Wide Awake

Wide Awake
written by David Levithan

I adore political young adult novels.  I just love them.  Despite many falling in the 'young adult' category not yet being able to vote, we are people and we are passionate about the world we live in.  It is so great to hear voices of fictional teens who feel the same.  Wide Awake is the stuff of a beautiful liberal idealistic heaven, and has to be one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading.  And he does it so great, too, with his typical mindblowing writing combining with perfection of a plot. He could have easily used the political victory as the ending, but instead took the hard and ultimately more rewarding road of tackling the end at the beginning.  While some of the made up historical events seem a little hokey, once they're explained, it's totally believable, albeit idealistic.  And while this may be deemed a 'political YA', more than anything this novel is about finding who you are and reconciling your identity with society's dissenting opinions on who you "should" be, whether dictated through social, cultural, or religious "rules".  The "Jesus Revolution" mentioned in this book is a beautiful concept and I could only dream of such a thing happening in my lifetime, the idea of religion going back to its roots of love and kindness for all.  Stein is kind of a simple character, and elements of the story seem simple, but there are so many amazing qualities found in this book.  Religion could easily have been written off as a force of evil and hate.  Instead, Levithan takes the effort to imagine people complexly and recognize that religion itself is not inherently good or bad, but a force for potential action in either direction, often both directions, in complicated, tangled up ways.  This book is political, but it is about so much more than that.  The personal doesn't automatically have to be political, but man, can the political be personal.

Rating: 5/5

Keep Holding On

Keep Holding On
written by Susane Colasanti

This is the YA novel about bullying that the world's been waiting for.  So many books addressing bullying take on a preachy stance, ignoring the realities that this bullying consumes a teen's life with shame, making it so difficult for bullying to be addressed.  Colasanti knows what she's talking about.  We are getting the raw, real story here.  I really love that the reader doesn't have to dig deep to find the morsels of meaning, the depth is all there, laid out, ready to be applied to the bullied lives of actual teens.  I have a lot of things I could say here.  I wish, and don't we all, I could one day have a one-on-one conversation with Colasanti about her books and her life, but for now, I'll revel in knowing that I am not alone, and neither are you.  The one adjustment I would have loved would have been either a sequel or an expansion of the story beyond the ending, because as with most endings, the ending was just a beginning.  Unlike many of those beginnings, though, it's one that's rarely written about, and if there's anyone I'd like to see writing that unwritten story, it's SC.

The Dreamhunter Duet

Dreamhunter 
written by Elizabeth Knox



I wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I did.  I thought it would be just another one of those fantasy novels written by a wanna-be fantasy writer, full of weird names with too many consonants and desperate clumsy attempts at world-building.  Wow, was I in for a surprise.  Yes, there are new names and you're immersed in a totally new world, but you're learning right beside the main character, rather than being plunged into a pre-existing confusing universe.  The novel explores a subject not explored much in YA books (with the possible exception of Lisa McMann's Wake series), the world of dreams.  There are some passages that drag a bit, but once the story gets going, you are immersed in an intricately developed universe where dreams are the basis for society's continued productivity.  All of the questions, the set-up, everything is addressed and if it isn't resolved in this novel, it is rapidly picked up in its sequel.  You are going to want to have the second book handy as you finish the first.

Rating: 5/5

Dreamquake
written by Elizabeth Knox



Starting things off to tie up loose ends left by the predecessor, Dreamquake takes the characters we grew to know and love and intensifies everything.  Now that the universe has been set up, the characters and story can fully be explored.  We get to know more of the 'why' behind the world, since the 'what' has been answered.  The characters really grow into their own skins through the course of the story, getting more and more comfortable with who they are and where they fit.  This could have been a trilogy.  This could have been one of those lengthy sci-fi series, dragged out into dozens and dozens of volumes.  Instead, Knox builds a world and wraps a story up in two books, but fits decades of mythology in such a compact duet.  The story may take place in an alternate world, but the undertones resonate with contemporary readers, and the plot's intricate twists and turns will take each and every one who sticks it out for the ride of their lives.  I have not seen a world as well-developed in a YA novel since Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and it's truly a pity that this series isn't as well-known as it should be.  What a story.  Bravo, Elizabeth Knox, you really know what you're doing.

Rating: 5/5