LGBT Monday (YA) Whatever.:Or how junior year became totally f$@ked

Author: S.J. Goslee

Series: Standalone

Released: August 2nd 2016

Publisher: Roaring Brook 
Length: 272 pages

Source: Bought

Buy: Amazon

 Hilarity ensues when a slacker teen boy discovers he's gay, in this unforgettably funny YA debut.
Mike Tate is a normal dude. He and his friends have a crappy band (an excuse to drink cheap beer and rock out to the Lemonheads) and hang out in parking lots doing stupid board tricks. But when Mike's girlfriend Lisa, who knows him better than he does, breaks up with him, he realizes he's about to have a major epiphany that will blow his mind. And worse--he gets elected to homecoming court.
It's like the apocalypse came, only instead of nuclear bombs and zombies, Mike gets school participation, gay thoughts, and mother-effin' cheerleaders.
With the free spirit of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the raw voice of Winger, and characters reminiscent of Freaks & Geeks, this debut YA offers a standout voice and a fresh, modern take on the coming-out story.  

Whatever by S.J. Goslee is a hilarious and honest YA coming out story and it’s in many ways unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It’s not a romance by any usual standards, but it can be painfully romantic and endearing at times. It’s a heart-warming story with so many laugh-out-loud moments and unparalleled honesty in dealing with subjects like self-discovery, bisexuality and coming of age.

Review: Underwater

Author: Marisa Reichardt
Series: Standalone
Released: January 12th 2016
Publisher: Macmillan
Length: 288 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon

Morgan didn’t mean to do anything wrong that day. Actually, she meant to do something right. But her kind act inadvertently played a role in a deadly tragedy. In order to move on, Morgan must learn to forgive—first someone who did something that might be unforgivable, and then herself.

But Morgan can’t move on. She can’t even move beyond the front door of the apartment she shares with her mother and little brother. Morgan feels like she’s underwater, unable to surface. Unable to see her friends. Unable to go to school. 

When it seems Morgan can’t hold her breath any longer, a new boy moves in next door. Evan reminds her of the salty ocean air and the rush she used to get from swimming. He might be just what she needs to help her reconnect with the world outside.

Underwater, Marisa Reichardt’s wonderful debut, is a book about the debilitating depths of fear and the stunning power of courageous hope. It begs to be read in one sitting and commands to be felt deeply. Underwater is a story about Morgan, a 16-year-old girl suffering from agoraphobia after a traumatic event. Morgan hasn’t left the house in months – she attends school online, has her own little rituals while her family is away and she meets her pro bono therapist in her own living room. Even the thought of going outside makes her panic until the right motivation comes along.

LGBT Monday: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Author: Becky Albertalli
Series: Standalone
Released: April 7th 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Length: 320 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.

With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met. 

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is the most adorable book in the history of books ever. (Seriously, my heart is currently a puddle on the floor.) But this book is much more than just quirky and cute, it is also necessary, very important even, because it (finally) brings much needed diversity into YA fiction. In the sub(sub)genre we usually refer to as coming-of-age contemporary fiction, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda shines like the brightest star.

The Cadet of Tildor Blog Tour Excertp and Giveaway

Hello lovelies,

Today I am very excited to share with you an excerpt from The Cadet of Tildor by Alex Lidell. I've been reading a lot of (good) fantasy lately and I'm really looking forward to this book. Here's some basic info:

Title: The Cadet of Tildor
Release date: January 10th 2013
Publisher: Dial
Genre: Fantasy
Age group: Young Adult
Buy: Amazon

Tamora Pierce meets George R. R. Martin in this smart, political, medieval fantasy-thriller.

There is a new king on the throne of Tildor. Currents of political unrest sweep the country as two warring crime families seek power, angling to exploit the young Crown's inexperience. At the Academy of Tildor, the training ground for elite soldiers, Cadet Renee de Winter struggles to keep up with her male peers. But when her mentor, a notorious commander recalled from active duty to teach at the Academy, is kidnapped to fight in illegal gladiator games, Renee and her best friend Alec find themselves thrust into a world rife with crime, sorting through a maze of political intrigue, and struggling to resolve what they want, what is legal, and what is right.


EXCERPT #5

He cocked his head, regarding her for several seconds. “No.” The word was mild. He switched the sword back into his left hand. “Fight.”

Fine. She skipped the salute and went for his throat.

The throat moved. And continued moving. The harder she swung, the more Savoy slid, his very lack of force mocking her efforts. An urge to hurt him suddenly gripped her, and Renee threw her whole weight behind the blows, aiming for his ribs, his thighs, his hurt shoulder. If a blow connected, just one, just once, he’d feel her worth, her potential, he’d know she belonged here.

About the author:

Alex Lidell is a YA fantasy writer and author of ABNA Finalist THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013). 

Although English is Alex’s primary language, it wasn’t her first. Coming from Russia, Alex learned english in elementary school and fell in love with reading when the school librarian put Tamora Pierce’s ALANNA into her hands. Years later, in college, it was another book that re-united Alex with russian, which she had shunned in adolescence. The Three Musketeers.* Alex thanks both books, and the writers who created them. 

Beyond writing, Alex is also a photographer, a horseback rider, and a paramedic. The latter two go hand in hand more often than one would like. She is trying to self-teach herself and her horse to sword-fight. Alex would love to see THE CADET OF TILDOR in the classroom and is working on developing teacher guides for the novel. She enjoys “e-meeting” both students and educators.

Follow Alex on Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, Shelfari or Library Thing

Please visit the tour site for information about the other tour stops.

You can enter to win one of the two following prizes:
$20 Amazon Gift Card, PLUS a copy of THE CADET OF TILDOR with swag – US
$20 Book Depository Gift Card – International

(The giveaway os offered and organized by the author and not The Nocturnal Library.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway


As always, a warm thank you to AToMR Tours for organizing this blog tour.

Review: A Brighter Fear by Kerry Drewery

Publication date: June 7th 2012
Publisher: HarpeCollins Children's Books
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Baghdad 2003. Lina is living with her father, a university professor, and dreaming about becoming an architect. Her mother, a successful lawyer, has disappeared four years earlier, taken on her way home from work, never to be seen or heard from again. Rumors of war are getting louder by the minute, but Lina’s father refuses to leave Baghdad in case her mother returns. When the bombs begin to fall and foreign soldiers become a part of everyday life, one by one Lina’s dreams start crumbling around her, until she has nothing left but desperate hope tied to an impossible boy.

Night after night, far too many nights for me to remember, or want to remember, the bombing continued. And with every bang, every crash, every explosion, I waited, expecting our house to be hit. For my world to end. I couldn’t think about tomorrow, that maybe next it was my turn to die.
The beginning of Lina’s story was strongly reminiscent of Lena’s story in Between Shades of Gray, and not just because of their names. It felt almost like reading Between Shades of Gray: Iraqi edition, and I had fun comparing the two for a while, but I was glad when they diverged after the first few chapters. As much as I loved Between Shades of Gray, I like diversity even more.

Lina’s account was interrupted a few times by very short chapters that focused on her mother’s disappearance in 1999. Interrupting a first person narrative with occasional chapters in third person and from a different point of view is a narrative technique I don’t particularly care for, so I was both dazed and dismayed when Drewery abandoned Lina suddenly and in a very difficult moment to give us three pages about her mother being captured four years earlier. The first time was the hardest because it followed a very emotional scene and I had a hard time adjusting to the sudden change, but it was difficult even later, when I knew to expect it. I can think of a few better ways to tell the same story, and I wish one of them had been chosen instead.

I can’t shake the feeling that it was simply too early for this book. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it was clear that the author strived for impartiality, and with wars, that sort of thing requires a lot of time and emotional distance, if it is ever even possible. I understand the appeal, the need to go where no YA author has gone before, but I also understand that sometimes you just bite off more than you can chew. No matter how sensitive Drewery’s approach, and no matter how brave she might be for deciding to write this story in the first place, the fact remains that in trying to be impartial, she remained superficial.

There are, however, a few things I greatly admire. Drewery’s writing style is clear and concise, but with great emotional depth. The easiness with which I connected with Lina proves that Kerry Drewery is an excellent writer. I’m already excited about her next project.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher, HarperCollins Children’s Books, for review purposes.

Review: Dark Eyes by William Richter

Dark Eyes by William Richter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


From the second I first saw Dark Eyes, I knew we were going to be great friends. Everyone in the world liked the Millennium trilogy, so labeling this book as YA version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a smart move indeed… but fortunately, it’s not just a marketing trick, it has a grain of truth to it.

In her short sixteen years, Valentina Mayakova has lived three very different lives. Shortly after birth, she was abandoned at a Russian orphanage, where she spent her first few years, with no one but an affectionate cleaning lady to care for her properly. At five, she was adopted by a rich American couple and taken to New York, where she became Wallis Stoneman, a pampered, but aggressive and stubborn girl. By her fifteenth birthday, her parents were already divorced, and Wallis, angry and defiant, left her mother Claire for a life on the streets of New York. Her street family consists of three other people: Ella, Jake, and Trevin. One day, while trying to make a new fake ID, Wally accidentally discovers a letter from her birthmother, with a heartfelt note and a valuable stone, and starts looking for her real mother all over the city. But she’s not the only one looking: her real father has just escaped from a Russian prison and dragged her older brother Tiger to New York to find her mother and the rest of the stones.

Don’t you just love it when someone writes for young adults like they aren’t made of glass? When an author respects that teens can read about something very traumatic and not be overly traumatized themselves? I often think about how patronizing YA authors tend to be toward their audience, but William Richter does not pull back. In Dark Eyes, he doesn’t just gloss over the events that put those kids on the streets. We learn about Ella’s vicious stepfather who used to rape and photograph her until she finally couldn’t take it anymore. We get a glimpse of Jake’s story, his dead parents and sister, and the abuse he had to put up with from his cousins and state appointed guardians. We get to really learn the details about the beaten and murdered meth addict in the morgue. We get bloody action scenes, throats get cut, women get beaten almost to death, and all the while, there is a steady stream of profanities in Russian. (The fun part for me was that Russian and Croatian swear words are almost the same so I chuckled every time Klesko said something particularly juicy.)

Dark Eyes reminded me so much of a Hollywood action movie, which I suppose makes perfect sense since William Harlan Richter is a Hollywood screenwriter. I kept waiting for Bruce Willis to show up, barefoot and in a white sleeveless shirt, and shoot all those wicked Russian mobsters. He didn’t come, but he could have – he would have fit right in.

There is, of course, the small issue of predictability. I knew everything that was going to happen at least fifty pages before it did and I knew which characters were going to die the second they showed up. It didn’t really bother me, however, and I don’t think Richter was aiming to surprise. Dark Eyes is a thrill ride that uses gritty, realistic details of life on the streets to shock and captivate the reader. I hope there's a sequel in the works.

Innocent Darkness (The Aether Chronicles, #1)

Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lazear

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Innocent Darkness is a story about Noli, a girl who lost her social status and her chances for a good marriage when her father disappeared, and is forced to go to a boarding school for troubled girls, from where she is later taken to Faery to become the human sacrifice that will save the entire realm. She is found and taken by the queen’s ruthless huntsman Kevighn. He somehow falls in love with Noli even though she’s just one of many girls he’s kidnapped and brought to his queen to be killed. Noli’s best friend V, whom she has feelings for, turns out to be none other than the earth court prince in exile and comes rushing to save her.


If someone had given me a copy of Innocent Darkness without the cover and the publisher info, I’d have dropped it after less than 20%, thinking that it’s self-published, and one of those books that gives self-publishing a bad name. Innocent Darkness seems unfinished and unpolished. It lacks structure, it’s full of rough transitions, repetitiveness and contradictions. In fact, to me it seemed more like a draft than like a finished book. It was very rough around the edges and uneven in more ways than one. The transitions between different points of view tended to be too abrupt and badly handled so they always came like a slap in the face.

In some ways, the book seemed very childish, but then there was just enough sex and opium to make me uncomfortable. (Reading about either of those things doesn’t make me uncomfortable in itself, but in this case, it didn’t fit well with the rest of the story.) I am glad that the author decided to tackle the topic of sexual abuse; after all, something like that is highly probable in a boarding school where unprotected girls get examined by a male doctor who has absolute power over them. I just wish the rest of the book wasn’t quite so naïve.

The language was another thing that didn’t sit well with me at all. I’m certainly not an expert in English language, I’m not even a native speaker, but I can recognize a failed attempt when I see one. It wasn’t nearly formal enough for that time (1901), alternate history or not, and throwing in a few archaisms and repeating them over and over again couldn’t have possibly worked.

I didn’t actually do a search to see how many times the exact words ‘opium and soft women’ were used, but it must have been over fifteen. To me, this shows that the author doesn’t know the first thing about opium users (or soft women) and that she didn’t do any research whatsoever, but instead adopted this expression because it sounded good to her (or it sounded like an appropriate activity for a man beyond redemption) and insisted on repeating it twice in every chapter. That brings me to Kevighn, the Faery queen’s huntsman, who indulges in all this opium and soft women and is one of the most underdeveloped characters I’ve ever come across. I’m still not quite sure what his role or his motivations were supposed to be, but his entire situation was left completely open, which makes me think that he’ll be very important in the sequel.

At the beginning, I liked Noli’s best friend V, even though he was a bit of a cliché, but as the story progressed and he was conveniently given the role that was most needed at the time, the whole thing (and his character) became utterly ridiculous. The way the plot was solved was also entirely predictable and childish and in complete contrast with the darker parts of the book I’ve mentioned earlier. That ending would have fit better in a children’s book, but for an adult, or even a young adult, it’s almost insulting.


I guess I’ve made it abundantly clear that I won’t be reading the next book in the Aether Chronicles. At best, this book needs a lot more work, but frankly, I’m not sure it can be saved.

Harbinger

Harbinger by Sara Wilson Etienne

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


”Whether you know it or not, each one of you is at a critical turning point. If you are willing, there is still time to turn back from the terminal paths you have chosen. But Holbrook is your last chance. In the peace of these woods, we can lead you back to society, show you how to assimilate, nurture appropriate behavior. But if you turn your back on this final opportunity, the rest of the world will not be so kind.”

Well, they weren’t exactly kind either. Faye Robson has been fighting with visions and nightmares for years. Instead of trying to find ways to help her at home, or simply listen to her, her father brought her to Holbrook Academy, a glorified mental institution, and just left her in the not-so-gentle hands of Dr. Murdoch. At Holbrook, Dr. Murdoch maintains order with the help of her vicious Caretakers, armed with Tasers and pepper spray. They punish and degrade students at the slightest provocation, but Faye’s group is targeted even more often than the others, and something is happening to them at night while they’re under the influence of sleeping pills.

There are authors who write descriptively and atmospherically like it’s the easiest thing in the world because it comes naturally to them, and some of those authors are among my favorites. However, there are also authors who’d like to belong to that group but can’t quite pull it off. Sarah Wilson Etienne is one of them. Her prose screams that she was trying too hard. I’m not sure what she was aiming to accomplish with the first three or four chapters of Harbinger, but I can tell you that she failed spectacularly. As much as she tried to make her descriptions of Holbrook and the surrounding woods stunning and memorable, her sentences simply lack colorfulness and depth. She doesn’t even have a distinctive style like Tahereh Mafi, for example. (Hey, you can like Mafi or not, but you can’t deny that her writing is different.) As far as I can tell, she tried to find her voice and failed.

The worldbuilding was also a mess. (Wow, I’m being especially eloquent today.) In the not-so-distant future, people don’t live in cities anymore, they are organized in Cooperatives. What are these Cooperatives? Who runs them? If not in the big cities, where do they live? What caused the society to move and reorganize in such a radical way? Etienne mentions something about oil, and then around 25% she mentions Peak War, but the real explanation doesn’t come until later, and even then it’s a lot of telling and no showing, and I just couldn’t see the point. Why would she set her story in a dystopian world if she wasn’t going to develop it properly? Halbrook Academy could have existed in today’s world with a few minor adjustments. In fact, that would have been so much better because the focus needed to remain on the institution alone. I really don’t see the point of throwing your characters in a world that you leave unexplained until the very end. Bits and pieces of information were thrown in randomly, but it was too little and much too late.
The second part of the book was even more confusing and it showed that an excess of ambition can be a very dangerous thing indeed. I’m sure the story about the Red Paint People sounded fascinating in theory, but the end result was confusing and… well, I was trying not to use the word terrible, but it seems that I have no choice. It was a disaster.

In case all this wasn’t enough to keep you away, there’s also the small matter of instalove. Faye and Kel meet and they instantly know that they’re special to each other. Her powers work differently on him and he isn’t at all uncomfortable around her like everyone else seems to be. At one point, she suspects him of spying, but she’s drawn to him nevertheless. She doesn’t really trust him or confide in him, but of course he’s gorgeous so they must be made for each other.

In my opinion, Harbinger isn’t worth your time. If it were a self-published book, I’d say it’s one of those that gives self-publishing a bad name. I struggled to finish it, and I had trouble keeping up with the abrupt changes in pacing. Sarah Wilson Etienne has great imagination, but her writing needs more work.

Wander Dust (The Seraphina Parrish Trilogy #1)

Wander Dust by Michelle Warren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Forewarning: I know not many days have passed since Maja reviewed this same book here, but I couldn't help it. This is why you want to read it:


Wander Dust is, in a nutshell, the love child of Jumper and Harry Potter.

This alone should make you dump everything you're reading and make you trigger-happy with your Amazon account. Well, aside from making you swoon just by thinking about Hayden Christensen... but I digress.

This is what I needed to lift me out of my reading slump!
I am in awe of Warren's fertile imagination, her plotting skills and her vivid descriptions. This is an author you definitely want to keep an eye on and I promise her book is certainly worth reading. And it's self-published! This must be the year of the Self-Pubbed Revolution!

The story starts with Seraphina celebrating her 16th birthday, in a restaurant, with her dad and his girlfriend. That's also when strange things start happening to her: candles igniting by themselves even underwater and a dark, dangerous looking lady trying to fry her brain just by looking at her.
When she receives the picture of a handsome guy in the mail and she discovers him stalking her at school, she just knows something's off.
After the umpteenth grounding by her father and a near-breakdown due to what she thinks are hallucinations, her father decides to send her to live with her aunt in Chicago and that's when she begins discovering the truth. Sera can time travel. When she starts attending the prestigious Academy, she learns she is a Wanderer, one-third of a team of time travelers, together with a Protector and a Seer. But when she realizes that her time traveling abilities might just lead her to her dead mother and help her change the past, trouble is sure to come her way.

Wander Dust is an ambitious book. It deals with time travel, a fact which, in itself, can potentially lead to disaster (as well as turning my brain to a mushy goo by trying to figure out the underlying theory).
If that weren't enough, its world-building is extremely sophisticated: different settings, real life places in which unreal, logic-defying action scenes take place; incredible, steampunk-ish magical inventions and relics which make time traveling possible. I loved it.
Fortunately, Warner delivers on both counts. She keeps her time traveling theory pretty simple, linear and very clear. I didn't have time to ask myself questions "but what if...?" because she'd already given an answer before they could take form in my mind.

Did I already say her world-building is amazing? I felt like a kid in a candy store just by following Seraphina inside the Academy. It occurred to me that I hadn't encountered such a good, imaginative, magic-ridden setting since the time of Harry Potter. The scenes in Venice (a city which I know very well) were accurate, realistic - an brownie points for not throwing at me misspelled, cheesy sentences in Italian. You could see she'd done her research there.

If even THAT weren't enough to convince you to pick up Wander Dust, rest assured this book will leave you breathless. It is so fast-paced, action-packed and full of great adventures you won't even have time to realize you're at the last chapter.
It's got good characters, a swoon-worthy guy and... ALERT! In my opinion, this book wins the Award for Best Kiss of the year, hands down!

I don't mean to be overly gushy and make you think this book is perfect, because it isn't. Like almost every other self-published book out there, it has a few editing issues BUT it's nothing major that a good professional editor could not quickly remedy and anyway, the story is just so good they didn't bother me at all.
It also has its fair share of clichés, in good old tradition of YA tropes. Nevertheless, it manages to be way, way better than a good part of the books I have read this year. This series has much potential I was really blown away.

I really can't wait for the second book to come out!

Unravelling

Unravelling by Elizabeth Norris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I never give five stars easily, but I'd give this book ten if I could.


I always feel this strange sense of accomplishment when I discover a book I can add to my all-time favorites. There aren’t many books that mean so much to me and that I keep going back to over and over again. I take that short list and adding books to it very seriously. Therefore, I needed to give myself some time before reviewing this because I was afraid that my initial reaction was entirely emotional and that my enthusiasm will drop once I calm down. I slept on it, I finished a very different book by one of my favorite authors, but none of that changed how I feel. If anything, I am now convinced more than ever that I found something truly special in Unravelling (that’s two Ls in the UK edition, only one in the US).


Janelle Tanner is living with her parents and her younger brother, working as a lifeguard at the beach and dating a gorgeous and extremely popular high school senior, Nick. Her life looks perfect on the outside, but on the inside, her mother is bipolar and needs to be taken care of, and her father, no matter how wonderful, has a job that’s keeping him away most of the time. He’s the head of counterintelligence in the FBI’s office in San Diego, and he just got a case that’s driving him and the other agents crazy. An explosive device has been discovered and it’s counting down days, but no matter how many experts they bring in, no one has any idea what it is or how to disarm it. As if that’s not enough, unidentifiable bodies, almost completely melted from radiation, are suddenly showing up everywhere. One of these bodies was found in the car that hit Janelle on her way home from work. She seemed more or less fine after the accident, but what no one knows, what no one would ever believe her, is that she died when the car hit her, and a stoner kid from her school, Ben Michaels, brought her back to life and healed her. Who is Ben? Where are all the bodies coming from? What’s going to happen when the countdown finally hits zero? Is it all somehow connected? Janelle and her best friend Alex always enjoyed ‘borrowing’ her father’s case files from his home office and discussing his cases, but this time, they may be in over their heads.


Elizabeth Norris’ writing is flawless. It doesn’t draw attention to itself, but it keeps you engaged and controls your emotions in a way that doesn’t make you feel manipulated. Unravelling is action-packed from start to finish, but that doesn’t mean that it lacks depth. It was truly heartbreaking, and I gave myself a headache from all the crying. If you think this is just another YA novel, think again, because Elizabeth Norris pulled no punches. She kept surprising me on every page, and each time I thought I had it all figured out, she did something entirely unexpected. It was like watching the awesome first season of Fringe all over again, but with a likeable heroine instead of Olivia.

Don’t you just love a girl who doesn’t spend all her time consciously making one mistake after another because she lacks the backbone to do the right thing? That’s our Janelle for you, a girl who knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t hesitate to make it happen. She’d been a victim once and she has no intention of being one ever again, so she thinks hard about every choice she makes and doesn’t allow herself to be influenced by anyone else’s opinion. She’s my new character I want to be best friends with. I always expect YA heroines to disappoint me sooner or later, because they almost always do, but with Janelle, that never happened. I can count on the fingers of one hand the characters that impressed me as much as she did.


(Did you guys notice how I avoided writing about Ben as much as possible? I'm trying to be serious here and I don't think gushing about that boy would help my cause much. But rest assured, he IS perfect.)

I think I’ve made my opinion pretty clear: I cannot recommend this highly enough. I can’t wait to find out how other people will feel about it. Do yourselves a favor and preorder this one, you won’t regret it.


A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher, HarperCollins UK, for review purposes.

The Catastrophic History of You and Me

Author: Jess Rothenberg
Published: February 2nd 2012
Publisher: Puffin
Paperback, 400 pages
Buy: The Book Depository



Confession time: I was pretty sure I would love this book even before it showed up in my mailbox. I loved the title, I liked the cover, and the description sounded really interesting. What I didn’t know, however, was that I wasn’t just signing up for a fun read, I was signing up for heartbreak and some really huge, eye opening lessons. Don’t get me wrong: Catastrophic History of You and Me is often laugh-out-loud funny, but that’s not nearly all it is.

Brie Eagan’s life was perfect: she had a great family, her three best friends and the most wonderful boyfriend a girl could wish for. At least that’s what she thought. But days before her sweet sixteen, her boyfriend Jacob uttered four horrible words that killed Brie on the spot: I don’t love you. It would seem that a young and perfectly healthy person really can die of a broken heart. It didn’t matter that Brie’s father is a famous cardiologist. It didn’t matter that she had so many other things to be happy about. The shock and the hurt of Jacob’s words were too much for Brie’s heart to handle.

At the beginning of our story, Brie opens her eyes to discover that she’s indeed dead, and currently existing in her own version of afterlife, which just happens to be her family’s favorite pizza place. Her company is even more surprising, especially the boy dressed exactly like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. His name is Patrick and he immediately jumps at the chance to be Brie’s guide through afterlife, or at least this part of it. He is kind, thoughtful and the closest thing to an angel Brie is likely to meet. As the two of them go back to observe the aftermath of her death, Brie is forced to accept that her life wasn’t nearly as perfect as she thought it was and slowly fight her way through five stages of grief.
Here’s just a small taste of denial:

This is all just a bad dream, I told myself. I’m totally in bed, totally safe, totally snuggled. Hamloaf’s next to me. Jack’s down the hall. Everything is okay. But still, why the crazy nightmare? I must have eaten something funky. Or maybe I have a history test coming up. Or I’d forgotten to floss.

In my experience, books that strike me the most are the ones that successfully mix humor and tragedy. One of the recent stellar examples is Looking for Alaska. Jess Rothenberg does this extraordinarily well. She knows when to lighten the mood with a joke, and when to stop with the humor entirely. She knows exactly how much tragedy her reader can take and when it’s time to water it down with one of Patrick’s nicknames for Brie or something similar. It is a valuable skill, and one that pretty much guarantees that I’ll read her next novel, and the one after that.

Here’s another thing I should mention, one I’m pretty sure some of my friends will appreciate. (I won’t be naming names, though.) Seeing as Patrick had died in the 80s and he’s dressed according to the fashion of 1983 or so, every chapter is titled after a song, a huge part of them from the 80s, and there is a four-page long playlist at the end of the book. I played most of them while reading this book and felt like a lost time traveler most of the time – but in a very good way.

An advanced copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher, Puffin/Razorbill UK for review purposes.