nominate for the cybils!!

So the Cybils (the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) is starting. Nominations in all categories are open and you should check them out here. Last year I was a round one panelist (aka judge) for the Young Adult Fiction category and this year one of my favorite bloggers, Clementine Bojangles from Early Nerd Special, is on the panel.

And I am so excited.

Being a Cybils judge last year was amazing. It was busy and crazy and fun and so much work and something I'd wanted to do for years. I still have one, maybe two, blog posts saved as draft about the experience that I could never quite describe well enough to hit 'publish' on. It was a crazy, incredible time. For a while I was reading a book a day. This year, though I'm not a part of the Cybils, I have an understanding of how the whole process works and am crazy excited about the nominations. Last year I discovered so many books I loved amidst all the nominations, and even if they didn't win I found new beloved books and favorite authors (this is how I discovered the Threads series, for instance). This year I want the judges to have, once again, tons of really great books to wade through, read, discuss, maybe possibly fall in love with.

So if you don't know what to nominate, here are some YA suggestions (for either the YA Fiction category or the Fantasy & Science Fiction category). Some of them have already been nominated, but I think they're still worth mentioning as great recently-published books. And also I don't feel like going through the nomination lists looking for every title. Alternately, you can also use this list as a handy to-read guide, because these books are all wonderful.

Also here's a link to the nominations page.

Tiger Lily, by Jodi Lynn Anderson -- A great, great, amazing take on the classic tale of Peter Pan. It's aching and haunting and beautiful and so many of its observations are spot-on honest.

Fangirl, by Ken Baker -- Oh goodness, this is just a straight-up adorable love story that rises to the very top of "adorable love stories." Great characters and a great commitment to their personalities and circumstances makes this book stand above the rest.

Nothing Special, by Geoff Herbach -- The sequel/companion novel to Stupid Fast, which won the Cybils last year. Enough said.

A Million Suns, by Beth Revis -- Incredible follow-up to Across the Universe. This is the sort of sci-fi book that keeps you up late, unable to sleep until you see how it ends.

Mothership, by Martin Leicht & Isla Neal -- Another awesome sci-fi; this one's light on the drama and heavy (in the best possible way) on the comedy and romance.

The Disenchantments, by Nina LaCour -- A wonderful, slow-moving coming-of-age story surrounded by music, love, and friendship.

Shatter Me, by Tahereh Mafi -- Crazy beautiful writing with a heroine of tremendous inner strength and a seriously messed-up world. A bit of dystopian, a bit of sci-fi, a bit of paranormal. I honestly don't know what genre it's supposed to be.

Bittersweet, by Sarah Ockler -- Classically great YA.

The List, by Siobhan Vivian -- This one should be required reading for teenage girls and their mothers. And their fathers. And the teenage boys, too.

Review: Everybody Sees the Ants

EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS
A.S. King
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Lucky Linderman is anything but. His dad hardly talks to him, his mother is addicted to swimming, his school thinks he's depressed, and Nadar McMillan has been bullying him for seven years. When his mother finally notices that the bullying has gone too far, she packs up Lucky and herself to stay a few weeks with her brother in Arizona, where Lucky's uncle proves to be more of a father than his actual dad and where his aunt is convinced he's going to kill himself. Meanwhile, in his dreams, Lucky is searching for his grandpa who went MIA during the Vietnam War and whose absence casts a long shadow over his family.

This is the first A.S. King book I've read and to be perfectly honest I wasn't sure what to expect. There's some question over whether Lucky's dreams are dreams or reality (they seem to hang somewhere in the in-between), so it's not entirely contemporary but the more fantastical elements never affect the plot. This is a book of family, of growing up, of bullying, and of making peace with the past, and it a lot of ways it walks the line. The characters were weirdly realistic and though I found it hard to really root for any of them I also found it difficult to dislike them. Individually the members of Lucky's family are crazy, but together they're some kind of normal, which is a strange line to walk.

In Arizona, Lucky meets a gorgeous, older girl named Ginny, who is, sadly exactly what you'd expect from that statement: beautiful, experienced, entirely out of his league though after a few hours with her he's hopelessly in love. It's worth stating that in most cases I don't have a problem with Manic Pixie Dream Girl characters, but in this book I found that Ginny was more of a trope than a character. She was a perfect cut-out of the MPDG; her being a part of Lucky's journey felt a bit obvious to me and because of this that aspect of the book fell flat.

Despite the fact that the fantastical elements and his relationship with Ginny didn't work, I loved Lucky's voice and the realizations he comes to through the course of the book. The dynamics between him, his parents, and his aunt and uncle are the strongest aspects of this book. The adults in his life are, in many instances, pretty useless in helping Lucky with his problems in school and with Nadar, yet despite that the book never vilifies them but instead show the realistic struggles each character is dealing with. The bullying aspect of this book was incredibly well-done -- so much so that for a good part of the book I felt like oh, this is too much. This is too sad. WHY IS NOBODY DOING ANYTHING!? Fortunately this hopeless attitude does not permeate the entire book and I'm so glad I kept reading.

It's interesting to note a few things that seemed "off" in this book. The fantastic elements, as I've said, felt out of place in the book. Lucky's MIA grandfather is a strong force in the novel, but I often felt like Lucky's "dreams" weren't exactly necessary in order for this to be the case, as his grandpa's influence was obvious in the way Lucky's home life was. Additionally, the novel switches back and forth from freshman year to the summer after, when Lucky is in Arizona with his mother. The chronology of the dual-stories confused me, though admittedly that might just be my problem and nothing with the book. Strangely, I don't have many books to compare this to, but if you like more experimental stories/writing, this might be right up your alley. I'd also recommend it to those looking for a book that handles the topic of bullying really well.

Mini-Reviews: Deadly Cool, And Then Things Fall Apart, Paradise, and Pregnant Pause

I haven't been reviewing regularly, which makes me sort of forget how to review a book, but I have read SO MUCH lately. SO MUCH! I read a book today! And a book yesterday! And soon I will start another one! So much reading! I think I could just read and read and read forever and as long as I could also write and drink iced tea and maybe watch television, I would be happy. I don't know if that's really nice or really pathetic. Also I would need country music though, of course.

ANYWAY.

Some super-short reviews of the books I've read lately. And by super-short I mean super super short. Also, unlike most of my reviews, these are more just my opinions than a real, critical look at the books.

Deadly Cool, by Gemma Halliday -- Quick, frothy murder mystery (ex-boyfriend accused of killing the girl he was cheating with) that did not hook me, though it might you. Recommended if you like series, mysteries, and pop-noir, if that's even a thing.

And Then Things Fall Apart, by Arliana Tibensky -- Plath-obsessed teen writes the story of how her life fell apart (parents' divorce, best friend's betrayal, major fight with boyfriend) while she's sick with the chicken pox. Very poetic-like, lots of musings about life and Bell Jar comparisons. Having never read Plath I really enjoyed it and can only assume you'd like it even more having read Plath.

Paradise, by Jill S. Alexander -- Defying her mother, Paisley joins a country-rock band and falls in love with their new lead singer. Though there are some parts I really enjoyed, on the whole it was mostly forgettable and the ending threw me for a loop.

Pregnant Pause, by Han Nolan -- Teen gets pregnant, marries her boyfriend, and works for the summer at his parents' fat camp while her own missionary parents are in Africa. A few subplots felt a little contrived, but protagonist Eleanor is one I totally love and her journey is as great as she is -- or at least, as great as she wants to be.

Review: Okay For Now

OKAY FOR NOW
Gary D. Schmidt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Set in 1968, Okay for Now is the story of junior high student Doug Swieteck, whose move to a tiny town shakes up his world. With an abusive father and a brother who steals his most prized possession, Doug looks to spend his time outside of the home. This is how he ends up with a job as a delivery boy for the local deli and bird-drawing lessons inspired by the Audubon book he finds in the library. 

This book is brilliant and impossible to explain. The book covers a year in Doug's life and there's a lot that happens in Doug's life. Between storylines involving his brothers (one a supposed delinquent, the other a soldier), his abusive father, a growing romance with his boss' daughter, drawing lessons, school, and his adoration of baseball player Joe Pepitone there's a lot to focus on. In some books the plethora of plots could be distracting or confusing, but this book is written so well that everything works together. This is about a year in Doug's life -- an important year, but still a whole, complete year when lots of things happen for him. His search for missing pages of the Audubon book unifies the book as does the look forward to sending a man to the moon in 1969. While this book is set in history, I'm hesitant to really call it "historical fiction" because it's not about history, it's just set there. And set there beautifully. The old-fashioned setting works perfectly as Doug, in ways that would never happen in 2011, is able to really get to know his neighbors and become a part of their lives in a very organic way.

There's so much I loved about this book: the setting, Doug's relationship with his brothers and mother, as well as the growing romance with Lil Spicer. Though I wouldn't categorize this book as a romance, it's definitely a love story and this becomes more and more apparent as the book continues. I loved this, though I know that some readers may feel cheated by the events that happen near the end of Doug's story. 

Unfortunately, amidst the huge amount of storylines there are a few in Okay for Now that just didn't work for me. A plotline involving a Broadway play seemed to play a much bigger role than it should have; it felt unrealistic and a little tacked-on. Additionally the resolution between Doug and his father wasn't quite enough for me; if there's anything that really disappointed me with the book, it was this too-easy family resolution. That said, the book as a whole is one I most definitely recommend, especially if you're looking to travel back in time with a book or wanting a really sweet, simple (in the best possible way) love story.

Review: Ten Miles Past Normal

TEN MILES PAST NORMAL
Frances O'Roark Dowell
Atheneum

When she was nine years old, Janie Gorman thought it would be awesome to live on a farm. Five years later she's beginning high school and realizing firsthand the havoc that actually living on a farm will play with her social life. Separated from her friends from middle school she spends most lunchtimes in the library and though she longs to be normal it's not until she starts to find some decidedly not-normal friends that she thinks there might be something better than that.

It's been a while since I've read a book I've just flat out liked as much as this one. It's easy to slip into Janie's crazy, goat-milking life, and despite her protests that she just wants to be normal it's clear that "normal" is one thing Janie will never be. And that's a good thing. While her best friend Sarah is on a tirade against cocoa (yeah), Janie finds herself doing things she never imagined. Joining the Jam Band, for instance, making friends with a boy named Monster, and discovering the bravery of those in her town.

This book has great characters, not least of whom is Sarah's older, wilder sister, Emma. I want to be best friends with Emma. Scratch that, I want to be Emma. She's freakin' awesome. So is Monster. So is Janie, and her mom, and her sister, and her dad, and her new friend Verbena. This book is full of the kind of characters that are both awesome and realistic, and a lot of this is due to the amazing dialogue. From the very start the dialogue in this book captured me -- way before I knew how awesome the rest of it is. Dialogue is one of those things I often overlook in my reviews, in favor of discussing the plot or characters or setting, but when it's really great, dialogue definitely makes an impact.

Despite the fact that Janie lives on a farm, the setting is not the strongest part of this book. It's not weak by any means, but the amazing characters and Janie's journey from surly to powerful takes over anything else the book has to offer. Despite the offbeatness of it, Janie's personal journey is one we can all relate to and it's a book I'd feel more than comfortable recommending to just about anybody. Authentic, sweet, and with a surprisingly powerful heart.

Review: Don't Stop Now

DON'T STOP NOW
Julie Halpern
Feiwel & Friends

When Lillian thinks that her friend has faked her own kidnapping, her and her best friend Josh set off on a road trip to track her down all while Lillian tries to figure out the relationship between the two of them. She's had a crush on Josh forever, but his feelings for her seem to lie in the land of purely platonic, despite the fact that they always seem to be holding hands and cuddling together.

This book, despite the whole kidnapping storyline, is very obviously about the relationship between Lillian and Josh. Friends. Best friends, but nothing more, it seems, no matter how much Lillian is in love with him. It's been a while, I think, since I've read a road trip book and this features a couple of the best parts of road trip books: kitschy tourist destinations and solid bonds of friendship. Unfortunately as far as the road trip goes, there were some logistical things I couldn't quite overlook. The parents here are out of the picture despite the fact that Josh's dad's credit card is paying for the entire trip. And despite the fact that it's mentioned quite a few times that Lillian and her mom are very close, her mom doesn't have a problem (like, at all) with the sudden road trip to who-knows-where. Let's be clear: there are some YA books, quite a few actually, that work without much mention of parents. But sometimes, like in this book, the lack of adults goes from "understandable" to "unbelievable." There was a suspension of disbelief required to accept what was happening.

Character-wise, Lillian is ambitious and creative while Josh has no direction in life. The two of them are almost textbook opposites and as the story continues this starts to work really well, especially as it becomes more pronounced and Lillian starts to realize that maybe Josh isn't the perfect boy she wants him to be. The flip side of this, however, is that Josh isn't really that great of a guy. Some readers might like him, but mostly he just got on my nerves. I had the urge to shake both of the characters -- to tell Josh to quit leading Lillian on and tell Lillian that ohmygod this boy is not worth it. That said, in a book about relationships there was also their friend, Penny, who they seem to have kept as a sort of pity-friend. Throughout the book she's portayed as a loner, kind of pathetic, and entirely too hung up on her own overbearing boyfriend. But the few glimpses there are of Penny's side of the story made me more interested in what was going on in her life than the other characters'. Her family is crazy, her boyfriend is scary, and she's just trying to get by: that was the girl I wanted to know more about, and it's unfortunate that the very serious things going on with her seemed so disconnected from the rest of the story.

Review: Perfect

PERFECT
Ellen Hopkins
Margaret K. McElderry

In Perfect, four teenagers struggle to embody the word and what it means to them. For Kendra, this means being beautiful, which means being thin. For Sean it's succeeding at sports no matter the cost. For others, like Andre and Cara, it simply means forging their own path instead of the one their parents are pushing them toward.

Usually when I read a novel in verse, the first question I ask myself is: did the verse help or hurt the book? Was it the right decision for this story? In this case, I'm not quite sure. Verse tends to highlight the emotions of a novel while, just by the nature of it, skimming over many details of plot and, sometimes, characterization. And sometimes this works really well in Perfect while other times I wanted more information. There are a lot of very serious things that happen in this book - not only the obvious issues of the characters, but also the ways these issues show themselves. There were moments where the verse alone left me wondering about details that hadn't been explained fully.

Like I said, there's a lot to this book. A lot of events, a lot of characters, a lot of everything. And it's a big book, so it carries it well, but sometimes I just wanted to settle into one story. POV tended to change at pivotal moments, just as something big was about to happen, and it left me feeling restless. Though each character's journey covers some huge issues and the idea of perfection in different ways, the story I kept coming back to was Cara's family's story. With a twin brother, Conner, who has ended up in a psych hospital after a suicide attempt, Cara finds herself stepping out of what is expected of her more and more, daring to defy her strongwilled mother who cares only how things will appear to others. Cara and Conner's mother is a huge force in their stories (and Conner himself is a big force in every character's story) and because of these things I really wanted the book to go into the family's dysfunction in-depth, but it never did that. Strangely the most compelling characters were the ones who didn't get to narrate their stories. Andre's girlfriend and Conner are the two most interesting characters. While the things the main characters do and the ways they explain them seem almost textbook, there's a complexity and very real emotion when it comes to these two.

The relationships and ways the four characters are related are done very well, as is much of the dialogue, which makes me wish there was more dialogue and that it didn't have to be told in verse. As this is my first book by Ellen Hopkins, I don't have much of a reference point to jump from. It was just as dark as I was expecting, while not quite having the impact I was hoping for except in small doses. This is definitely going to be the exact right book for some readers, such as those dealing with figuring out their own idea of strength and perfection, but for me it didn't quite deliver as strongly as other books more narrowly focused on these topics have.

Review: Withering Tights

WITHERING TIGHTS
Louise Rennison
HarperTeen

Tallulah would much rather go to the Performing Arts College for the summer than spend time at camp with her brother, and when she arrives at the college the quirky misfit quickly makes friends with other quirky misfits. She determines that this will be the summer she meets a boy, discovers her artistic talent, and finally grows up.

Set in the UK, there was much of this book I didn't quite understand in terms of terminology and the places the characters talked about. Really though, I think that probably just made this already-funny book that much funnier. This is the start of a new series (and I'm guessing quite a bit longer than the typical 3-book series in YA) and there's not a ton of wrap-up in the end. Enough to close this particular chapter of Tallulah's story in a nice way, but not enough to tie down the loose ends involving certain boys and Tallulah's new friends.

I'm the only person I know who wasn't a fan of the Georgia Nicolson books so I was honestly worried about enjoying this one, but I shouldn't have worried: Tallulah's just as quirky and about a million times more likeable than her older cousin and I found myself rooting for her right away as she dives into a whole new environment and quickly discovers that while her new friends are mega-talented, she isn't quite, though she still loves the Performing Arts College and hopes to stay on beyond the summer. The friendships she develops with her fellow students are sweet and funny, though it was sometimes hard to keep the characters in her group of friends straight in my head. Compared to the rest of the book, her relationships with the boys seemed a bit lackluster and definitely not the best part of the book. For me, that was probably the thing that seemed most like the first Georgia Nicolson book, so I'm sure others will love it much more than I did. I'd definitely recommend this to fans of the author's previous series, but even broader I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a seriously funny book with a really amusing narrator.

Review: The Big Crunch

THE BIG CRUNCH
Pete Hautman
Scholastic Press

June and Wes' love story does not go the way love stories are supposed to go. When they meet, there's nothing, and it's not until later that they feel a spark. By then June is dating one of Wes' friends and even after realizing they like each other, there's a lot of ambiguity in their relationship and where they want it to go.

This book captured me. June's always-on-the-move family made me feel for her even as it was clear she wasn't great at letting people in and this made her personality hard to really see. In fact, this was - let's just get it out of the way now - a problem with both characters, throughout the book. While a few of the peripheral characters had lively personalities, it was really hard to tell who June and Wes were sometimes. Their emotions were clear and I found it easy to relate to them, but even after reading the book I don't think I could tell you what sort of characters they were as far as hobbies, passions, or personality traits. However, even if their personalities aren't always clear, the story itself, which takes place throughout an entire year, gives a clear glimpse of their lives and the relationships they have to others which, in a strange way, makes the characters clear in a different sort of way.

Strangely though, that didn't end up mattering to me, and I think the reason it didn't was because this book was just so well done. At its core this is a teenage love story and the emotions are sharp and poignant. It's obvious throughout the book that June and Wes have something special between them and this never seems forced. We know the characters' lives apart before we ever know them together, and the fact that neither one is actively looking to fall in love or really has great expectations for whatever does happen lends an air of unexpectedness to the story, even though you can easily guess a few of the things that end up happening. At times June and Wes - especially Wes - are impetuous at times, to the point of stupidity. It feels realistic while at the same time a few of the events of the book seem to illustrate the whole love is blind idea.

And this is why the ending seemed, compared to the rest of the book, a bit lackluster as far as the emotion goes. While emotion played a huge part in the rest of the book, near the end it seemed to dissipate, which no doubt some will enjoy but I didn't quite enjoy or buy it, not for these characters. As a whole, the writing style of the book reminded me quite a bit of Lynne Rae Perkin's middle grade novel, Criss Cross -- I'd recommend it to fans of that book, as well as readers who want a different, more uncertain sort of love story.

Review: The Liar Society

THE LIAR SOCIETY
Lisa & Laura Roecker
Sourcebooks Fire

Kate is convinced that the death of her best friend Grace was more than just a freak accident. After a year of therapy and medicine, she still doesn't believe it was an accident and when she starts getting cryptic emails from Grace, leading her to clues about what really happened, she sets off to solve the mystery, Nancy-Drew-style. With her lovestruck and conspiracy-crazed neighbor (Seth) by her side, each clue seems to lead to even more mystery and it becomes obvious that their elite prep school is housing more secrets than just the answer to Grace's death.

I have to start with the absolute best thing about this book, which is the fact that it's like a modern version of Nancy Drew. Though Kate's sarcastic exterior (not to mention the way she used Seth) was more than a little annoying in the beginning, these things led to her being incredibly determined to solve the mystery and an honest friendship growing between her and Seth. The plot was refreshingly unpredictable and made for a page-turner of a book.

In addition to Kate's tenacity and the comic relief Seth brought to the book, the setting of Pemberly Brown, their elite prep school where Grace died, was incredible. Richly detailed, with exactly the sort of creepy history you'd expect, it not only added to the "Nancy Drew" feeling, but also grounded the mystery in reality thanks to how real the school itself seemed. Though Kate's search veers to the outrageous at times, the just-as-outrageous setting makes it seem more realistic.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Liar Society, and then the end came. And it was, at least for me, unsatisfying. I like my books, even as a part of a series and especially as the first book in a series, to house a complete story beginning to end, and in some ways this book didn't live up to that. The last few chapter dragged on, but never gave the resolution I was hoping for and expecting. I'd recommend for fans of mysteries and series, especially if they don't mind non-conclusive endings.

Review: Shine

SHINE
Lauren Myracle
Amulet Books

When Cat's best friend is viciously beaten and left with hateful words written on him, the town and police blame it on gay-bashing out-of-towners. But Cat knows that there is badness inside the confines of her small town (Black Creek) and she thinks she knows who's to blame. However, as she sets off to find her best friend's attacker, she discovers that there's much more lurking under the surface of her town and succeeding in finding the attacker will mean going further into the darkness than she ever considered.

At the outset this book seems, while horrific, fairly straightforward: gay teen gets beat up in a backwater town. And while this was the catalyst for everything else, the story quickly becomes bigger and more complicated. Cat discovers, along with the reader, that nothing about the attack is as simple as it appears. Cat, who is dealing with her own trauma that happened years earlier, takes on the case of the attack when no one else will. Her dad is a shut-in, the aunt raising her prefers to brush anything bad or ugly under the rug and forget about it, while her brother let her down the moment she most needed him and she hasn't been able to look at him the same since. The police, stifled by the town's most powerful family, have virtually given up on solving the case, and when Cat starts asking questions the whole town knows it. She's poking her nose in where it doesn't belong.

What Cat does - the choices the makes, the people she seeks out - wouldn't work in other books. On more than one occasion she puts herself in harms way, seeks out danger in order to get closer to the truth of what happened that night, and in any other book I'd be thinking what are you doing? This will not end well! The difference is that here, in Shine, Cat's doing what she has to do. What nobody else will.

This is an extremely dark, disturbing book, but it has to be. There are parts of the story that I really would like to talk about. Shine blew me away with how well and how realistically it handled certain topics, ones that I haven't read in other books. One subject in particular left me stunned by not only how well it was handled, but the fact that it was handled at all. This book goes where others don't, tackles incredibly difficult but all-too-real issues of Black Creek and towns like it. And it does it in a way that left me stunned.

Unfortunately, not all of this book was done so well. The romance aspect, while a small part of the book, seemed out-of-place and very shallow compared with the rest of the story and Cat's trauma in particular seemed to be given the same shallow treatment in the end. Because the book is written with such depth in aspects of setting, characters, themes, and plot, the parts where it falters stand out all the more.

Review: Instructions for a Broken Heart

INSTRUCTIONS FOR A BROKEN HEART
Kim Culbertson
Sourcebooks Fire

When Jessa finds her boyfriend making out with another girl just before their drama club's trip to Italy, she has no idea what to do. But her best friend does; she gives Jessa twenty envelopes, each with a different reason that Sean (the now-ex-boyfriend) is a jerk, along with instructions to help heal her broken heart. However, when Jessa gets to Italy and starts following her friend's meticulously thought-out reasons and instructions, she realizes that in some ways they're causing more harm than good and maybe she has to find her own way to figure things out.

Every so often I'll read a book that doesn't seem to match the back cover/inside flap pitch, and this is one such book. While the summary would have you believe it's a love story orchestrated (or at least helped) by the instructions from Jessa's best friend. This isn't quite true. Not only is it not a love story, but it quickly becomes clear that Jessa - and the friends around her - have some misgivings about the instructions. Instead, this is a story of Jessa trying to get over her heartbreak, sure, but also figure out why it happened and who, away from her everyday life, she really is and wants to be.

Jessa's pain, right from the outset, is huge and overwhelming. Unfortunately, these emotions are told more than shown -- I never truly felt Jessa's pain and maybe part of this is because while Sean is a huge force in Jessa's thoughts, he's really not very present in the book. We get her thoughts of him (sort of) and her best friend's angry thoughts, but I never felt that Sean's character or their relationship was very dimensional. He felt like a placeholder and their relationship felt, sadly, like a sort of stock "first love," which prevented it from having much depth or resonance. Her hurt just never clicked with me even as those around her echo how hard it must be for her to be on a school trip with her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. I consistently felt like I was missing something.

The strength of this novel lies not in its emotions or the actual catalyst of Sean's betrayal, but in the setting of Italy and the group of people that Jessa is with. It's clear from the beginning that her drama club -- students and teachers -- act as something of a large family together. While Jessa has her friend Tyler by her side the entire time, there are also glimpses of her relationships with other students in the class as well as both teachers on the trip. This gives more insight into Jessa's character and life as we get snippets of what her classmates think of her and how they react to the various instructions she's following. In the end, this was more a story of Jessa finding out what, not who, she wanted. There were aspects of the book that felt underdeveloped; I would have liked more personality when it came to Sean and Jessa's best friend and, in many ways, Jessa herself. Many times during this book I wondered why Jessa continued following the instructions as they didn't seem to be helping as much as they were meant to and the extreme anger that they were written with did not endear me to her best friend. There were subplots, usually concerning Jessa and her best friend, that held so much promise and disappointed me when they seemed unresolved by the end.

There's a lot of beauty in this book; the Italian setting seems written so well for Jessa's personal journey, and the closeness of the drama club was refreshing. The characters kept me interested and I did enjoy the book, but many aspects didn't tie together so well, leaving the overall effect to feel somewhat frayed and scattered.

Review: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

DASH & LILY'S BOOK OF DARES
Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Knopf Books for Young Readers

Despite never having met, a red notebook connects Dash and Lily, two teenagers in NYC who pass each other dares and messages by leaving the notebook at various locations. What starts as a way to pass the time becomes bigger as Lily and Dash's adventure starts to involve not only them, but also their friends and family members.

Full disclosure here: I've never been a huge fan of either Rachel Cohn or David Levitan. No particular reason, but I've never found a book of theirs that I really truly enjoyed, so I was a bit nervous about reading this one. Especially as, in the beginning, it's hard to deal with the unique personalities and quirks of the two protagonists. Dash is pretentious in that annoying, not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is sort of way while sheltered Lily comes off as very, very young. The over-the-top-ness of these characters is annoying in the beginning, but the overall story is so cute and cheerful that it eventually overtakes the characters who, after time, become more relatable as they mature a bit. By the end of the book I really liked Lily and thought that she, even more than Dash, had grown up and became a more relatable and likable character.

There were definitely parts of this book that I found unrealistic - the lack of adult supervision for one, especially with Lily, whose entire extended family seemed to be focused on her at times. It required a bit of suspension of disbelief, but overwhelmingly, thanks to the adorable romantic-comedy adventure, this was a very cute love story. Even cute enough for me to overlook the fact of the ridiculous fake Pixar movie that was referenced. (Yes, I know this is a small thing. But, come on, it's Pixar.) I'm sure all David Levithan fans will love this book no matter what, but I'd also recommend it to anyone who loves a cute romance.

Review: Five Flavors of Dumb

FIVE FLAVORS OF DUMB
Antony John
Dial

Piper has one month to get her school's best rock band - Dumb - a paying gig in order to earn a share of the profits and become the band's manager. But not only is the band a mess, Piper also knows nothing about music in the first place. And she's deaf. Still, determined to make some money to help restore her dwindling college fund, Piper quickly teaches herself the ropes in order to become the band manager that Dumb needs.

I'd heard plenty of good things about this book but, being completely honest, it didn't blow me away at first. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief needed in order for me to accept that not only was Dumb Seattle's best teen band, but that Piper, who had absolutely no interest or knowledge of music, would be their manager. Piper's home life is a mess thanks to a dad who, partly because he never learned ASL, has almost no relationship with her and a baby sister who's getting all the attention because with her cochlear implants, she can hear while Piper can't. Piper has a lot of anger, especially in the beginning, and a lot of it (mostly directed towards her father) makes perfect sense. However, while it made sense it also made the character a little difficult to relate to when many of her decisions were fueled by anger and resentment.

However, as the band and Piper's rock-music education became a bigger part of the book, things started coming together more smoothly in the story. While I at first found the deaf-band-manager plot to be unbelievable, the reality of Piper's emotions and reactions as she learns more about the band, music, and how to be a good manager, elevates the book. Through music, which her dad and brother both love, the different parts of Piper's story (family, band, school) come together into a unique and wonderful story.

The family subplot, though it felt weak at the start of the novel, wound up being one of the strongest parts of the book, especially as Piper's relationship with her father changed. I loved the family history and the complicated relationships Piper had with each of them. And while some of the secondary characters fell flat, a few of them, including band members Kallie and Ed, were well-developed characters who really shone. Though I had a few problems with the too-tidy ending and the ASL-written-with-English-grammar, this is one book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend, especially if you're looking for a music-based book.

Cybils!!!!

About a week-ish ago I applied to be a Cybils panelist in the YA Fiction category. For those who don't know, the Cybils is a book award given by bloggers for the best YA and children's books of the year. We all know how much I love YA, especially the contemporary sub-genre, and I've wanted to be a part of the Cybils for years.

Somewhat incredibly, I MADE THE CUT. Which means I'm actually a Cybils first-round judge for the YA Fiction category. AND I COULD NOT BE MORE JAZZED.

If you haven't nominated anything for the YA Fic category yet, I have some suggestions of books that haven't yet been nominated:

Popular, by Alissa Grosso
Other Words for Love, by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
Stay, by Deb Caletti
Vaclav & Lena, by Haley Tanner (although honestly I can't tell if this one was published as YA or adult)

ANYWAY SO THAT'S HAPPENING.