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Review: No Perfect Places by Steven Salvatore

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No Perfect Places by Steven Salvatore

No Perfect Places
Steven Salvatore
Bloomsbury YA
Published May 30, 2023

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About No Perfect Places

From lauded author Steven Salvatore comes a YA about twins whose incarcerated father dies and leaves behind a life-changing secret.

When their father was imprisoned for embezzlement, twins Alex and Olly Brucke lost everything except their strong bond with each other. But after their dad dies unexpectedly, the twins start to fracture. Alex is spiraling, skipping classes to get drunk or high. Olly is struggling with a secret his dad ordered him to keep: they have a secret half-brother, Tyler.

So when Tyler shows up in their lakeside town for the summer, hoping to get to know his siblings, Olly hides the truth from Alex. But as Alex and Tyler start to form a friendship, the lies become harder to juggle. If they can’t confront their father’s past and fix their relationship, Olly and Alex each risk losing two siblings forever.

A thought-provoking novel about grief, family secrets, and figuring out how to belong against the odds.

My Review

Okay, so you know how there are just certain authors whose books just hit you deep? Steven Salvatore is one of those authors for me. I have loved all of their books so far, and I’m both delighted and unsurprised to say the same of NO PERFECT PLACES.

The relationship between siblings absolutely melted my heart. The wildly different experiences and feelings they each had for their father made perfect sense from each character’s perspective. Alex’s destructive grief was heartbreaking. As was the wreckage from Olly’s protective need to try to control everything.

And let’s not skip the romantic relationships because this, again, is something Salvatore does SO WELL. Olly and Khal have this great balance in their relationship. It’s not that things are perfect. It’s not even that they have their whole relationship figured out. They are always on the same side, though. I loved that. Alex has a whole rollercoaster-on-fire of romance, and while it hurt to read some of those scenes, I felt like they were so well done. As Alex begins to process her grief and process her feelings about herself, she begins to see the relationship in a different light. The change felt organic and had me cheering for her so hard.

I also want to say that the romantic storylines never stole the show. They were absolutely subplots, and they stayed in their lanes, so I felt like the story struck a great balance there.

Another thing (yes, more!) that Steven Salvatore does brilliantly well is how they present art within a story. In AND THEY LIVED, they told us the story of Chase’s college animation project.

In NO PERFECT PLACES, we get Olly’s journey of creating a short film to submit to a contest. The movie scene descriptions are great, and I loved how the final product echoed the themes of the larger story.

All in all, such a great book. I loved it so much. It’s the story of three siblings and their journey through a very particular kind of grief, and the community they build which helps them heal.

Content Notes for No Perfect Places

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Olly is gay and uses he/they pronouns. Alex uses drugs and alcohol to numb her grief. She also experiences domestic violence at the hands of a partner. Olly’s boyfriend is Iranian American and Muslim.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Boy/boy kissing and boy/girl kissing. References to sex, and some brief explicit statements about sex.

Spiritual Content
Brief references to Muslim faith. Alex and Olly both says “goddess,” as in “Oh my goddess.”

Violent Content
A man dies while denied access to medical care. Some scenes show domestic violence and emotional abuse in a relationship. A boy punches other characters and attacks them with few consequences. A girl punches a boy after he slaps her. In one scene, a girl overdoses and dies. A girl knees a boy in the groin after he tries to grab her.

Drug Content
Teens drink alcohol, smoke pot, and use other drugs in a few scenes. It’s shown in a way that highlights the destructiveness of the behavior. A girl dies of an accidental overdose.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of NO PERFECT PLACES in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Constellations by Kate Glasheen

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Constellations
Kate Glasheen
Holiday House
Published May 23, 2023

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About Constellations

A debut graphic novel about a queer teen living in the margins who is determined to find their way ahead.

Are you supposed to be a boy or a girl?

It’s a question that follows Claire everywhere. Inescapable on the street, in school, and even at home. A black hole forever trying to pull them in. But as long as they have ride-or-die best friend Greg at their side and a drink in their hand, everything will be okay. Right?

Except, Claire can never have just one drink. And when harassment at school reaches a fever pitch, Claire begins a spiral that ends in court-ordered rehab. Feeling completely lost, Claire is soon surrounded by a group of new friends and, with the help of a patient counselor, finds a space to unpack all the bad they’ve experienced. But as Claire’s release gets closer so does the Can Claire stay sober and true in a world seemingly never made for them?

Set in 1980s Troy, New York, Constellations is a portrait of a queer teen living in the margins but determined to find their way ahead. Done in watercolor and ink, debut author-artist Kate Glasheen has created a world where strong lines meet soft color, and raw emotions meet deep thought in this story of hope, humor, and survival.

“A unique journey that doesn’t turn away from hard truths; courageously honest and vulnerable.”—Iasmin Omar Ata, the Ignatz Award winning creator of Mis(h)adra.

My Review

What a moving story. At the beginning, we meet Claire and get a view of the town, which has kind of shrunk in on itself following factory closures. There are people Claire once felt connected to that aren’t here anymore. I love the those people and missing things are drawing as though they’re on a piece of notebook paper that’s been torn out of a notebook. Like pages ripped out of a journal– perhaps the one we see Claire sketching in from time to time. I thought that whole idea was really clever.

A lot of the story takes place while Claire is in rehab. I liked the way those chapters were presented, too. It felt like going on the journey with Claire and peeling back layers of why this happened. Why alcohol? Why is it so hard to stop? What are you running from? I felt like the way the story unfolded really drew me into those questions and made me feel Claire wrestling with the answers.

Overall, I think CONSTELLATIONS contains some powerful visual storytelling, and I’m really excited that I got to read it. I hope this author writes a lot more.

Content Notes

Brief depiction of sexual assault and references to abuse. Alcoholism and addiction.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Claire has questions about gender identity. Neither of the labels “boy” or “girl” are a good fit. Claire is also an alcoholic. Other characters have addictions to drugs and alcohol and are attending rehab.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
A couple of girls kiss Claire.

At one point, a group of boys begin taunting Claire and one grabs Claire’s groin.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A boy in the rehab program talks about how his father beats him. Others describe emotional abuse or neglect. These are brief descriptions. Panels show teens fighting a couple of times.

Claire remembers an instance in which a nun forced Claire to stand outside in front of others with no pants on.

Drug Content
At the start of the story, Claire drinks alcohol at every opportunity. Claire shares the number of family members who are also alcoholic. At rehab, others share their addictions. Some of the rehab participants return to using drugs or alcohol after they leave the program.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of CONSTELLATIONS in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Hunt for Eden’s Star by D. J. Williams

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

Hunt for Eden’s Star
D. J. Williams
Tyndale House
Published April 4, 2023

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The Hunt for Eden’s Star

A coming-of-age teen is thrown into a world of ancient secrets when he discovers a supernatural compass that protects a weapon of mass destruction. With the help of a diverse group of friends, he embarks on a global adventure, seeking the truth about his sister’s death. He uncovers two clandestine, supernatural societies waging an epic, hidden war that threatens the future of civilization.

D. J. Williams’s suspenseful, page-turning style whisks readers into a wildly exciting, supernatural adventure that grabs hold of the imagination and never lets go. As Jack races to collect ancient artifacts critical to the survival of the world, readers are transported to incredible locales across Asia, including the lush jungles of the Philippines and the high-energy streets of Hong Kong. Themes of addiction, revenge, faith, and friendship emerge as Jack battles literal and psychological demons, and even his own friends and family members, on his quest to thwart the forces of evil.

My Review

This was a tough one for me. Suspense is always a bit of an iffy genre, so it could be that I’m generally less comfortable reading that type of story. I found myself struggling not only with some of the suspense elements, but also other elements of the story as well.

One of the things I wrestled with most was the portrayal of characters. I felt like a lot of the characters came across as kind of flat. Jack and his friends kind of acted a bit like frat boys, only interested in girls when they were attractive or could offer the boys a benefit of some kind (a key to an exclusive area, for example). Do high school boys act like that? Yeah, I’ve known some who did. But I found it to be an odd choice to cast those boys as the heroes of the story?

I also felt like Jack never really gained real forward momentum. There were a few scenes where he would make a grand statement about having a goal (one time this was about getting revenge for his sister’s death), and in the next scene, another character would basically tell him that was the wrong goal because reasons. And Jack would abandon his stated goal and kind of be back to trying to figure out his next move. I think I expected him to at some point become the character making things happen.

He does have moments where he accomplishes this. For example, he rescues a bunch of girls who are prisoners being trafficked by the bad guys. It’s a cool scene, but it didn’t really connect to the larger story other than to remind us that the bad guys are super bad.

Conclusion

HUNT FOR EDEN’S STAR has a lot of interesting elements in it. For example, Jack and his friends attend a coed, elite boarding school with four houses. Each house is identified with a particular set of virtues. Students are assigned to a house by a sort of magical process. Very reminiscent of a certain wizarding school. It was cool, and maybe the various houses are more involved in later books in the series, but I didn’t really catch much connection to the story in this first book.

Lots of the story takes place in Hong Kong, so I enjoyed the connection to history and politics/current events happening there. I kind of wish the story had featured that more in connection to the plot.

So, there were some really cool elements. I don’t know if the author just wanted to include all the things that will be relevant to later books to kind of garner reader interest for those things and set up some elements for later? It made the book kind of a long one for YA, especially for YA suspense, at almost 500 pages.

On the whole, I think this series really isn’t for me. Parts of it reminded me of the TIME ECHOES series by Bryan Davis which also has kind of a secret society, murder mystery thing going on. If you liked that one, then HUNT FOR EDEN’S STAR might be a good fit, too.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Jack is white. Some minor characters are BIPOC.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Some comments by boys about girls being attractive. A man brings a girl who is bound and blindfolded to Jack’s room and hints that Jack is to have sex with the girl.

Spiritual Content
Some characters worship Elyon. It seems like this might be supposed to be a representation of Christianity. (The book is published by a Christian publisher.) The religion is pretty transactional. Characters earn supernatural gifts by fully committing to the faith. Jack must pass tests where he must master his fear and instead have faith. If a servant of Elyon goes to a forbidden place, they lose their supernatural abilities and eventually die. Jack’s sister made a kind of contract with Elyon– her life for his– and this means Jack must be the one to complete a mission she left unfinished.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Some battle scenes involving gunfire. Jack witnesses a political protestor murdered by police in the street. Jack discovers a group of girls who are victims of human trafficking. All are bound and blindfolded.

Drug Content
Jack and his friends visit a club and drink alcohol. Jack takes a pill that a stranger hands him in passing. He reflects on his past as an addict and credits his sister with saving him.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THE HUNT FOR EDEN’S STAR in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.

Review: I Will Find You Again by Sarah Lyu

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I Will Find You Again
Sarah Lyu
Simon & Schuster
Published March 14, 2023

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About I Will Find You Again

All the Bright Places meets Ace of Spades in this twisty teen thriller about finding a way to live after losing the one person who feels like home.

Welcome to Meadowlark, Long Island—expensive homes and good schools, ambition and loneliness. Meet Chase Ohara and Lia Vestiano: the driven overachiever and the impulsive wanderer, the future CEO and the free spirit. Best friends for years—weekend trips to Montauk, sleepovers on a yacht—and then, first love. True love.

But when Lia disappears, Chase’s life turns into a series of grim snapshots. Anger. Grief. Running. Pink pills in an Altoids tin. A cheating ring at school. Heartbreak and lies. A catastrophic secret.

And the shocking truth that will change everything about the way Chase sees Lia—and herself.

My Review

For some reason, I find I’m always drawn to books about complicated grief. This one is no exception. It’s an intense story, both in its exploration of grief, but also in the way that it’s written like a thriller. I feel like all the stories I want to compare it to give things away about the plot, though.

After Lia’s death, Chase finds herself trying to sift through her memories and those of her friends to piece together what happened and understand why. She feels someone must be responsible, or that there must be an explanation that will make Lia’s death make sense, and she’ll do whatever it takes to find the truth.

I liked those things about her. Her desperation was palpable. Her grief exploded off the page. I couldn’t help rooting for her, even though sometimes she did self-destructive things.

The story explores the pressure that Chase and her friends feel at school. All of them have ambitious AP course loads plus extracurriculars. They decide that drugs and a cheating ring, in which one person completes an assignment or test and distributes the work to the others, is the only reasonable way to survive.

While obviously cheating is wrong, I couldn’t help pausing to think about why they chose that course and whether certain high-achieving academic programs do push kids too hard. I don’t know. It’s still something I’m thinking about.

All in all, I WILL FIND YOU AGAIN has perfect pacing in a deep, emotional landscape. Fans of E. Lockhart or Matthew Quick totally want to check this one out.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Chase is Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Taiwanese. Lia is Korean and adopted by white parents.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two girls.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Mentions of suicidal thoughts. Brief mention of a suicide attempt.

Drug Content
Chase takes an upper called Focentra (a fictional drug) which she buys from a classmate.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of I WILL FIND YOU AGAIN in exchange for my honest review.

Review: All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

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All My Rage
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill
Published March 1, 2022

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About All My Rage

Lahore, Pakistan. Then.
Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.

Juniper, California. Now.
Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.

Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever.

When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.

From one of today’s most cherished and bestselling young adult authors comes a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness—one that’s both tragic and poignant in its tender ferocity.

My Review

Well, if I thought Sabaa Tahir was going to go easier on her characters in a contemporary novel(versus fantasy), I was very much mistaken. Because, oh my gosh, the things Noor and Salahudin go through and have been through. Wow. I loved both of them right away. It took me longer to understand why Misbah’s point of view was part of the story. She begins in the long past and gives some context to some of Sal’s past and explains her husband’s alcoholism. But those sections continue into the present part of the story, too. Late in the book I realized how things connected and reading her point-of-view made a lot more sense then.

There’s one part, maybe roughly three quarters of the way through the book, where the story drops several big bombshells that I wasn’t prepared for. I mean, I wondered what the deal was with certain things, but didn’t know for sure that there was necessarily going to be more of an explanation. And then, bam. I felt like I was still reeling from that when another thing happened.

You know when you see a character doing something, and you’re like, “No. Bad idea. Stop!” Yeah, I definitely had that moment in this book. I’m like, this is a terrible idea, please do not do the thing you’re doing. This is going to go badly.

That only happens when I’m really invested in a book, though, so I feel like that’s clear evidence that ALL MY RAGE really hooked me. I think one of the most brilliant things about the book, besides its beautiful characters, is that the balance between rage and vulnerability is perfectly executed. I felt Noor’s rage with her. And it made perfect sense. She had every right to be angry. Also, I loved that she faced her anger, even when it was messy.

The ending of the story– no spoilers– really moved me, too. It resolved a lot of things in a way that felt both realistic and hopeful, and I love it for that.

All in all, I’m so glad I read this book. I was a big fan of AN EMBER IN THE ASHES, so I was really curious to see Sabaa Tahir write a contemporary story. The characters in EMBER are so strong, I had pretty high expectations for ALL MY RAGE. The book definitely exceeded my expectations. I loved it and definitely recommend it.

Content Notes

Content warning for reference to sexual assault, drug overdose, alcoholism, domestic violence, loss of a parent, earthquake, racism and Islamophobia.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Misbah and Noor were born in Pakistan and emigrated to the United States. Salahudin is Pakistani American. They are also Muslims.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Reference to arousal.

Reference to sexual assault, but without description.

Spiritual Content
Noor visits a mosque for prayer. Misbah and Salahudin reference prayer.

Violent Content
A man hits a teenager in the face. Brief description of a man and woman electrocuted to death. Graphic description of a man beating up a teenager.

Drug Content
A couple of characters sell drugs to other students. Sal’s dad is an alcoholic and is drunk in several scenes. Sal cares for him while he’s drunk and passed out. A girl overdoses on painkillers.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog.

Review: Wrecked by Heather Henson

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Wrecked
Heather Henson
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Published on March 22, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Wrecked

For as long as Miri can remember it’s been her and her dad, Poe, in Paradise—what Poe calls their home, hidden away from prying eyes in rural Kentucky. It’s not like Miri doesn’t know what her dad does or why people call him “the Wizard.” It’s not like she doesn’t know why Cal, her one friend and Poe’s right-hand man, patrols the grounds with a machine gun. Nothing new, but lately Paradise has started to feel more like a prison.

Enter Fen. The new kid in town could prove to be exactly the distraction Miri needs…but nothing is ever simple. Poe doesn’t take kindly to strangers. Fen’s DEA agent father is a little too interested in Miri’s family. And Cal isn’t satisfied with being just friends with Miri anymore. But what’s past is prologue—it’s what will follow that will wreck everything.

Shining a klieg light on the opioid crisis coursing through this country, WRECKED will have readers on the edge of their seat right up until the explosive ending.

My Review

First, let me say that this book is an incredible, wild ride. I love Fen and Miri! Clay broke my heart. For a short book (272 pages) it packs a huge punch in emotions and action.

So I’m not generally the biggest insta-love fan, but I think the whole, “Fen and Miri have just met, but they share this instant connection” actually worked for me in this book. In part it worked because it felt like an emotional connection between outcasts and oddballs, not a connection based on their physical attraction for each other. It wasn’t even overtly romantic at first. That definitely hooked me.

The secrets Miri keeps are huge. Just being friends with Fen could blow her whole life apart. Fen is used to people’s eyes glazing over when he tries to explain his love for his soundscapes, so he’s kind of given up on anyone understanding him, ever, when he meets Miri.

The third POV character is Clay, a boy in love with Miri. A childhood friend of hers who has been brought into the family by Miri’s dad. I liked his character, too. He has such a tragic past. He’s fiercely loyal to Miri and her family. He needs to be recognized as valuable to someone.

All that comes together in a high-intensity story set just outside a meth lab. I’m a little confused because the cover copy talks about this story bringing attention to the opioid epidemic, but I didn’t think meth was an opiate? I thought it was a stimulant? So I don’t know if it’s been reclassified (a quick google search seems to indicate no?) or if that’s kind of a marketing thing. Connect the book to the opioid crisis because it’s higher profile right now than meth addiction? I don’t know.

Conclusion

All in all, I enjoyed the story and read it really quickly. I didn’t want to stop because it felt like all the dominoes were always about to fall. I think fans of books by Ellen Hopkins will like the gritty writing (though this isn’t written in verse) and the gripping characters.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. At one point they both take tops off.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
More than once a boy is threatened at gunpoint. A boy walks into a burning building because his friends are inside.

Drug Content
Several characters abuse crystal meth and/or drink alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of WRECKED in exchange for my honest review.