fast-paced contemporary stories will enjoy the quick-moving plot and high stakes. Softies like me will love the characters, especially as their relationships with each other develop and change them. Also, it has a great cat!

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
The story occurs in an area modeled after Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. Characters are Asian—some Cantonese and some Japanese names.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently. I think Dai might be the only one who swears, and it’s not very often. More in the beginning and then a few times toward the end.

Romance/Sexual Content
Mei Yee has been sold into prostitution. A client visits her, but the details are vague and focus more on her emotional state and how she survives rather than description of the events between her and the man in her room. Those few scenes still feel pretty intense, though.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Men beat a prostitute who has tried to escape her traffickers. Boys gang up on another youth, intending to beat or stab her. At one point, a boy cuts a cat with his knife. A young man uses a gun to shoot at enemies. Again, it’s the intensity of the emotion associated with these scenes which makes them so intense, not so much any graphic descriptions of violence.

Drug Content
Traffickers use heroin to subdue a young woman and prey on her addiction to keep her helpless. They use the threat of injecting heroin to control other girls who fear being drugged and becoming addicted.

 

Review: Ungifted by Gordon Korman

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , ,

Ungifted
Gordon Korman
Balzer + Bray
Published on August 21, 2012

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About Ungifted
The word gifted has never been applied to a kid like Donovan Curtis. It’s usually more like Don’t try this at home. So when the troublemaker pulls a major prank at his middle school, he thinks he’s finally gone too far. But thanks to a mix-up by one of the administrators, instead of getting in trouble, Donovan is sent to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction (ASD), a special program for gifted and talented students.

It wasn’t exactly what Donovan had intended, but there couldn’t be a more perfect hideout for someone like him. That is, if he can manage to fool people whose IQs are above genius level. And that becomes harder and harder as the students and teachers of ASD grow to realize that Donovan may not be good at math or science (or just about anything). But after an ongoing experiment with a live human (sister), an unforgettably dramatic middle-school dance, and the most astonishing come-from-behind robot victory ever, Donovan shows that his gifts might be exactly what the ASD students never knew they needed.

My Review
The opening chapter of Ungifted was one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. I was immediately drawn in to Donovan’s frank humor and way of viewing the world around him (despite its sometimes disastrous consequences!). I’m not a huge fan of adult point-of-view scenes in children’s literature. Ungifted contains a few of those, but not too many. I still kind of wish they’d been left out. I found the kids’ viewpoints much more interesting and entertaining.

I liked how each character had a distinct voice and a story which contributed to the overall whole. I thought the positive view of science was great and the parts about the robotics competition were super cool. The tone and quick pacing make this book a great choice for reluctant readers as well as those interested in science and robotics. Highly recommended.

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Cultural Elements
Main characters appear to be white. I think some other races are represented in minor characters.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
One of the boys uses a wrestling move he learned on YouTube to attack a couple of bullies trying to break the gifted students’ robot.

Drug Content
None.

Review: Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Once Was Lost
Sara Zarr
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published on October 1, 2009

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About Once Was Lost
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.

Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. She used to believe in a lot of things. As a pastor’s kid, it’s hard not to buy in to the idea of the perfect family, a loving God, and amazing grace. But lately, Sam has a lot of reason to doubt. Her mother lands in rehab after a DUI and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. When a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, the local tragedy overlaps with Sam’s personal one, and the already-worn thread of faith holding her together begins to unravel.

In her third novel, acclaimed author Sara Zarr examines the coexistence of affliction and hope, and what happens when everything you thought you believed—about God, about your family, about yourself—is transformed.

My Review
Once Was Lost has been on my reading list for years. I kind of have no excuse for taking so long to get to it, because it’s not a long book, and it’s exactly the kind of story I love—someone in a difficult place desperately trying to do the right thing anyway. I loved that about Sam. She makes some choices that get her into trouble, but I never doubted that her heart was good and never wavered in wanting to know how her story ended.

Perhaps it’s a little unexpected to find a book in mainstream literature with such strong spiritual themes. I loved the way Zarr handled the descriptions of the small town and the church people. She made them real and gave them real problems without vilifying them. I also loved the way she let us into Sam’s struggles about her faith and her disappointment about what youth group was like. Sam expected this joyous, close-knit community, and instead, she felt distant from the other participants. That war between appearances and genuine connection totally resonated with me thinking back to my own youth group days. It felt so very right on.

All in all, I loved this book. I think it’s a great read for Christian kids who may be facing the same kinds of struggles Sam is but also for kids who don’t share Sam’s upbringing or faith. It’s a great window into what church life can be like with its ups and downs. And ultimately, this story is about self-discovery and personal growth and healing. You don’t need to have faith for those messages to matter. I highly recommend this one.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white. The story takes place in a small California town.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
One instance of mild profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
As pastor’s daughter, Sam and her family feel a lot of pressure to behave in certain ways. Sam feels like she can’t be honest about doubts she’s having, and when others have significant spiritual experiences, they expect her to be as thrilled about them as they are. Sam wrestles with her faith in a genuine, sensitive way. The church is depicted as a group of well-meaning, even if sometimes hurtful, people. While Sam’s faith isn’t the focal point of the story, her wrestling with doubts does have a meaningful resolution.

Violent Content
While Jody is missing, people speculate about what may have happened to her. The story doesn’t give any details about what goes on during her captivity, but it obviously traumatized her.

Drug Content
Sam’s mom spends much of the book in a rehab program for alcoholics. Sam remembers different events where her mom’s alcoholism interfered with family life or caused other problems. Sam knows her two best friends have gone out with other kids to have a beer at a party, but she’s never invited along, and they don’t tell her about it directly.

 

Review: Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Love and First Sight
Josh Sundquist
Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Published January 3rd, 2017

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About Love and First Sight

Love is more than meets the eye.

On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?

As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?

My Review

Love and First Sight was a fast read for me. I loved getting to view the world through Will’s senses, and get a feeling for what it might be like to be blind from birth. It was amazing how the author described Will’s surroundings and how his day went without ever using sight vocabulary. And when Will eventually gains eyesight, it blew my mind to discover how much of sight we take for granted–for example, learning depth perception and perspective, or what colors are. It was such a unique perspective to read from, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Another aspect of the book I liked was how Will viewed concepts like racism, or beauty. When Will finally gets to see his African-American friend for the first time, he comments that “for all the attention race gets, for all the wars that have been fought over it, all the atrocities committed and hatred based on differences in skin tone over the centuries of human history, I would honestly have expected something…more. The contrast is obvious, yes, but the difference is marginal….What’s the fuss about?” He had similar views about beauty, commenting on how silly it is we base our idea of beauty on the changeable opinion of society.

All in all, I thought Love and First Sight was a great read. While I felt like it did lack a bit of character development, it tackled some issues that are especially relevant to YA readers, and carried them off beautifully. I’m rating this book 4 out of 5 stars (minus 1 for some inappropriate jokes), and recommending it to fans of Kasie West and Amy Clipston.


Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Most of the characters are described as white. Whitford is African-American. Cecily has a birthmark on her face that most consider to be disfiguring. Will is blind for the first part of the book.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A character curses once, but the actual words are not given. Characters say “Oh my God!”

Romance/Sexual Content
One kiss, not described in depth. Jokes about homosexuality, and both male and female body parts. Some pictures the characters run across are described as being X-rated. Will accidentally gropes a girl. 

Spiritual Content
Brief joke about a chicken nugget resembling Jesus.

Violent Content
Will tries to defend someone by beating up a bully, but ends up hurting himself instead. Will breaks stuff and punches things in his bedroom in a fit of a despair.

Drug Content
Anesthesia and immunosuppressant drugs are used.

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Review: Here Lies Daniel Tate by Cristin Terrill

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Here Lies Daniel Tate
Cristin Terrill
Simon & Schuster
Published on June 6, 2017

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About Here Lies Daniel Tate
When ten-year-old Daniel Tate went missing from one of California’s most elite communities, he left no trace. He simply vanished.

Six years later, when he resurfaces on a snowy street in Vancouver, he’s no longer the same boy. His sandy hair is darker, the freckles are gone, and he’s initially too traumatized to speak, but he’s alive. His overjoyed family brings him home to a world of luxury and comfort he can barely remember. In time, they assure him, he’ll recover his memories; all that matters now is they’re together again.

It’s perfect. A miracle. Except for one thing.

He isn’t Daniel Tate.

He’s a petty con artist who accidentally stumbled into the scam of a lifetime, and he soon learns he’s not the only one in the Tate household with something to hide. The family has as many secrets as they have millions in the bank, and one of them might be ready to kill to keep the worst one buried.

My Review
The premise of this book pretty much hooked me before I even had a chance to read a word. I’d read another book a little bit like this, but not from the point-of-view of the kidnapping victim, so I was really interested to see a story told from inside that person’s mind, as Daniel’s is.

Daniel warns us right off the bat that he’s a liar, and yet I kept getting sucked into believing everything he said. I felt like the tug-of-war balance between those two ideas made this one of the most unique books I’ve ever read. I love unreliable narrators, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything where the narrator leads so point-blank with the fact that he’s a liar.

I liked the way the story messed with his emotions, too. In the beginning, he only wants to survive, but as he gets to know the family, he finds himself invested in relationships with them and even contemplating staying long-term and living as Daniel.

The end was strange. I won’t give it away, and I feel like considering the premise, I shouldn’t have been as surprised by it. I don’t know. I liked that it left a lot of questions unanswered—Daniel’s character seemed incapable of anything else—but it also confused me. Did the family ever get any kind of justice? It seemed like the party most responsible kind of got off without consequence.

On the whole, I’m really glad I read the book. I loved Terrill’s debut, All Our Yesterdays, and was really excited about another suspenseful story from her. I got a lot of what I hoped for, even if the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I wished for.

If you liked The Tension of Opposites by Kristina McBride or Lost and Found by Cat Clarke, you will want to grab a copy of Here Lies Daniel Tate.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Daniel and his family are a white, upper class group. He meets and is attracted to an Asian girl at school named Ren. Daniel’s brother Nicholas is gay.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used frequently. I think because of the emotional intensity of some of the scenes, the swearing feels a little more prevalent than it actually is.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple instances of kissing between a boy and girl. In one scene it’s unclear how far the romance progresses—it begins with kissing and jumps to later, when the couple is curled in bed watching a movie (apparently still clothed).

A couple scenes show Nicholas and his boyfriend briefly kiss on the mouth.

A reference to an incest relationship.

Spiritual Content
The closest instance is the fact that the protagonist, who poses as Daniel, sometimes feels guilty thinking about how the actual Daniel, who is likely dead, might feel about the imposter taking over his life.

Violent Content
Daniel learns that one member of his family has a violent past. He ends up in a violent altercation with one family member. Someone is shot, perhaps fatally.

Drug Content
Jessica Tate is an alcoholic who sometimes drives drunk. Lex drinks wine and has a history of addiction to pills. Ren tells Daniel about her cousin’s pot-smoking habit. He also hears rumors that Patrick used to sell pot at school.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Review: Between the Lies by Cathy MacPhail

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Between the Lies
Cathy MacPhail
Kelpies
Published on April 20, 2017

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About Between the Lies
Judith Tremayne is missing. She hasn’t been online, nobody has heard from her. She simply appears to have vanished, until Abbie Knox, a school nobody, receives a message: “I want to come home.” Suddenly everyone knows Abbie’s name. The mean girls and the misfits alike are obsessed with Jude’s disappearance. Abbie finds herself at the centre of a whirlwind of rumours, secrets and lies. Why would popular, fun Jude be messaging loner, loser Abbie? Why would Jude disappear? Can Abbie bring her home? Award-winning author Cathy MacPhail authentically captures the voice and lives of teens — desperate to be seen, bombarded with online harassment yet obsessed with living their lives on social media. This tense thriller is packed with MacPhail’s trademark sharp dialogue and a series of sensational twists.

My Review
Between the Lies totally delivered on the promise of sensational twists. At more than one point in the story, I had no idea what would happen next. I’m kind of a sucker for an unreliable narrator, which Abbie absolutely is. I’m not sure how I’d score her in terms of likeability, though. She’s deeply flawed, but she also knows it for the most part, and there was something soft and vulnerable about her despite her scrambling and lying and keeping people at a distance, and I couldn’t help liking her for that vulnerability.

I kept hoping for a bit of romance or at the least the development of an unexpected friendship. Between the Lies really isn’t that kind of story, though. It’s much more psychological and focused on Abbie unraveling the truth surrounding Jude’s disappearance and the strange harassing text messages she receives.

If you’re into psychological mysteries or unreliable narrators, check out Between the Lies. It’s a super quick read—I think I finished it in about two hours—and will keep you guessing even up to the last few pages. Add it to your list if you liked We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, especially that topsy-turvy storytelling feeling.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Between the Lies is set in Scotland. No race details about the characters are really given. Abbie’s fourteen at the time of the story.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
At one point Abbie shoves another girl. A girl falls down a flight of stairs. Later we learn someone tripped her on purpose. A girl falls down a hole and sprains her ankle.

A couple other creepy things happen. Classmates learn of Abbie’s fear of clowns, and she ends up spotting a clown following her. Sometimes she’s not sure whether this is in her head or real.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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