Teen Tuesday

The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry (Henry Holt & Co. hardcover, 3 May 2016).

When Olivia Reinhart was three years old, her mother was murdered.  The primary suspect was her father, but he disappeared.

Flash-forward fourteen years:  Olivia is an emancipated minor working in the deli department at a grocery store.  She is visited at home by two police detectives who call her by her birth name, Ariel Benson.   They inform her that her father's body has been found, in the woods not far from where her mother had been.  

In the Medford newspaper, where her family had lived then, she sees a notice for a memorial service, and decides to go, even though she can barely afford the gas to get there from Portland.  

Olivia swings by the house where she and her grandmother lived until she died, when OIivia was seven.  Seeing that it vacant (and technically, Olivia owns it), she decides to stay for a while to see if she can find out anything about what happened to her parents by getting to know their relatives and friends who are still around.

Although she tries to remain incognito, she's recognized by the elderly neighbor, as well as by her childhood best friend, who agree to assist with her investigation.  

What none of them realize is that they are all putting themselves in danger from someone who managed to keep his/her crime a secret for fourteen years, and will do anything to keep it that way.

This is a riveting, fast-paced story that I read in an afternoon.  

Ms. Henry is a worthy successor to classic young adult mystery writers such as Joan Lowery Nixon and Caroline B. Cooney.  

YA Wednesday

This is Where it Ends by  Marieke Nijkamp (Sourcebooks Fire hardcover, 5 January 2016).

The staff and students of the Opportunity High School in Opportunity, Alabama, are gathered in the auditorium for the principal's traditional "beginning-of-the-semester" speech.

Well, most of them are.  

The track team is outside, training.  Tomás and Fareed have broken into the administration office, looking for someone's permanent record. 

Principal Trenton always gives the same speech, and it always ends at 10:00 a.m. sharp. But this time, when the class bell rings and people begin shuffling towards the exits, they can't get out. 

At 10:05 a.m., a shot rings out.

This gripping story is told from the perspectives of four different students:  Tomás, his twin sister Autumn, her best friend  Sylv(ia), and track runner Claire. Each chapter contains a few paragraphs from the viewpoint of each, as well as screenshots of texts from others.  

The story unfolds in real time over the course of 54 minutes, and can almost be read that way.   

Marieke Nijkamp did extensive research on school shootings, reading investigators' reports and  first-hand accounts, listening to recordings of 911 calls, and studying the psychology of being held at gunpoint.  This has resulted in a piece of fiction that feels very realistic. It's a frightening reflection of the times we live in, and should be required reading for all high school staff, students, and parents. 

FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-galley of this book.

YAThursday

First & Then by Emma Mills (Henry Holt hardcover, 13 October 2015).

Devon loves Jane Austen.  So much so that almost all her thoughts go through the  WWJD (What Would Jane Do?) filter.  Of course, she doesn't always act on it, especially in her everyday speech patterns.

But she does keep her crush on her best friend Cas to herself.  She's pretty sure he doesn't know about it, seeing as he treats her almost like one of the guys.

In her senior year, her fourteen-year-old cousin Foster comes to stay with them.  Foster doesn't like Cas, but Devon doesn't like Foster.  He's a skinny geek who belongs to the Future Science Revolutionaries Club, and is relentlessly cheerful despite the fact that his father recently died and he's been more or less abandoned by his addict mother.  

Because she hasn't taken her required year of PE yet, she's forced to be in a class with a bunch of freshmen, including Foster.  But one other senior is in the class:  obnoxious football star Ezra Lynley, who seems to think Devon is a lower life form.

But when Foster unexpectedly displays an incredible talent for kicking a football, Ezra takes him under his wing, and Devon is forced to learn more about Ezra than she ever wanted to.

Vlogger Emma Mills' debut novel is a charmer, with believable characters and a sly wit that channels Jane.  It has been described as Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights, and was recommended in John Green's 2015 Holiday Book Giving Guide.  Green's fans, as well as Janeites will love this book.




FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Teen Tuesday - Three Exciting January Releases

The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull  (Dutton BFYR hardcover, 19 January 2016).


After years of living in America, Clare Macleod and her father are returning to Ireland, where they’ll inhabit the house Clare was born in—a house built into a green hillside with a tree for a wall. For Clare, the house is not only full of memories of her mother, but also of a mysterious boy with raven-dark hair and dreamlike nights filled with stars and magic. Clare soon discovers that the boy is as real as the fairy-making magic, and that they’re both in great danger from an ancient foe. 

I'm From Nowhere by Suzanne Myers (Soho Teen hardcover, 26 January 2016).

A few weeks into her sophomore year at Ventura High School in California, everything changes for Wren Verlaine. It’s always been just Wren and her mother, Hannah. But when Hannah receives a reporting assignment in Greenland for six months, Wren is shipped off to Hardwick Hall: Hannah’s alma mater back East, which she’s refused to discuss for as long as Wren can remember.

Wren tries to befriend her suitemate, Honor, but Honor looks right through her as if she isn’t there. At least Wren finds an escape in hanging out with cute rowers, like the adorably crinkly eyed Nick, or in riding horses, which she discovers she loves. She finds her niche in the campus’s underground music scene with Chazzy, a darkly hilarious fellow musician. But soon clues begin appearing about the darkest secret her mother ever kept, and the revelation that follows brings Wren and Honor crashing back together, threatening the lives they’ve started to build—perhaps forever.

The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos (Balzer + Bray hardcover, 26 January 2016).

All Imogene Scott knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child. It’s the story of how her parents met: he, a forensic pathologist; she, a mysterious woman who came to identify a body. A woman who left Imogene and her father when she was a baby, a woman who was always possessed of a powerful loneliness, a woman who many referred to as “troubled waters.”

Now Imogene is seventeen, and her father, a famous author of medical mysteries, has struck out in the middle of the night and hasn’t come back. Neither Imogene’s stepmother nor the police know where he could’ve gone, but Imogene is convinced he’s looking for her mother. And she decides it’s up to her to put to use the skills she’s gleaned from a lifetime of reading her father’s books to track down a woman she’s only known in stories in order to find him and, perhaps, the answer to the question she’s carried with her for her entire life.



All summaries are from publishers' websites.

Author Interview -- Jen Klein

Photo and bio: SohoPress.com

Emmy-nominated Jen Klein grew up in North Carolina and studied theatre at Appalachian State University. She wrote the screenplay for the movie Choke and is also the author of the forthcoming contemporary YA romance Shuffle, Repeat.

Jen is currently a writer on the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons, and several animals, all of whom are unruly and ill-behaved.

I was invited to interview Jen Klein, the author of Jillian Cade: (Fake) Paranormal Investigator  as part of YA Reads 2015 Debut Authors Bash.

Enjoy!

S&N: Did you write when you were a kid? What made you decide to write a novel?

JK:  I wrote all the time when I was a kid. I wrote in spiral notebooks, propped up on my elbows on the floor behind the living room sofa. Why there? I have no idea, except maybe it was my very first writer’s cave, before I knew how much I loved a writer’s cave.

** Note: my “cave” these days is most often the guest room, drinking a cup of coffee while Tangerine Dream plays. Or in my bed, sitting up against the pillows, reminding children to PLEASE close the door when they come in or out. 

As far as what made me decide to write a novel…? I was already a screenwriter and -- like many screenwriters -- always THOUGHT I would write a book, but never had. Books seemed daunting: so many pages, and with words going all the way to the edges of the page. SO MANY WORDS. But then one day, I decided to try. And a few pages in, I fell in love. It was like flying. So I kept going.

S&N:  What was your high school experience like, compared to Jillian’s?

JK: I was less dark than Jillian. Less insightful. Probably just as self-involved, but less aware of my self-involvement. Like Jillian, I wasn’t sure I deserved to be seen, to be loved. Unlike Jillian, I was kinda quiet and made good grades.

S&N:  Who were your favorite authors when you were a teen?

JK:  Betty Smith.
       Judy Blume.
       Stephen King.
       Margaret Atwood.
       Orson Scott Card.
       John Irving.
       Jean Auel.
       Anne Rice.

S&N:  The premise for the book is kind of unusual. Jillian made me think of a combination of Buffy Summers (the vampire slayer) and Veronica Mars. Was Jillian based on them? If not, what inspired her?

JK:  Jillian wasn’t based on Buffy and Veronica -- those were comparisons made after she was born. And, yes. I do think of her as being “born.” I guess I think of all characters that way. 

Something I say a lot -- on panels or to other writers in my screenwriting world -- is that I think writing is more like archaeology than architecture. 

By that, what I mean is that it’s not about BUILDING a thing. It’s about FINDING a thing. In this very strange, mystical way, it’s like the story already exists somewhere and you’re just trying to find it. 

I notice it so much in a TV writers’ room, also. It feels like we’re all working together, trying to find the right version of a story. When you get tired or discouraged, someone else can pick up a shovel. In television, the shovel is in the hands of a room full of other writers. In publishing, it’s your editor.

Collaboration is a beautiful, magical thing.

Thanks to YA Reads, I have a signed copy of Jillian Cade: (Fake) Paranormal Investigator , as well as some Jillian Cade swag for one of my readers.  Please comment below by 12:01 a.m. on December 16th, and don't forget to include an e-mail address where I can contact you if you win. Entries from the US only, please.

Soon to be a major motion picture!

Paper Towns by John Green (Dutton hardcover, 2008).

Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman have lived next door to each other since they were two.  

At the age of 10, they saw the body of a man who'd shot himself under a tree in their local park.  Quentin's reaction was to (after a nap) talk to his parents (both therapists) about it. Margo went to the man's house, talked to the police and the next door neighbor.

After that, they grew apart.  

We meet them again when they are seniors in high school.  Quentin is a nerd, and Margo is the most popular girl in school.  Margo isn't exactly typical, though. Her adventures are the stuff of legend, but stories such as Margo getting backstage at a rock concert by convincing security that she's the girlfriend of a band member are true.  

One night, Margo knocks on Quentin's window and convinces him to join her.  Quentin has the night of his life driving all over Orlando with her.  The next day, she's disappeared.

Certain that Margo intended him to find her, Quentin spend the final few weeks of his final year in high school obsessing over clues that she's left for him.

This book is typical John Green:  it draws the reader into the story in a such way that they feel a part of it.

The movie is set to release the first week of June with Nat Wolff playing Quentin and Cara Delevigne as Margo, and I'm looking forward to seeing it!

FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed the book from my local library.