Dirty Little Secrets

Dirty Little Secrets
written by C.J. Omololu

**REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**

Obligatory spoiler warning, since I have pretty much nothing to talk about in re: this book other than the ending.  I thought it was a fascinating exploration of hoarding, and I was so pumped to see how all of the ends would be wrapped up, so I was shocked (and not in a good way) to find that it all ended with Lucy burning her house down.  Really?  Even after Josh and Kaylie come into her life and introduce the idea of safety?  Even with the notion that maybe her brother could help, maybe her sister needs help?  And where is she going to end up now?  And what of her mental state?  I don't often hold books up to moral standards, but when mental illness is involved, I like to see authors come up with productive answers on how to actually deal with a situation.  Just like it says in the book, sometimes you've just got to act and deal with the consequences all at once rather than avoiding something chronically.  And burning a house down seems like the most avoidant act possible.  Pathetic.

Among Others

Among Others
written by Jo Walton

I'm kind of torn because I really wanted to love this book, but in the end, it was just missing something.  The ending was one of the most rushed things I've ever read.  I love how books are romanticized, and anyone who is a book lover will identify with Mor's true love and connection (albeit somewhat snobby/limited to SciFi) of books.  I do love that in the end, this is a book about the magic of books.  But there was so much blank space in the middle where not much happened, and that's a shame.  There are also a lot of blanks, the situation with her aunts, what actually ended up happening with her mom, what the fairies were, and that's disheartening to walk away from.  I don't know what else to say.  I really wanted this to be the perfect book and I'm pretty sad that it wasn't coherent enough to be when it had all the right ingredients.  

Almost Perfect

Almost Perfect
written by Brian Katcher

I've read some criticisms of this book, that Logan is unnecessarily antagonistic toward Sage, and while Logan's words and actions are incredibly hurtful and problematic, ultimately, he gets Sage, he changes, he evolves so much, and that matters, if not to you, then to me.  Growing up in an environment where anyone outside the "norm", whatever that means, is othered, I can relate to Logan's cluelessness.  We are all ignorant of something.  We all have things to learn and improve upon within ourselves, and that Logan was able to do so, even after making tons of mistakes, shows so much inner courage.  Anyways, I really appreciated this book, particularly its complexity, and while I'm still looking for a book that deals with transgendered teens that ends on a positive note, I know life is more complicated than that, and ultimately, the Paper Towns-esque ending is more realistic.

A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness
by Nassir Ghaemi

I have never seen a stronger case against the stigma that mental illness carries than what was written in this book.  What a read.  Ghaemi takes this radical approach in outlining why certain revered historical figures very probably had mental illnesses, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, both of whom I learned had attempted suicide at some point in their lives.  He takes it a step further though, by showing how their mental illnesses led them to success rather than failure, the same success that eluded many mentally healthy leaders.  I love this book.  I love the subject matter; I don't think I've ever been more interested in history than when it was intertwined with psychologically in this book.  I love that mental illness isn't just seen as a struggle, but a positive force.  I do wish the spectrum of mental illnesses included was wider, but the book does what it sets out to do, and it does it beautifully.  I want everyone to read this book to re-evaluate what mental health really means.

The Anybodies

The Anybodies
written by N.E. Bode

This is a must for children's book lovers!  It mimics the styles of Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, Harry Potter, and many more, and beyond that, references them, too.  It features a girl who can bring elements out of the books they came from and a grandmother with a house literally made of books.  And the characters!  They are all quirky and lovable, and even the antagonist is given a chance to be explained.  Mad props to any book that can explain the effects of trauma on a person's ability to love.  Easily one of my new favorites.

Rating: 5/5

Converting Kate

Converting Kate
written by Beckie Weinheimer

I could not have read this at a more opportune time.  I was raised in a conservative Muslim environment, and my experiences and thoughts were almost identical to those of Kate's.  This book is spot on with the doubts and uncertainty experienced when trying to get out of an extreme religious upbringing, and my praise and sympathies to the author for having to deal with this kind of stuff firsthand and then be able to write so eloquently about it.  The whole book is just beautiful, and Kate is privileged enough to live in a place where a liberal church exists--I have never had that experience, unfortunately.  I also like how the book ends on a kind of uncertain but hopeful note.  Nothing in life is certain, contrary to what religion might sometimes claim, and Kate still has a lot of thinking ahead of her.  It is really refreshing to see young adult fiction portraying teens thinking about the role their faith plays in their lives.  It's a natural part of most of our lives, and I wish there were more books that were open about that process.  The only other YA I have read that addresses religion is Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost.  Kudos to Weinheimer for her courage.

Found

Found
written by Margaret Peterson Haddix

I really enjoyed this book, but I'm unsure how the next few books will play out.  I am into sci-fi.  Historical fiction?  Not at all.  It seems like the sci-fi is being used just to make the HF more interesting, and I am not sure if it'll succeed.  I loved the suspense of this book, and I'm also very curious to see how they'll manage to keep that up.  I hope that this series functions as a cohesive series rather than each book being sort of a historical fiction standalone.  The explanation for time travel at the end of the book was predictably messy and confusing, but again, this is only book one and I am cautiously excited to see how everything plays out.

Fall to Pieces

Fall to Pieces
written by Vahini Naidoo

Wow, this book has a lot of negative reviews, and I'm not sure why.  I actually liked this book.  It took a while to get into, but was worth it for me.  The top  complaint seems to be the abundance of profanity, to which I say, have you ever been around teenagers?  It's accurate.  The other complaint I see is that it's 'melodramatic', which is just an insult to anyone who has lost a loved one.  Melodramatic?  Everyone deals with their grief in different ways, and the main character had just lost their best friend, to suicide, no less.  She and her friends do and say things that are harmful to both themselves and others, but they are in severe pain, and by the end of the book, they learn to resolve their problems and face their grief in a much healthier way.  For that development, I think this is a fantastic read and guide to managing unhealthy emotions in a turbulent time.  My only complaint would probably be the fact that therapy was brushed off so quickly and so often as an option.  Her best friend just died.  Of course she should be in therapy.  I'm always annoyed to see the already overwhelming stigma of mental health furthered in media, particularly a book addressing teen suicide.  You know that many of the readers of such a book will be individuals who identify with the subject, and therapy can be extremely helpful and even lifesaving when a good therapist is found.  Beyond that, the writing's not perfect, but the important ideas of pain and the freeing power of forgiveness are delivered wonderfully, and for that, I appreciate this book.

I got this book from...:Amazon Vine

The Basic Eight

The Basic Eight
written by Daniel Handler

**this review contains spoilers**

Let's start off with some of the positives.  The writing in this book is great--same dry, clever wit we saw in A Series of Unfortunate Events.  The characters and their development are second to none.  Handler has the ability to create extraordinarily rich characters.  The format is also an appealing aspect--being told from the future and written as a personal journal, with fake essay questions and vocabulary words in each chapter.  Unfortunately, despite its many positive qualities, the book did the one cringe-worthy thing I was dreading: a multiple personality plot twist.  Really?!  Handler is capable of so much better.  The entire time I was reading this book, I was so excited, but in the back of my mind, kept thinking that the one thing that would ruin it would be if Natasha and Flan were the same person.  What a disappointment.  And let's not even get into the mental health implications here.  Way to promote a dangerous stereotype.  I want to love this book so badly.  I want to pretend the ending never happened.  How can one small thing have such a profoundly negative impact on what was, up to that point, a great novel?  I would love to see Handler try his hand at a similar novel, one that's less problematic and less of a cop-out but in a similar setting.

I got this book from...:LibraryThing's SantaThing

Every Day

Every Day
written by David Levithan

I have so many things to say about this book.  Let's just start off by saying that it is a unique premise and it is well worth your time to give this book a place on your YA bookshelf.  I think David Levithan finally succeeds in his idea of sculpting a book with a multitude of POVs.  Where his other books, mostly notably The Realm of Possibility with its 20 characters, had little tying all of the stories together cohesively, all of the lives here are tied together with A's soul.

A few thoughts.

While from the start, Levithan makes it pretty clear that A has reached a point of contentment with not knowing who or what he is, that still feels like a big mystery to me.  To uphold the realism of the story, it was necessary to leave it a mystery.  But unlike A, I'm a lot less comfortable with unknowns, and that's entirely a personal preference with no reflection on Levithan's writing, but I do wish we had gotten...something more.  Not necessarily a full-fledged supernatural explanation, but something.

Rhiannon is an interesting character to me.  I was glad that A got to experience life in her body, and it is her existence that binds the story together, but at the same time, what's so special about one teenaged girl?  Levithan makes it a point to say that we're all human, with much more similar than different, so what makes Rhiannon the first one A falls in love with?  Honestly, really looking at the story, she doesn't seem so remarkable, beyond A's interpretation of her, which I would argue strays into manic-pixie-dream-girl territory, where a female character isn't fully imagined as a complex human being.

As always, Levithan does what the few and the talented in the YA realm do--really bring the character's thoughts to life.  Teenagers are usually plagued by the big questions, spending plenty of time thinking and angsting and learning from all of it, and it's great to witness A's inner dialogue.  We also get to see brief glimpses into A's unstable childhood.  That bit of the story left me completely unsettled.  No soul escapes that kind of instability unscathed.  A is far too well put-together for someone who has literally lost loved ones (and yes, as a child, attachments are formed and they are formed fast) every single day.  For storytelling purposes, this makes sense.  For reality...not so much.

I'm also a bit unsettled by the fact that all of the teens A occupied were located so close to one another.  Again, for storytelling purposes, makes sense.  But not every 16 year old lives within a few hours of one another.  It would have been incredible to witness glimpses into the daily lives of teens all over the world through A's eyes.  That could have reached out to so many more readers.  I almost wish Rhiannon wasn't a character at all, leaving us with A's story, maybe just with Nathan as a complication to deal with.  What does Rhiannon's character ultimately accomplish?  Yeah, we get the tragic first love story and it drives the plot, but to me, it doesn't seem to have the resonance as A's own journey of self-discovery.  She could have still been a love interest, but with a significantly smaller role.  I'm not sure.  She's the story's glue, but I wish there had been a different brand of glue.

Ultimately, a strong story, one I will highly recommend to readers, but I think it could have been stronger.  It'll stand out in the realm of YA fiction, it'll be one of the better books, but in Levithan's hands, I truly believe it could have been better.

Also by David Levithan:
The Realm of Possibility
Wide Awake
Are We There Yet?
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

reading next: Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon