Category Archives: By Genre

Review: When You Leave by Monica Ropal

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

when-you-leaveWhen You Leave
Monica Ropal
Running Press Kids

For Cass, the girl who survived her father’s desertion and best friend’s battle with cancer, love doesn’t come with the possibility of loss but the certainty of it. When the hot boy at her new school seems interested in her, Cass keeps their relationship a secret. At first it’s just flirtation and fun, but Cooper isn’t satisfied with the cool exterior Cass shows everyone else. He wants the real her.

And just when she’s ready to let him into her heart, he’s gone. Dead. Murdered. Worse still, her friend Gavin gets blamed for it. All Cass can do now is try to piece together who Cooper really was and why the real killer wanted him dead. Her search unearths truths she is barely able to face and forces her to confront her own losses again.

It’s rare to find a book in which every character surprises you. When You Leave is about a girl trying to solve a mystery, but instead of looking for the murder weapon and simple motives, she uncovers a host of secrets and discovers that the students she meets are never what they seem. I loved the little things, from the surprising décor in Cooper’s kitchen to the way Cass still hears Mattie’s voice in her head even though he can’t speak aloud. I reached the last page and still wanted the story to continue. Days after closing the book, I still find myself thinking about the characters. Ropal did a fantastic job capturing the identities and conflicting layers of teens.

Language Content
Extreme word choice, moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Brief descriptions of pretty intense kissing. Seems like things don’t really go further, but it’s a bit fuzzy.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Three boys attack Cass’s friend Gavin. A boy’s body is found. He’s been beaten to death. Cass doesn’t witness this, and there aren’t any detailed descriptions of what happened to him. A boy attacks Mattie and Cass in the woods. Descriptions are pretty brief but moderately intense.

Drug Content
References to a boy selling pot to kids at Cass’s school.

Review: Between Shadows by Kathleen Cook Waldron

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

Between Shadows
Kathleen Cook Waldron
Coteau Books

When his grandfather dies unexpectedly, Ari and his remaining family gather at the cabin deep in the woods. At the reading of the will, another surprise greets Ari, his dad and his aunt: Grandpa left the cabin and all his land to Ari. Uninterested in the remote property that conjures painful memories, Ari’s dad and aunt make plans to sell everything. Ari is determined to change their minds.

Author Kathleen Cook Waldron brings to the story her own experience living in the bush. The details of the cabin and surrounding land and community are told in vivid detail so that even the most urban readers can perfectly picture the serene woods, playful stream and peaceful lake.

Through Waldron’s clean storytelling, we follow a grieving family as they wrestle with loss. I loved how each member of Ari’s family reconnected with his grandfather through the experience of staying at the cabin. Though he’s no longer present, his love for his family is so clear in the things he left behind. Each character discovers and responds to these unwritten love letters from their father or grandfather. In these moments, Waldron’s writing is moving, subtle and clever.

This is a great story about the opportunity grieving families have to rediscover their lost loved one and renew relationships with one another. The rustic setting gently reminds us to consider what’s really important.

Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
None.

Drug Content
None.

Review: On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

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

On the Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta
Penguin Australia

Taylor Markham has been at the school on the Jellicoe Road since she was six years old. It’s her turn to lead the students in the annual territory wars with the Townies and Cadets from a school in Sydney. But lost memories of her childhood, her mother and a man she hopes is her father distract her from the game. When her caregiver, Hannah, disappears, Taylor studies the stories Hannah left behind, looking for clues to her whereabouts. She forms unlikely alliances with territory rivals, and together they work to solve the mysteries behind many things that happened on the Jellicoe Road.

When I started reading this novel, I felt a bit lost. It seems like two stories are happening simultaneously, and it’s hard to figure out which parts of which stories are significant at first. I love Marchetta’s Lumatere series, so I really wanted to stick with this book. In reading other reviews, I found other readers who’d had similar experiences, so I kept reading. And it definitely paid off.

The stories do intersect, and so many things make sense once it’s clear how they fit together. I loved the elements of history sort of repeating itself among Taylor and her friends – it’s kind of the redeemed version of the other story. The characters are fantastic. The romantic tension is delicious. Really great stuff.

Language Content
Extreme profanity, mild to moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Kissing and references to sex. A couple of scenes briefly describe couples leading up to having sex. A couple times teens see each other in their underwear.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Some kids fist-fighting. A fire destroys a house and two girls go missing. A shooting accident kills a boy (No description of his injuries.)

Drug Content
None.

Review: The Key by Jennifer Anne Davis (Audiobook)

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

The Key
Jennifer Anne Davis
Clean Teen Publishing
Published November 15, 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

A bloody coup overthrows the king and wipes out nearly the entire family. Only a baby girl escapes with the help of a palace guard. Rema grows up knowing nothing of her past or who she really is. Her only clue is a necklace with a cryptic message inside.

Though she is raised as the daughter of a horse merchant, she catches the eye of Prince Darmik, commander of the king’s army. His jealous brother, the Crown Prince, sees Darmik’s affection for the girl and blackmails her to marry him instead.

Torn between her attraction for Prince Darmik and the Crown Prince’s threats, Rema does the only thing she can: she pledges herself to Prince Lennek to spare her family from harm.

Rema is a high-spirited girl, one who will not easily be broken. Prince Darmik is an honorable man. Though his father the king makes some terrible choices, Darmik will uphold the law and support his king. Both are complex characters with internal as well as external conflicts.

Prince Lennek and the king were much less complex. The king is evil because he is greedy. He’s greedy because he is evil. Prince Lennek is spoiled and that motivates all sorts of disastrous choices. I felt like there were a lot of unexploited opportunities for tension and complexity in both these characters. I couldn’t understand why Darmik would blindly serve them if they were indeed so vile.

I found the economics of the story world a bit distracting. The farmers grow the food, which the king then collects and sells back to the people, though much of it spoils before it can be distributed. Servants receive only bread and water twice a day. The people are not allowed to travel from one district to another. How does this make any sense for trade? If the king is levying high taxes against the people, how are there barons or lords still wealthy? A nearly bankrupt kingdom – now that would give the king some greater motivation than greed. Seventeen years of this seems like it would leave the kingdom bankrupted with a rebellion mounted long ago.

Also (spoiler alert) at one point Rema is accused of betraying her engagement to Prince Lennek by being caught with another man. She refutes this as a lie. Um… but like two scenes ago she was kissing another guy?! I was confused.

One thing I did enjoy was listening to Michelle Michaels narration of the story. Her voice carried the intensity perfect for the suspenseful or high-action scenes. Her accent fit the story well. Sometimes the intensity of the narration seemed a little high for the scene at hand, but overall she definitely kept the feeling that important things were about to happen throughout the entire audiobook.

A lot of readers have raved about this book on Goodreads. Honestly, I couldn’t really get into it. There were too many things that made me sit back and scratch my head. For readers looking for a fantasy fix, I recommend the series Tales of Goldstone Wood by Anne Elisabeth Stengl (very clean, Christian content.) The recently released novel Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard is a bit similar in plot but, in my opinion, more well-executed.

Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
Brief kissing. References to Prince Lennek’s promiscuous behavior. A palace servant is discovered to be pregnant. She claims Lennek is the father. Darmik and some of his soldiers visit a tavern at which some girls approach them. Darmik sends them away.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Darmik uses military force to capture rebels spreading rumors that an heir to the former king lives. He plans to torture the rebels to find out more, but descriptions are extremely brief. When Rema is sent to the dungeon, she finds terrible conditions there.

Drug Content
Darmik and his men visit a tavern for ale and information.

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

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Guilt and Innocence in The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

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

The Walls Around Us
Nova Ren Suma
Algonquin Books

Violet’s best friend Ori would have done anything for her. That’s what best friends do. At least, that’s what Violet tells herself happened that night behind the theater, the night those two girls died. After that, Ori gets sent upstate to a girls’ prison.

Amber waits for her new prison roommate. She’s known the girl will come since the night the doors opened, the night she saw the girl who didn’t belong. She also knows the new roommate starts the beginning of the end. That they will all die in a few weeks’ time.

In poetic narrative, Suma delivers a story of three girls and the guilt or innocence that binds them to one another. It’s thick, dark, and supernatural.

As a former dancer, I enjoyed the references to ballet and the role the competitive dance world played in shaping Orianna and Violet. It created a natural foundation of tension and sense of rivalry that kept me turning page after page of the story.

The supernatural element comes into play when all the prison doors open one night and many prisoners leave their cells. Amber meets a shadow of a girl who doesn’t belong and afterward sees glimpses of the prison as it looks in the future. It pretty much freaks her out and she worries that she’s losing her mind.

Suma pulls the threads of all the girls’ stories together powerfully in the conclusion of the tale. Again, it’s dark, but it also feels necessary. This is definitely less a feel-good tale and more a deeply thoughtful, balance-in-the-universe sort of story.

Language Content
Infrequent profanity.

Sexual Content
Both Ori and Violet are sexually active. Ori has a loving relationship with a devoted boyfriend, where Violet chooses shallower, physical relationships. In one scene, Violet engages in oral sex with a boy. She’s caught and possibly photographed in the act. There are also several brief references to girl-on-girl experiences within the prison.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Amber’s stepfather physically abused her. Amber fantasized about ways to murder her father in a journal. Descriptions are brief. The description of his death in a fire is also pretty brief.

Two girls bully another girl pretty severely. There are some brief descriptions of things they do. They’re less violent than straight up horrible.

Drug Content
A vine with flowers, a powerful hallucinogenic, grows outside Amber’s cell window. Some girls smoke the flowers to get high. Another inmate, Peaches, trades drugs to the other girls. No point-of-view characters use drugs in the story.

Review: Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller

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

Where the Stars Still Shine
Trish Doller
Bloomsbury USA Children’s
Published September 24, 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Callie spent most of her childhood believing her father is after her. She’s never been to school, never had any real friends. Anytime there’s a whiff of suspicion, her mother whisks them away to a new town, new trashy job, new sleazy boyfriend.

Then the truth comes in the form of an arrest warrant for her mom. In a blink, Callie finds herself living with her estranged dad, his new wife and their two small children, right smack in the middle of a large, loud, loving Greek family. For the first time, someone cares whether Callie comes or goes. She has friends, if she can crack the code on how to keep them. And she might even have her first real date!

The relationship between Callie and her dad is really moving. Here’s this man who hasn’t seen his daughter in so many years, who wants so badly to reconnect with her. Here’s this girl whose entire life has been turned upside down, who worries that accepting the father she didn’t know she had means betraying her mom, who’s sick and needs her more than anyone. That tug-of-war was so well-crafted and believable. There’s a lot of threads about reconciliation between estranged family members and the importance of family and community. Those were great themes and very well-executed.

While in the care of her mother, Callie was sexually abused by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. This leaves deep emotional scars. She starts hooking up (meeting to have sex with) guys as a young teenager, even though afterward she feels used and dirty. On one such quest, she lucks out and meets a guy who not only takes her to bed the first time they spend any time together, but also wants to build a relationship with her and cares very deeply for her, despite his playboy reputation.

This does show Callie learning to build trust and to experience sex within a safe, loving relationship, which is so healing. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that in real life, a girl can sleep with many, many guys hoping that the next day they’ll turn out to stick around. It’s probably not the best way to find a good guy. Conservative me couldn’t help wishing she’d found that he was a good guy first and built that trust first.

Besides that, though, I felt really connected with Callie’s emotional journey. I loved her demonstrative family, and the vividly described setting. It has more sexual content than books I’ve read by Sarah Dessen, but the strong heroine and deep emotional journey reminded me of her stories. If you’re a Dessen fan, you may want to check out this book.

Language Content
Extreme profanity, moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Callie becomes sexually active in her early teens. She briefly recounts those experiences as well as memories of childhood sexual abuse. The abuse memories are pretty intense. A boy kisses Callie later in the story and she immediately takes off her shirt. She meets another young man and has sex with him without knowing much more than his name. The descriptions of her encounters are fairly short and not super graphic, but there are some details given. Another couple engages in a pretty heavy make-out session on the couch, but few details are given.

Much of the sexual element in the story is really about Callie’s abuse and the process she experiences to learn how to have a healthy relationship with sex.

Spiritual Content
Callie’s family attend a Greek Orthodox Church and encourage her to attend with them, but don’t pressure her. Callie really isn’t into the spiritual stuff.

Violence
Callie witnesses a man smacking his adult son.

Drug Content
Callie’s mom hangs around some pretty unsavory bars and probably drinks too much. Callie and her friends drink alcohol. They are all under 21.

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