review: being friends with boys

BEING FRIENDS WITH BOYS
Terra Elan McVoy
Simon Pulse
(bought finished copy)

As with every Terra Elan McVoy novel I've read, the front-flap summary for this one is much simpler than the story itself, as well as fairly misleading. Yes, this the story of a girl who is friends with a bunch of boys and falls for one of them, but it doesn't go down quite the way you think and it's also a lot more complex. Really this is about Charlotte, manager to her friends' band (Sad Jackal), as well as the brilliant mind behind their song lyrics, and what happens when the band breaks up, her most solid friendship falters (and then falls apart altogether).

And my feelings are mixed. To be perfectly honest, there were too many characters in this book that I just didn't like. I'm one of those readers that likes to like characters; as a general rule, I don't want to read about someone I can't stand. And though Charlotte, her three sisters (two steps- and one biological who's off at college), and a few of the more center-stage characters (her best friend Trip, for instance, as well as "bad boy" Benji) were plenty likable, there were plenty of other characters (mostly band members) that I just wasn't a fan of. And maybe it's the territory that comes with a boy-dominated novel but there was sometimes a little too much vulgarity for me personally.

But. Despite the issues I had with some of the characters, Being Friends With Boys, just like McVoy's other novels, manages to be so much more complicated than the summary can explain and also sneak in more than a few moments of stark honesty and realism. Because Charlotte has so many relationships (friends, family, crushes) going on throughout the course of the book, there's also plenty of opportunities for those all-too-honest small epiphanies. There's her older sister who's started college and how much Charlotte misses her and doesn't quite know how to deal with the fact that their lives are now so separate. There's there best guy friend who seems to quit their friendship at the same time as he quits the band, and Charlotte not understanding what happened between them. There's also her (ex) female best friend, whose dismissal of Charlotte is a big part of the reason she's a-okay having only male friends. Strands of friendship and family are woven so neatly throughout the music-fueled story. In many ways, Charlotte reminded me of Ruby Oliver, at least in the later books -- she's a girl surrounded by plenty of friends, living what looks from the outside like a very cool life but who is dealing with some very painful relationship issues including broken and struggling friendships.

Of course, there's also a romantic storyline (more than one, really) in this novel, but despite the fact that there's more than one Potential Boyfriend for Charlotte, it's obvious who she should end up with and their storyline is sadly very minor, especially compared to the other storylines.

I liked this book. It's well-written and so full of different types of relationships, which is one of my top favorite things about reading realistic fiction. However, I did have a few fairly large issues with the book's unlikable characters and often dysfunctional relationships. If you're a first-time Terra Elan McVoy reader, I'd start with The Summer of First and Lasts and save this one for later.

Terra Elan McVoy Giveaway!!

Thanks to Terra Elan McVoy and her wonderful Simon & Schuster people, I'm hosting a giveaway of her entire backlist (Pure, After The Kiss, and The Summer of Firsts and Lasts), plus a signed copy of her newest novel, Being Friends With Boys. I'm very excited about this! McVoy is a sadly underrated voice in contemporary YA and I'm eager for more readers to be introduced to her books.

This giveaway is open to US readers only (sorry, international!). You can gain extra entries by commenting on my Q&A with the author or tweeting abut the giveaway.

This giveaway will close on May 16th -- two weeks from now.

Q&A with Terra Elan McVoy

I'm so glad to be posting this Q&A with Terra Elan McVoy, whose upcoming book Being Friends With Boys is one I can't wait to read considering how much I liked two of her earlier works. Next week I'll be hosting an awesome giveaway of her books and you can comment on this post for an extra entry.

Photo Credit: Jamie Allen

Broadly, what are your books about?
I'd say in general my books tend to be about figuring out who you are and what you really want out of life: finding and asserting your own voice in the cacophony of other voices around you. (Friends, romantic interests, teachers, family, bosses, society, etc.)

What is it that inspires your writing?
The drama of Real Life has always been incredibly inspiring to me. I just find the complications of human relatinships, and the nuances of daily life, endlessly fascinating. The challenge of figuring out how to articulate a specific emotional experience in a way that someone else can feel it too --  a stranger far away whom you've never met, but who is reading your book -- is also a bit part of what inspires me to write. To accomplish that is an enormous task, and I'm constantly searching for how to do that best.

Are there any authors or books that specifically influenced you as a writer?
Every book I read is an influence on me in some way, because I'm always reading to learn more about the craft of writing -- how to do it well, how not to do it, what's out there in the conversation, etc. Reading is so enormously important, if you want to be a writer, because it's always teaching you. But writers who have really struck me and made me go, "Oh gosh, I wish I could write like that" include Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Pat Conroy, MFK Fisher, Laurie Halse Anderson, John Irving, Carson McCullers, and Raymond Carver.

What was your favorite thing about writing Being Friends With Boys?
The writing process of Being Friends With Boys was actually pretty difficult, and I had to do a lot of extensive editing, so I think my favorite part is that my editor and I managed to transform a book that was originally pretty messy, into something we are both very excited about. Collaborating with her (my editor) is always a lot of fun, but this time around, it was particularly so.

Why do you write stand-alone novels instead of series? And would you ever consider writing a sequel to one of your novels?
I have such huge admiration for people who are able to pull off a series, because to me it seems so overwhelping! Arcing out a single novel is difficult enough -- I can't imagine what it takes to successfully arc out a series, and then the books within them. I also just have so many different issues and situations that interest me, so I jump around a lot in terms of subject matter. I think that's harder to do in a series. Maybe one day, when I have some more experience, I'll think about a series, but for right now it's not in the plan. I will say, however, that there are some characters from my other books who remain interesting to me and maybe one day I will continue or revisi their stories.

Do you read a lot of YA? What are some of your favorite books?
I do read a decent amount of YA, though I'm not the book-in-a-couple-of-days reader that I used to be! There are so many great voices out there right now and such good writing, so it's really hard to choose, but some of my very, very favorites include Nothing Like You by Lauren Stasnick; Take A Bow, by Elizabeth Eulberg; Lola And The Boy Next Door, by Stephanie Perkins; Love Is The Higher Law, by David Levithan; Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin; Accomplice, by Erieann Corrigan; and Feed, by M.T. Anderson. There are about six books on my To Read list right now that are all YA, and it seems like I can never keep up!

Other Favorites:
Movie? It's cheesy, but I love "You've Got Mail."
TV Show? Mad Men
Song (currently)? I am obsessed with the Gorillaz right now, particularly "On Melancholy Hill."
Thing to do on a rainy day? Read or write (ideally both), and maybe bake something!

Terra Elan McVoy has been reading and writing avidly since she first learned how, and has had many jobs that center around those two activities, from managing an independent children's bookstore, to teaching writing classes, and even answering fan mail for Captain Underpants. Terra lives and works in the same Atlanta neighborhood where her novels After The Kiss, Being Friends With Boys, and Pure are set. She is also the author of The Summer of Firsts and Lasts. To learn more about Terra's life, visit TerraElan.com. You can also like her Facebook author page, and follow her on Twitter at @TerraMcVoy.

Review: The Summer of Firsts and Lasts

THE SUMMER OF FIRSTS AND LASTS
Terra Elan McVoy
Simon Pulse

For sisters Calla, Violet, and Daisy, summer camp is something special. It's the place their parents met and, for Calla at least, the three weeks away from home during the summer have always been something to look forward to. This year Calla's working as an assistant to the camp director while Violet has her last summer as a camper and Daisy tries to figure out who she is apart from her older sisters. Added to the girls' summer-camp-related stories are their romantic lives: Calla hopes to finally admit her feelings to her best friend, sure that he feels the same way, while Violet's attraction to a boy she knew two summers ago is undeniable and Daisy's first-day-of-camp crush turns out worse than she expects. 

This is a difficult story to sum up, which is probably why the jacket-flap summary feels so misleading (and, to be honest, what I wrote above isn't too much better): this book isn't really about boys. It's about three sisters and how their last summer all together at camp defines and changes them. Told from the POVs of each girl, the story develops their personalities and the dynamics between them well, if a bit strangely. The fact is that while this is very much a book about the bonds of sisterhood, for a large part of the book Calla, Violet, and Daisy don't have many scenes together. Calla's busy behind the scenes of camp, helping the new director keep everything running smoothly; it's a job she's proud to have gotten but it's obvious that for Calla, who loves camp more than any of them, not getting to truly experience it this summer is a letdown. Violet, tired of always playing by the rules, falls under the spell of a rebellious fellow camper, Brynn. And Daisy, the youngest, deals with being something of an outcast in her cabin, thanks to her more introspective personality and the fact that she's not willing to bend to others' expectations of her.

In a big way, I loved this book. At different times during the course of the story I related strongly to each of the sisters: though the timespan of The Summer of Firsts and Lasts is only two weeks, there's so much detail and so much happening both internally and externally, that it feels like much longer. There's love, friendship, heartbreak, nonconformity, and unity all conveyed here. The emotions and relationships are rarely straight-forward, even and especially between the sisters themselves. While it's obvious that they love each other and would do anything for one another, there's the usual push-and-pull of family and of sisters that McVoy writes incredibly well.

Outside of the sister's relationships with each other, there's the romantic aspect of the book, which was a bit hit-and-miss for me. Calla's friendship with Duncan, the boy she's in love with, seems predictable from the outset: she's sure that he shares her feelings and that this will finally be their summer while her sisters, who've seen this play out again and again between the two of them, think she's being a little pathetic and wish she would just confess her feelings and get it over with. I wanted more out of this relationship, more that showed just how close Calla and Duncan were and why their relationship was so confusing. And there are glimpses of this, but because they rarely see each other, it was never as much as I wanted.

Meanwhile, Violet's unstoppable crush on James, a boy she knew from two summers ago, is a very different sort of relationship and since it's the most romantic/couple-y one in the book, I wish it had been handled a bit differently. For the most part, Violet and James don't talk. They share glances, they're constantly aware of each other, and they sneak off together in the night. But the majority of scenes we get between them are purely physical and, considering how attached Violet is to him, how happy he makes her, and how authentic these feelings come across, I wish there had been more. More of his personality and more of their dynamic together. Because while I really wanted to root for them, it's hard to root for a couple you really know next to nothing about.

And this, unfortunately, gets at one of my biggest problems with The Summer of Firsts and Lasts: it's often hard to really pin down these character's personalities. Part of this, I think, is because they're in the world of summer camp, which doesn't quite operate the way other settings/places do. Though the emotions come across so incredibly clear, it's sometimes difficult not having something solid, concrete, to hang those emotions on. Terra Elan McVoy is a uniquely talented writer and I love this book -- it's a bittersweet story with complex, realistic emotions -- but still I sometimes felt like there was a little bit of something missing.

Review: After the Kiss

AFTER THE KISS
Terra Elan McVoy
Simon Pulse

Though Camille and Becca have never met, their lives become intertwined when Camille kisses Becca's boyfriend, Alec. For Becca, the kiss signals the end of her relationship while it unmoors Camille, who has gotten good at not setting down roots as her family is constantly picking up and moving. Written in split POV with both verse (Becca) and second-person stream-of-consciousness narration (Camille), the book explores the kiss from both girls' viewpoints as they deal with what comes after.

Since the kiss seems to be the jumping-off point for both girls' stories, I was surprised that it didn't come until over 100 pages into the novel. The characters and writing style kept me reading up until that point, however McVoy's unique writing is both positive and negative: it was interesting, but second-person narration usually reads a bit weird and takes some getting used to even in the best of hands. Becca's verses read more like prose split into lines, but I'm partial enough to novels-in-verse that this was okay with me. The story really takes off when Camille and Alec kiss and from there the girls' stories twine together in an interesting way as Camille's new hangout is the coffee shop that Becca works at. The two strike up a strangely unique relationship though I was disappointed that there was never any sort of recognition or confrontation between them.

This book sets itself apart from many books with similar cheating-boyfriend themes because not only is Alec not much of a character, but more importantly Camille has no idea he has a girlfriend. The writing style at first creates a distance between the characters and the reader, but after a while this distance went away and I felt very much as if I were standing in Camille-and-Becca's shoes as they dealt with life. Though I personally related a bit more to Camille, both characters are strong and reading about Becca's job and senior-year newspaper are some of the highlights of the book. Both girls are dealing with heartbreak -- Becca over Alec, and Camille over an unnamed boy she had to leave with her family's most recent move. Camille's heartbreak, strangely, seems more deeply felt than Becca's, but that might just be my own bias. Both girls are also dealing with family issues as Camille's parents' constant moving has her unmoored and unable to connect with others while Becca's parents' divorce has left her living alone with her mother while her older brother is away at college. The issues the characters are dealing with are strange mirror images of each other and I loved the various themes -- family, love, friendship, and money. The writing styles make everything a bit hazy and there were times when I found myself wishing the story were written in a more straight-forward manner -- I missed scenes and dialogue here, but in the end I have to say that this style of writing actually helped the book. Reading the character's unique POVs brings the reader much closer to them, as if reading a journal or private blog, even if it distances from the rest of the story. It makes the emotions of the story that much stronger and in a story built on turbulent and deeply-felt emotions, this is important.

It took a while to adjust to this book, but once I did I couldn't stop reading. It's understated and complex, different and heartfelt. I definitely recommend it, especially for those readers who like more experimental writing.