Author: laceline

In this blog post I found on JSTOR, Chris Crowe begins his thesis with stating that objections over YA literature usually stem from one of two reasons:

1. They aren’t the Classics.
2. They corrupt the young.

He states in a quote from a Harry Potter critic that children’s (YA) books can be great literature, but only if they’re well-written, stretch the reader’s imagination, and open virgin minds to the magical power of words. I think that this is a really great way to put it, especially in comparison to the new law in Maine that’s trying to pass with ‘obscene content’. This is contrasting to where it’s stated in the law that if a piece of literature has content that is not deemed educational, political, etc., it can still be a crucial part of a child’s curriculum.

In another paragraph, Crowe states that there are some YA “classics”, but the genre hasn’t been around long enough for there to really be classics. There aren’t really any YA books that fit into the requirements of true literary classics, like Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice, etc.

A lot of adults are worried that YA books would “corrupt” the young, based on how “woke” the novels are nowadays, addressing topics like sexual assault, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, mental health, suicide, and more. The negative press coming from this has actually managed to change minds of some people who had previously admired the YA genre.

Crowe states that while not all of the YA books are addressing concerning topics like stated above, the ones that are showing content like that cover the media for the ones that don’t. The books that parents will get worried over, the books that are challenged in the media, the books that students relate to the most… those are the books that make trouble for the rest of the YA genre. And, of course, those are my favorite kinds of books.

They Never Came Back by Caroline B. Cooney is a novel which, in the beginning chapters, switches between the points of view of two girls; Catherine Ferris, age 15, and Murielle Lyman, age 10. Five years ago, Murielle’s parents fled the country to escape federal prison for stealing millions of dollars from their clients. Murielle was sent into foster care, thought to be lost to the rest of her family.

Five years later, Cathy Ferris shows up in Greenwich. She’s identical to little Murielle, but of course five years older. Her cousin Tommy recognizes her immediately, getting down on his knees in front of sixty other summer school students and pleading for Cathy to admit that she’s Murielle.

The book follows Cathy- aka Murielle- as she unwinds the truth of her childhood and both of her lives collide into one. She’s being cornered by her Aunt Lois, cousin Tommy, and the FBI- who wants to use her as bait to lure her parents out of hiding.

This book was a very quick read but I was actually pretty unsatisfied with the ending. I’m going to put spoilers here just to show what I mean by “unsatisfied”: Murielle ends up making contact with her parents without the help of the FBI, but with the help of one of her classmates in summer school. Not a long conversation or anything, but Murielle tells her parents to RUN. I wish that the story had gone on longer to tell you what happened after the FBI realized that her parents had made contact with her; I wish the story had shown Murielle reuniting with her parents after those long five years, even if it was through prison visitations.

Another part of the story that I feel wasn’t addressed enough was the little bit of romance speckled here and there; a boy in Cathy’s class, Spencer, has a crush on her and asks her to hang out one Saturday. We never get to find out how Spencer really feels about Cathy after he finds out she’s Murielle, we never get to know how they continued along after the book ends.

N34RLY GONE by Elle Cosimano follows the story of Nearly Boswell as she nears the end of her senior year. She’s racing for a scholarship against her best friend, Anh, losing her other friend Jeremy because she doesn’t return his feelings for her, all while being framed for murders and trying to figure out who is responsible.

Nearly finds clues for these murders through the Missed Connections ads in the newspaper. Each murder that occurs targets one of her tutoring students, leaving a number marked somewhere on the body of the victim. Nearly feels as though she’s running in circles; she has all these numbers but no clue what they mean. Each ad that appears in the paper is like a countdown, testing her to see if she can decipher the clue in time to stop the murder from happening.

As all of this is going on, she’s falling in love with a police informant who is working on the case where she is the main suspect. Reece Whelan is the token bad-boy, except he’s working to fix his record. He wants to be a better person and fix the mistakes he’s made in the past- but he also wants to keep Nearly from being wrongfully convicted of multiple murders (or killed).

This book was awarded the ITW Thriller Award for Best Young Adult Novel, as well as the Edward Award Nominee for Best Young Adult, both in 2015. I think this book is definitely deserving of the Thriller Award, based on the fact that it keeps the reader on the edge of their seat and is definitely a page-turner. The Edward Award seems to be pretty general, like any YA novel could win it. I do definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in murder mysteries with a little bit of drama mixed in.

It’s taken me so long to write this particular review because I honestly don’t have much to say about this book. Overall, it’s alright. The story follows the summer of camper-turned-counselor Goldie Easton as she navigates the murder of her ex-boyfriend, which took place on camp grounds. It’s a very cliche book; the summer camp is elite, with all the secrets and mysteries all coming back to money. The book shows the relationship between Goldie, coming from a working-class household, and her camp-friends, Ava and Imogen, who come from upper-class Manhattan families. They all have their own secrets that they keep from each other, though they’d always promised to tell each other everything. Goldie’s hiding the fact that her entire life had been upturned on New Year’s Eve the year prior, Imogen didn’t get into college, and Ava’s father is a big-time scammer on Wall Street. Ava and Goldie’s problems are a lot more related than either of them could have guessed in the beginning.

The book ends with everyone pretty content with their lives; the murder was figured out, Goldie and her friends stopped lying to each other, etc.. Happily ever after, you know, all that stuff. It was just a very quick and predictable read, one that I’d recommend if you need to get an assignment done quick but not if you want to have a lot to write about.

This book is an absolute roller coaster. I first read it sometime in middle school; could’ve been sixth grade, could’ve been eighth. I don’t really remember. Point is, don’t read this book until you’re emotionally developed enough for it. This book is all sorts of f-ed up. It’s a story about Amelia “Gannon” Gannon, who lives a pretty shitty life with her three adopted brothers and her parents. Since her parents adopted the crazy, misbehaving boys off the streets of Guatemala, Gannon has noticed her father distancing himself from the family. She herself feels as though she’s become invisible, and the only people in her mother’s brain are her brothers.

This changes when she meets Michael “Brooks” Brooks. Michael’s a new kid at school who is known more by the rumors spread around than by anyone whose actually spoken to him. Immediately, Brooks becomes concerningly obsessed with Gannon. He’s showing up everywhere; next to her in the halls at school, at her work, and even… on her windowsill?

That’s right. One night, Gannon’s doing her nightly little routine (which consists of self-harm. Like I said, book’s f-ed up.) and she’s greeted by Brooks’ voice coming from the window where he was sat watching her cut herself. The story continues along with the same old shit; Gannon falls into a toxic, extremely co-dependent relationship with a toxic boy. She ends up in the hospital due to an accident and they see all the self-harm scars. She gets sent to a mental hospital, while Brooks is sent to juvie. Once they’re both out, they run away together and live in an absolute shithole of a house. Safe to say, the relationship continues to spiral downwards.

The epilogue of the book fast-forwards to three months later, where Gannon and Brooks are no longer together yet Gannon is still mentally destroyed from him. She sees him everywhere in crowds, even though she knows he’s not really there, and she thinks about him all the time

No Way Home by Jody Feldman is definitely a story that will keep the reader on the edge of their seat. It kept me engaged from beginning to end with plot twists everywhere along the way.

No Way Home follows Tess Alessandro, a high school girl from Washington, D.C., who was accepted into an Italian exchange program. It was the thing of her dreams; she has family in Italy that she never sees, and she’d heard so much about it from her Nonna who’d immigrated that she was ecstatic to go.

But… when she’s at the airport with her parents to leave for Italy, she meets the girl who she is exchanging places with. Sofia Rossi made her uneasy at first glance, but she just took it as nerves for going to a country where she barely knew the language (Tess had no idea how she even got accepted with her knowledge of the language). Once she’s arrived in Italy, she realized that the red flags she saw along the way there were real. Her host family took her passport, credit card, and phone from her while she took a nap after arriving. She was woken up with a FaceTime call from Sofia, who was hovering above her parents with a kitchen knife.

That’s when Tess’s own personal Hell began. The Rossis forced her to steal and lie, among other illegal things, in their own interest. The real question, though, was why Tess? Why did she get stuck with these people, why did she have to be their pawn? Well, it’s more complicated of a story than you’d think. With all of the twist and turns, random bombs dropped, etc… the book truly is a page-turner.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries and low-key thrillers. It also has a good amount of romance throughout it with one main love interest that’s there from the beginning to the end. It just came out in 2022, so I don’t think the book has gotten much traction yet, but I feel as though a very broad audience could appreciate it.

Gone by Michael Grant is one of my all-time favorite books (and series). It focuses on a small town on the southern coast of California called Perdido Beach, but doesn’t stick with one singular point of view. Each chapter is written through the eyes of a different character. The “main” character, though, so-to-speak, is Sam Temple. The book opens with Sam sitting in his history class when, all of a sudden, the teacher disappears. Along with the rest of the adults in the town.

Everyone over the age of fourteen is gone. There’s a round barrier circling the town; impenetrable and painful to touch. Kids are mutating and gaining unexplainable, dangerous powers. Sam is forced into a role of leadership when the kids from the private school up the hill come into town and make themselves known. There’s two sides; The Coates Kids and the Perdido Beach kids. And within the sides, things get divided. Half of the Coates kids hate Caine, their leader. The kids down in Perdido beach are splitting up amongst themselves. The “Normal” kids hate the “Freaks”, due to what seems to be a mix of jealousy and fear for their powers.

I first read this book in a reading group in fifth grade and immediately became obsessed with the series. It definitely appeals to different ages because I still love it and I’m about to turn eighteen soon. Everybody who I know has read this book (and/or the whole series), has told me that they liked it.

I love the way that the point of view changes with each chapter; some characters know more than others, some characters are keeping secrets from each other, some are completely clueless about half of what’s really going on. The books are longer, but they’re definitely worth the read.

Death Note Another Note by Nisio Isin is a sort of prequel to the original Death Note manga. It is narrated by Mello, a boy who grew up in an English orphanage alongside L. Mello ‘wrote’ this novel in hopes that Kira and Near would read it. (Near being another boy he and L grew up with, and the one who discovers Light Yagami as Kira)

The novel follows FBI agent Naomi Misora as she is enlisted by L to try to catch Beyond Birthday, a serial killer on the loose in Los Angeles who leaves miniscule clues at each of his murders. Misora quickly realizes that these clues are like a jumbled up road map, where the roads keep intertwining and crossing and it’s all just confusing.

L realizes that these clues being left behind are meant for him, meant to be a game to test his true knowledge against Beyond Birthday.

Why was BB doing this, you ask?

Mello, Near, L, and Beyond Birthday all grew up together at Wammy’s house in England. The four boys, along with the other inhabitants of Wammy’s, were incredibly smart- the smartest children in the world. And they were being raised to become L.

It’s a title passed down through Wammy’s house, and the four boys were the top contenders for the prize. The L we all know and love won, of course, but BB was not happy, to say the least. He wanted to outsmart L- and be the only person to ever do it. (Before Kira, of course.)

While Naomi is working on this case, she’s approached by a private investigator who is… also working on the case. There’s something off about this detective, though, he’s weird. He sits weird, he looks weird, and he definitely dresses and talks weird.

While this investigator “helps” Naomi throughout the novel, he’s really just unraveling the murders in front of her. Because he is the murderer. He is Beyond Birthday.

And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill himself in order to beat L.

The manga Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba follows college student Light Yagami as he navigates through the hardest, yet most exciting years of his life.

Light Yagami is a senior in high school when the manga starts; he has perfect grades, perfect attendance, and is probably the smartest kid in Japan. One day when he’s sitting in class, bored, he sees a notebook falling from the sky outside. After class, Light finds the book outside. It’s thin, black, and has two words written on the cover: Death Note.

Not long after, Light meets Ryuk the Shinigami, the owner of the notebook. The Shinigami are Gods of Death, and he informs Light that if he writes someone’s name in the book while picturing their face, they will die.

It doesn’t take long for the genius to become psychotic with this new power. He draws the attention of international police, bringing the anonymous detective who goes by the name L into the Kanto region. L, having no true name or face, is the smartest detective in the world. He takes the cases that no one else can figure out… and solves it.

Light is now known internationally as Kira, who plans to rid the world of violence and become God of his new world. He kills off as many criminals as possible, no matter how minimal their crimes are. The Japanese Police Force and L are running in circles trying to catch Kira, who happens to be right in front of them.

Light’s father is the Chief of police, and helping the Kira Task Force (run by L), so Light is able to get insider information to help avoid police suspicion.

This doesn’t last long, though, because Light is recruited to the Task Force at the same time that he becomes L’s number one suspect.

Years pass with Light and L working together to hunt down Kira, and the story ends heartbreakingly. L is murdered by a Shinigami named Rem, Light is killed by the Task Force, and Light’s girlfriend, Misa, who knew he was Kira and was helping him kill, kills herself by jumping off of a bridge at sunset.

L spent the final years of his life hunting down his best friend, and he never got to know that it was really him all along.

Light wasted those years trying to become a God, even though Ryuk had told him, “Humans haunted by Shinigami usually have nothing but misfortune.”

Misa wasted those years fawning over Light, begging him to love her, when the entire time he was using her for his own personal gain- the only thing that prevented Light from killing her was the threat from Misa’s Shinigami, who told him that if Misa got hurt in any way, she would kill Light.

This manga is over two thousand pages long, so obviously I didn’t go into immersive detail with the summary, but it is truly a work of art.

Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss is a Young Adult fictional retelling of high-jackings that occurred during the 1970s by Palestinian guerillas. The author tells in her postscript that she actually experienced these events, and although she had a hard time remembering it, she did her best to retell it in a way that drew readers in.

Fifteen year old Anna is traveling alone, on her way back to boarding school in England, when her plane is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. The plane is redirected to an airstrip in Jordan, where there is already another plane full of passengers being held hostage. Anna’s plane is kept hostage for four long, agonizing days full of heat and lacking food.

The highjackers didn’t intend to kill any of the passengers; their demands were simply for the English government to release one of their members, and they would release their hostages.

This story is short and simple; it doesn’t have a lot of character-development so you couldn’t really feel for Anna and the boys she befriends on the plane, but you got the main point of the story and understood the events that happened.

I think that my favorite part of the story was after everything had happened, years later, Anna returned to the Jordanian desert where she was held hostage. There was a horse farm instead of an airstrip, and she found the spot where her plane was kept. She stood in that spot and stared out on the horizon, seeing the view that she had watched for four days from the inside of a hot, crowded, smelly airplane.