The Furies - review by Arianna

The Furies Natalie Haynes 3 / 5	Published 2014 First Sentence "The first thing they'll ask me is how I met her."
Publisher's Description: When you open up, who will you let in? When Alex Morris loses her fiancé in dreadful circumstances, she moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past. Alex takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, which accepts the students excluded from other schools in the city. These are troubled, difficult kids and Alex is terrified of what she's taken on. There is one class - a group of five teenagers - who intimidate Alex and every other teacher on The Unit. But with the help of the Greek tragedies she teaches, Alex gradually develops a rapport with them. Finding them enthralled by tales of cruel fate and bloody revenge, she even begins to worry that they are taking her lessons to heart, and that a whole new tragedy is being performed, right in front of her...
Dear Reader, First off: apologies for the long hiatus! We've had a lot going on in our own lives lately: I've had a beautiful baby girl, and AmberBug has started an awesome new job! Both of which are keeping us quite busy. Not, of course, too busy to read! But unfortunately it's meant giving a bit less attention to our blog. We hope to resume more regular postings soon! In the meantime, on to my review... Unlike AmberBug, I went into this book with absolutely no expectations. I think that actually helped quite a bit, because I would also have been disappointed if I were expecting a really suspenseful, can't-put-it-down novel. This was definitely NOT that. It was, I suppose, more of a character study, although I found it odd that I didn't connect at all on any level with any of the characters - even though I think the author intended for me to. While I felt detached sympathy for Alex, the main character, I didn't really care about her outcome. And that was true several times over for all of her (what felt like peripheral) students. It was so odd, because I felt like you'd just barely met everyone and, boom, there was the crux of the plot! I think the author spent more time with those characters in her head, and expected we'd done the same? In any case, I found I just didn't care about anyone in the story. And I didn't believe in the main characters' motivations, which meant the denoument felt incrdibly flimsy to me.  I also didn't like how the reader was made to feel as if the entire group of students were involved in the crime being outlined, from the title and from how much attention was equally paid to everyone in the class. I wasn't quite sure how the rest of the students played into the actions of the one. Why did the reader have to spend so much time with all of them? Just to learn about the tragic lives of troubled youths? And to me, the connections between the story and the discussed Greek plays were VERY tenuous. While I enjoyed learning a bit more about a few classic Greek tragedies, I felt as if I didn't get a very thorough understanding of them, and yet at the same time - like Amber - I felt as if I were stuck back in a high school English classroom. Boring! And, I'm sorry - naming the other boy in a fight Donny Brooks: REALLY? That got to me, even though I laughed out loud upon first encountering it.  Overall, I'm not sure I would recommend this book to anyone, although I certainly didn't hate reading it. Some of the writing was really great. I just felt like the novel dragged quite a bit, and my time could have been spent better elsewhere. But I do agree with Amber that the inclusion of the Greek plays helped make the book quite a bit more interesting, and I did come away with a bit more knowledge, which I always appreciate.  Yours, Arianna

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Everything, Everything

Everything, Everything Nicola Yoon 3 / 5	Published September 1, 2015 First Sentence "I've read many more books than you."
Publisher's Description: This innovative, heartfelt debut novel tells the story of a girl who’s literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she’s ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more. My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.
Dear Reader, No. No, no, no. I was so disappointed - going into this, and even when I began reading, I thought: Great! I am going to totally dig this book, and fly through it, and it'll be a nice break from all the dense reading I've been doing this summer! And, well, it was the latter. But I was so thoroughly disappointed, especially given how great the ratings were on Goodreads! I was totally riding along on the premise, and then...it suddenly hit me, about 1/3 of the way through, The Twist. And I just spent the whole rest of the time reading going, "No. She wouldn't. Would she?!" Because this is essentially the plot of a movie. One that I've never seen, but while I was explaining the expected twist to my husband, he said, "Yeah. Like ______?" (I won't spoil anything for others, but that blank is clickable, if you'd like to see what I am talking about) and I said, "No way, for real?!" So on top of the book being predictable, it was kind of a copycat of a terrible premise of a movie. Blerg. I can see someone going into the book and not seeing the twist as being blown away by the ending, and that is awesome, and I am kind of envious of those people. Because had I been taken by surprise, I think I would have loved the book, too! I loved the characters, I loved the concept (in a strange love/hate way), and I loved the relationships. Everyone was believable and real and I flew through it over the course of two bedtimes. But. Yeah. Dang. I only rated it so highly because I could not put it down until the end. And I did thoroughly enjoy reading the book! I just hated that dread in the back of my mind...and was so frustrated when it was confirmed. Le sigh. Yours, Arianna

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My Sunshine Away

My Sunshine Away M.O. Walsh 4.5 / 5	Published 2015 First Sentence "There were four suspects in the rape of Lindy Simpson, a crime that occurred directly on top of the sidewalk of Piney Creek Road, the same sidewalk our parents had once hopefully carved their initials into, years before, as residents of the first street in the Woodland Hills subdivision to have houses on each lot.”
Publisher's Description: It was the summer everything changed...  My Sunshine Away unfolds in a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom. But in the summer of 1989, when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—experiences a horrible crime late one evening near her home, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of Southern suburbia has a dark side, too. In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.
Dear Reader, This book caught me so off guard. But it hooked me almost instantly. I fell in love mostly with the nostalgia of it; it's strange to see people writing about the childhoods of MY generation, now! I am so used to reading of those of my parents, and while I do have a soft spot for the '50s and '60s, I have to say it was really moving to read about the '80s. Granted, the narrator was slightly older than me, but not by enough that it really mattered. He painted this incredible image of the innocence of growing up in that era, and how it was shattered by events like the explosion of the Challenger and, in the book, the rape of a neighborhood girl in a place where such things just did not happen. I did not grow up in a neighborhood like the one Walsh describes, but I knew of them well: burgeoning developments where young parents moved in order to raise their families near their peers. At one time, I was quite jealous of my schoolmates who would talk of running around with the other neighborhood kids in a pack, exploring or playing Kick the Can or Capture the Flag until dinnertime. I grew up on a street which was not designed as a neighborhood, one which did not have many other children. We didn't have that same experience. While now I wouldn't change my childhood for anything, I know there were times when I was younger that I wish I'd experienced the camaraderie. So this book was especially interesting to me in how it managed to capture my "nostalgia" for something I never even personally experienced. But it did so quite well. I felt like I was one of the neighborhood kids, running around with the rag-tag gang, experiencing their discoveries, joys, and sorrows along with them. Overall, this book is at its core a story about the transition out of innocence. The narrator grows from harboring a pure, unadulterated boyhood love into puberty, where love becomes commingled with adult lust, and everything changes. Those times are difficult and confusing for all of us, and we often find ourselves unmoored during that transitional stage. To have the loss of innocence of a neighborhood girl - the very object of his crush - become intertwined with simply trying to grow up? That just made everything worse, particularly when the narrator himself became a suspect in the rape. Throw into the mix several other innocence-obliterating situations, and this book truly explored the depths of the often aching pain of growing up. And I have to say, I have a serious soft spot for those sorts of stories (Stand By Me or The Outsiders, anyone?). This book is also, as many others have pointed out, a love song to Baton Rouge. I did not grow up in the South, but I really loved this depiction of it. I love that the author was willing to examine in depth both the happy and darker sides of his hometown. He wrote with as much joy of the late summer night crawfish bakes as he did pain at the neighborhood’s loss of innocence. Walsh clearly loves his native state, and the reader loves it through his eyes. (It made me wonder often how much of this tale was the author’s own, and how much fiction.) I clearly can’t write enough about what moved me so in this book - perhaps I am just going on in an attempt to pin it down, myself! In any case, let me just leave you with one of my absolute favorite parts of the book, one which others might overlook because it is found in the Acknowledgements section: “The first person I’d like to thank is you--anyone who took time to read this--for your generosity and spirit. Thank you for reading every single book you’ve ever read by any author from anywhere. It’s important.” How great is that?? I think I love this author. I look forward to seeing more from him. Yours, Arianna P.S. I also love the title...it evokes for me the (haunting, if you think about it the right way) sound of a young child singing that line solo...

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The Girls from Corona del Mar

The Girls from Corona del Mar Rufi Thorpe 3 / 5	Published 2014 First Sentence "'You're going to have to break one of my toes," I explained."
Publisher's Description: A fiercely beautiful debut blazing with emotion: a major first novel about friendships made in youth and how these bonds, challenged by loss, illness, parenthood, and distance, either break or sustain.  Mia and Lorrie Ann are lifelong friends: hard-hearted Mia and untouchably beautiful, kind Lorrie Ann. While Mia struggles with a mother who drinks, a pregnancy at fifteen, and younger brothers she loves but can't quite be good to, Lorrie Ann is luminous, surrounded by her close-knit family, immune to the mistakes that mar her best friend's life. Until a sudden loss catapults Lorrie Ann into tragedy: things fall apart, and then fall apart further-and there is nothing Mia can do to help. And as good, kind, brave Lorrie Ann stops being so good, Mia begins to question just who this woman is and what that question means about them both. A staggeringly arresting, honest novel of love, motherhood, loyalty, and the myth of the perfect friendship that moves us to ask ourselves just how well we know those we love, what we owe our children, and who we are without our friends.
Dear Reader, This book had so much promise, I thought. It being about a pair of best friends who grew up in the '90s. But, ultimately I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to take away from it. Perhaps it was that Mia needed to learn to define herself separately from this woman who was once her best friend but had become a stranger? But she seemed to rely too much on schadenfreude*, which seemed to make her a truly bad person when she considered Lorrie Ann her best friend. Especially when she claims to have always considered Lorrie Ann "the good one" and considers the issues of who deserves what in life. And I struggled with the crux of this book, which seemed to revolve around whether a woman has the right to kill her child - not just have an abortion, mind you, but to put a living child (in this case, one suffering day in & day out from CP) out of his misery. The arguments on both sides were difficult for me to read. Perhaps it would be different if I were a mother, but I do wonder: would I be swayed by love to keep a suffering child alive, or to mercifully "save" him? Oh gosh, this book made me never want to have to find out that answer! What a difficult situation. I can't even. The book makes me wonder at Mia, as she struggles valiantly to hold a friendship together which proves increasingly difficult to even remember was once solid. Perhaps it is for the same reason she studies ancient translations of cuneiform: she wants to see everything as a story, something that's already happened, and isn't as good at looking at the here & now. I don't want to get too far into the story because it's easy to give big plot points away, but the reader has a difficult time telling if they were EVER truly best friends. What little we see of their "inseparable" teenage years isn't all that rosy, I don't think. Hmm, I wonder if the struggles of the friendship is why the book is titled "The Girls from..." and not "The Best Friends from..." Overall, an interesting book, but I kept wondering where it all was going. What small points the author made seemed to be shoved in at the end there. However, these girls are personalities which I don't think I will soon forget. Yours, Arianna *Holy crap I just checked, and I spelled that right on the first go!

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Girl Defective

Girl Defective Simmone Howell 3.5 / 5	Published 2014 First Sentence "The song 'Wishing Well' by the Millionaires (Decca, 1966) was as rare as it was weird, and my dad named his record shop after it."
Publisher's Description: In the tradition of High Fidelity and Empire Records, this is the literary soundtrack to Skylark Martin’s strange, mysterious, and extraordinary summer. This is the story of a wild girl and a ghost girl; a boy who knew nothing and a boy who thought he knew everything. It’s a story about Skylark Martin, who lives with her father and brother in a vintage record shop and is trying to find her place in the world. It’s about ten-year-old Super Agent Gully and his case of a lifetime. And about beautiful, reckless, sharp-as-knives Nancy. It’s about tragi-hot Luke, and just-plain-tragic Mia Casey. It’s about the dark underbelly of a curious neighborhood. It’s about summer, and weirdness, and mystery, and music. And it's about life and death and grief and romance. All the good stuff.
Dear Reader, This is definitely a case of me partially choosing a book by its cover - I loved the blend of record-bin vintage and cartoon drawings. Turns out this book was also nostalgic in another way, too: it felt like a more modern, Australian, novelized version of My So-Called Life in a lot of ways. Which of course I loved, MSCL being an old favorite. I could see the main character, Sky, as Angela Chase, and her tough and reckless friend Nancy as Rayanne. So that was pretty great. Plus, Sky's dad was a drunker version of Rob Fleming, which brings back another sort of nostalgia for me. Sans Championship Vinyl and top-ten lists. The book itself was enjoyable - another one I probably would have latched onto and loved were I still in high school (or anywhere NEAR high school age...hah!). As it was, it was an enjoyable story about misfits and family and friendship and love. And about finding yourself, and "your people" as Sky's mother puts it. I felt, though, like at times I was "out of the loop" because a lot of slang and local jargon was used in the book, and I have no familiarity with Australian-isms. So, that made the book a little rougher to read than it otherwise could have been. Not that I blame the author! I just wish I got more of the references... Overall, though, a fun and touching book about how everyone defines (and interacts with) family in different ways. Sky is "saddled" with the caretaking of her oddball younger brother because her father is usually too busy with running the record store - or too drunk. Luke wishes he had been able to take better care of his own sister. Nancy continually runs from whatever family she might have once had, opting instead to forge temporary (and often unhealthy) connections which she will forsake for the opportunity to "travel the world" (read: escape over & over again to other places). I did like the connections Howell built between Sky's father and his old friend, and how Sky's yearning for her estranged mother didn't become too cliched. Things didn't work out perfectly in this book; it wasn't intended to. But I like books where people figure out how they can find a way through. Ultimately, the entire Martin family is able to move forward in one way or another. No, this doesn't promise blue skies and rainbows forever. This isn't a sanitized Grimm tale. It's just a small slice of life, and one to learn from. A fun side note: the name of the record shop where the Martins live and work is the Wishing Well, named after the following (rare and elusive) tune: Yours, Arianna

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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands Chris Bohjalian 4.5 / 5	Published July 8, 2014 First Sentence "I built an igloo against the cold out of black plastic trash bags filled with wet leaves."
Publisher's Description: A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the bestselling author ofMidwives and The Sandcastle Girls. Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless girl living in an igloo made of garbage bags in Burlington. Nearly a year ago, a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had a meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault—was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to leave their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's house, inventing a new identity for herself, and befriending a young homeless kid named Cameron. But Emily can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever-and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.
Dear Reader, Despite my love for his other books, this might be my favorite Bohjalian book yet. I started reading it only a few days ago, and was worried I wouldn't finish it before its release date. But I ate it up! It was so engaging. (I picked up this ARC when attending the Connecticut Library Association's annual conference back in April. Chris Bohjalian spoke in front of a packed room, and I was lucky enough to snag one of two remaining galleys.) This book is the story of Emily, whose parents have supposedly caused a nuclear power plant's meltdown in her hometown. This means that not only is Emily suddenly orphaned, she is also left homeless, with nowhere to turn. On top of all this, and what might have been the most heart-wrenching part for me, Emily also worries that her dog has been abandoned, trapped in the family house, and is starving to death. Being a dog lover, this part especially hit home for me. However, as it is the story of a teenage girl from New England, it really was quite an easy story for me to relate to. Emily Shepard's life sounded much like my own, growing up. (Luckily, though, I did not have to deal with alcoholic parents!) Emily is a very strong, independent character, which I loved. She is constantly uncertain about her future, but manages to take care of herself - and later, also a nine-year-old boy. I use the term "take care of" loosely, as Emily resorts to many unsavory acts in order to survive the cold Burlington, VT winter. But she has such a personality! And despite her insecurities, she really does have a great sense of herself and engages in some wonderful self-reflection throughout the book. She is very self-aware, especially for a sixteen year old. Emily's idol is the poet Emily Dickinson, which I found a really interesting direction for the author to go, particularly since Dickinson is rather "dated" in the eyes of today's youth, I believe. But I like the way the main character was constantly comparing her life to the poet's, and in many ways trying to emulate her famous namesake. She went so far as to adopt the new name "Abby Bliss" when she needed to go incognito: this being the name of Dickinson's best friend. The whole setup worked really well. I wondered at times whether Bohjalian determined the name of his protagonist because of the poet, or whether he linked the poet up with his teenage hero only after she had already come to be. I don't want to give away too much, so I won't talk at length about what actually happens in the story. The book really does a great job at looking both forwards and backwards in time: Emily/Abby explains that she has trouble staying on track and not straying from her linear timeline.  I thought that was a great touch. Bohjalian definitely knows teen girls (although during his talk at the CLA, he mentioned how much he leaned on his own teenage daughter for help with voice and especially slang!), and I would equate his ease with the main character's voice to that of Wally Lamb. Both authors craft such real stories: you almost feel as if you know their characters personally. I will probably be recommending this book highly for the next few months, to anyone who will listen!  Haha. I would caution that it's maybe a little bit adult, as there is mention of drugs, prostitution, and self-mutilation, but a teenager with a good head on his or her shoulders should be fine with the content; there is very little that is explicit, as far as I can recall. Definitely check out this innovative & imaginative story - like me, you may spend half the time wondering what you would do if such a nightmare scenario happened in your hometown! Yours, Arianna

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The Dinner

The Dinner Herman Koch 3.5 / 5	Published 2009 First Sentence "We were going out to dinner."
Publisher's Description: It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse—the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love. Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.
Dear Reader, This was one of those books I went into entirely blind: I had no clue what it was about, really, or where it took place or what its general plot idea was.  I knew (duh) that it focused around some people meeting for dinner, and that was about it.  So I was surprised to see that it was actually about two Dutch couples, the males brothers, and not very good brothers to each other, at that.  At least, you can tell that the storyteller isn't a big fan of his older brother, that's for darn sure.  Serge is a politician through and through, and his little brother hates everything about it: how it's changed Serge; how pretentious he is now about wine, food, and his appearance; how everything he does feels like it is for the vote and for no other reason.  The entire book really focuses on this awful incident that the couples' teenage boys perpetrated.  It examines the story from each parent's angle, as they decide how to proceed past the event in the best possible way.  There are several flashback sections where you see The Incident occur and then see how one father deals with it in relation to his own troubled past and his tense relationship with his older brother.  It is fascinating to watch everything become revealed piece by piece through the eyes of this protagonist.  And it certainly makes the reader wonder what sort of person they'd be if they were in the same situation.  How do you deal with family messes?  It's easy to point at other families' flaws, but so much more difficult to look inward at your own. This book reminded me quite a bit of that odd movie Sexy Evil Genius, which my boyfriend and I watched on Netflix a few months back.  (Which apparently went straight to video, not too surprisingly.)  It, too, took place at a restaurant table, and dealt only with a very small group of people.  The viewer watched while the backstory unfolded, told in bits and pieces over the course of a couple of hours.  Very similar plot devices!  But such extremely different stories.   I think it's a neat setting - examining such a small time and space can still yield such an intricate story. Yours, Arianna

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Eleanor & Park (review by Arianna)

Eleanor & Park Rainbow Rowell 3.5 / 5	Published 2012 First Sentence "He'd stopped trying to bring her back."
Publisher's Description: Two misfits. One extraordinary love. Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor. Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park. Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
Dear Reader, I read this a while ago, but it's taken me some time to get around to writing a review.  I guess because I didn't love OR hate it, really, so my dispassion helped me avoid considering it really at all.  I actually did LOVE reading it, weirdly enough.  It was an engaging story which I couldn't stop listening to.  The audiobook was read by two different voices (Eleanor's and Park's) and it was well done by both the (I think they were) teenaged readers.  The story was really interesting: Eleanor is a new girl who was considered a serious "weirdo" in the 1980's by her schoolmates, who connects with quiet but cool Park over comic books and music.  I loved the premise, of course - I was certainly never the "cool kid" in high school, so I understand Eleanor's situation (although I was lucky never to be treated as poorly as she was!).  I loved the idea of the two bonding over the kinds of things I love.  I loved that they were two misfits who found love with each other, and how they supported and cared for each other so well, despite all of the obstacles to their being together.  And I don't really know what I didn't love about this book, but there was definitely something.  As much as I could really relate to a lot in the book, I just couldn't connect to it on the level I wanted to.  There was something holding me back.  And that's why I haven't been able to review this well - because I can't really pinpoint my feelings towards it.  I would definitely recommend this book to people, too.  I just can't express why I would, save from that it's about the 80's and mix tapes and teenage romance and how you feel at that age that you can save each other from the rest of the world.  I'm gonna change this to a 3.5, at least (I had it rated as a 3 before).  I'm sorry that I can't really review this one well.  (Maybe part of it was the build-up from others who had read and enjoyed it - almost nothing lives up to the hype, I've found, and my expectations are probably always too high.)  I'd still definitely recommend reading it.    Yours, Arianna P.S. Amber's review of this book was WAY more articulate than mine, and actually explains why she felt the way she did about the novel.  I think she's right - it started off GREAT, but didn't stay great, and that's really where the problem lay with it.  I think the ending was ultimately also great, but the middle had some blah-ish parts.  Plus, she's right: having to be dragged back to the feeling of teen angst and super-dramatic relationships might just have not worked as well with those of us who were lucky to survive it and move past it, haha.  Thanks, Amber!

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