The Victoria in My Head

Well, another contemporary YA that I really liked. I feel like I'm making a liar out of myself. Or I've been incredibly lucky. Or YA Fiction is changing.

I'm gonna go with the latter.

The Victoria in My Head is about Victoria, a Cuban-American high school student in New York who's focused on getting into a good school (this feels familiar, right?), but her life is incredibly boring. She can predict everything that happens from the time she wakes up in the morning to dinner in the evening. Nothing ever changes.

But.

There's always a but.

Victoria sees a boy putting up a flyer for band auditions. And the boy is gorgeous,  BUT A BAND! The band is looking for a lead singer, and in a moment of insanity, Victoria believes she can do it.

A brief moment.

Then she realizes not only is it a crazy idea, but her parents would never let her.

But luckily, she has a best friend named Annie who isn't afraid to share a video of Victoria's 11 year old self singing. And the band says, come audition! And despite being completely humiliated that they saw the video, she does.

Aaaand she bombs it. Stage fright. She does ok, but didn't blow anyone away.

I mean...of course she gets in. What story would there be without that? She has to hide it from her parents--pretends she's still in track. They find out, of course. She gets in trouble. Pretends to quit. Oh, and there's a love story. The whole time Victoria is with this one guy, I just wanted to scream at her: HE IS CLEARLY THE WRONG ONE! YOU'RE DOING THIS ALL WRONG! It was a first boyfriend, so of course it was all wrong.

Ultimately, it was a cute story. There was nothing spectacular or life changing about it, but it was a fun read. Probably made more fun by the fact that I didn't expect to like it much. I mean, I don't know anything about music, and that was a big part of the book. Every chapter title had a song name and band, and I didn't recognize even one. I probably would have appreciated the story even more if I had.

The characters are fun. The story is fun. Worth reading if you like contemporary fiction.

City of Saints and Thieves

I was intrigued by City of Saints and Thieves because it was one of Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers selections, but it was also YA. I've never seen a Teen book make this list.

The story follows Christina aka Tina aka Tiny Girl aka Tiny. Tina is an excellent thief. She has to be; it was the only way to avoid becoming a prostitute on the streets of Sangui City. She works with the Goondas, a street gang in the city, to make her living--and work toward taking revenge on the man who killed her mother.

When her mother first brought Tina to Kenya from Congo, she found a job as a maid for Roland Greyhill, an American businessman. There, she spends five (7? Can't remember) easy years of childhood, plays with Greyhill's son, Michael, and gets a new sister. But everything changes when her mother is murdered. Tina, 12 years old, takes her sister and flees to the streets because she knows exactly who killed her mom: Mr. Greyhill.

Tina stashes her sister in a nun-run school where she was able to get a scholarship, then goes to the head of the Goondas for help in taking revenge. She wants to kill Mr. Greyhill. But he has other ideas--among them taking Mr. Greyhill's extensive fortune. So he gives Tina a book: The Count of Monte Cristo (and c'mon, this is my all time favorite book. How could I not love this?!) So Tina decides the best formula for revenge is: 1. Dirt. 2. Money. 3. Blood.

So when she gets a chance to break into the house to copy info from Greyhill's computer, she takes it. With a little support from computer genius Bug Boy, she gets all the info she needs tot ake Greyhill down.

She also gets caught.

She has to spend the next week with Mr. Greyhill's son, Michael, who convinces her to try and find proof that his father did it--because Michael is positive he didn't.

This was a whole different type of mystery that was absolutely impacted by the setting. The situation is dire: Tina is beholden to this game, they're chasing down a murderer, being chased by murderers and militia. The book taking place in war-torn Africa just added a new element to what otherwise would have been a typical Nancy Drew type mystery. Tina has much greater concerns than whether her friends will betray her (she knows they will) or what clothes to wear (she lives on a roof, for goodness sake). She has to figure out how to survive on a daily basis.

And there are no happy endings like in your typical YA story. Tina doesn't fix Africa. She doesn't take down the bad guys or a corrupt government. She solves a mystery that has deeply affected her life, and then her life goes back to normal-stealing and surviving.

It was a phenomenal story, and the narrator was spectacular. I cried a few times. I can't imagine a life like many in Africa live. This is my second book recently that takes place there and deals with that violence, and it's horrifying. But I do hope more books are written (and read) about it.

13 Minutes

I don't really read Thrillers, but my best friend does. Every now and then, she throws one my way to read. She received 13 Minutes as an ARC from the publisher  because she read the author's adult novel, Behind her Eyes, and wrote the author to tell her how much she loved it. The problem is, 13 Minutes is YA. My friend vehemently doesn't read YA.

But she read it! She asked me to read it for a second opinion since she's not familiar with the genre. I don't read very much Teen Fiction--mostly just Fantasy--and most of the problems I had with this book are the reason.

13 Minutes is about a girl named Natasha who is found dead on a river bank. They revive her, but she was dead for (pause for dramatic effect) 13 minutes! Natasha doesn't remember how she got into the lake. She knows it wasn't a suicide attempt, so it seems to be foul play. The story is told from the third person with a mix of diary entries, police reports, and news articles thrown in.

Natasha is one of those 'most popular girls in school' type people. And not one of the super nice, friends with everyone type. The school calls her and her two best friends, Hayley and Jenny, the Barbies. They rule the school and make or break others' reputations. But when Natasha wakes up in the hospital, it isn't the Barbies she asks for; it's Becca Crisp, the childhood best friend she dropped. Becca is on the fringe of the social ladder at school. She's a bit rougher around the edges, has a 19 year old boyfriend, and only one real friend at school. So when Natasha starts paying attention to her again, it makes her feel pretty good.

Natasha knows something must have happened the night she was found, and she suspects Hayley and Jenny. They've been talking about her and hanging out with her behind her back, and they'd been fighting a lot before Natasha's accident. So she asks Becca to help her figure it out. They start hanging out together more. Becca starts ditching her other friend to see Natasha, which causes friction between them.

The whole first half of the book was painful to sit through. I tend not to read YA Fiction because I don't care about teenage mean girl drama or the romantic relationship drama or the angsty 'I feel sorry for myself but I'm hiding it by acting out' drama. And while I am aware that some teens relate to it because that's what being a teenager is, I personally, do not care to read about it. Just not my speed. So, I did not enjoy most of this book. The second half of the book, where you really get into the meat of what happened and Becca has nothing but solving this mystery on her mind--that almost made up for the first half.

So it was not a failing on the part of the author that I didn't like this book--it was just a matter of reader preference. Others may really find it compelling.

But me-I'm off to find a good fantasy!

Life After Life

See? I read things besides YA!

Life After Life is by Kate Atkinson, a bestselling author with an impressive backlist of books. When this book came out a few years ago, everyone was talking about it and I desperately wanted to read it. But then, there were other books I desperately wanted to read, and I was in school, and it was really thick, and and and. You know how it goes. Ultimately, I'm glad I waited. If I had read this when it came out and when everyone was hyped up about it, I would have been desperately disappointed.

It was OK. At first it was really confusing.  It follows Ursula Todd, a British girl born in 1910 who dies on the day she's born. You're probably wondering: wait, the main character is dead? The answer is yes and no. Her life is saved when the physician snips the cord around her throat, and she takes her first breath. As Ursula grows up, she dies numerous times. But then, time resets and she has the chance to live these moments over--to change whatever it is that killed her. The catch is, no one actually knows this is happening to her. It's like the reader is a god looking down on the world and watching another god reset this girl's life over and over to see what will happen.

Ursula only experiences very strong senses of deja vu. She knows something terrible is going to happen and that she can find a way to prevent it. This is especially poignant when World War I ends in 1918 and the family's maidservant goes out with her beau to join the crowds of people celebrating. Know what else happens in 1918? The Great Influenza. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what happens. #nospoilers

It was interesting to read the same experiences and watch them play out differently. It was interesting to see what a huge impact something that happened when she turned 16 has on the rest of her life, and then how her life changed if that didn't happen. It was almost like a choose your own adventure story. You remember those, right?

Overall, I liked it. It was well written. It wasn't a bad story. It just wasn't riveting. It might have been more interesting if I had read it for a book club, if I was planning to discuss the different events with a group of people. But having read it on my own, it wasn't what I was expecting. And your expectations can make a huge difference in how you feel about a story. Sometimes, the there's too much hype.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

I just finished listening to Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston. It's not usually the type of story I would read because 1. It's YA fiction which I mostly don't read and 2. It's about a girl who is raped. I decided to pick it up because I heard good things from a friend. Also, because I met E.K. Johnston once. She stopped at the Barnes and Noble where I work on her way home one time and I got to meet her. She's awesome, btw. She's also won my undying loyalty so there's that...

But back to the book! Exit is about a girl named Hermione Winters. She's co-captain of her cheerleading squad about to enter her senior year of high school. The story opens with her attending her final cheer camp. She's taking it very seriously because at the end of her senior year, she wants her team to win nationals, a huge cheerleading competition. At camp, there's a lot of work to do, but there's fun, too. She's surrounded by her team, and teams from all over Canada, and get the chance to bond with many different people. Then, there's the dance. Hermione is having a great time. She's dancing with her friends, loving the music, out of breath, and someone hands her a drink. The next thing she knows, she wakes up in a hospital bed with her best friend Polly hovering over her. She doesn't remember anything else.

Let me just tell you hard it is riding a bike while bawling your eyes out. It's hard. I mostly listened to this while taking bike rides in the morning, and I'm glad I was alone. This is not the kind of book that you walk away from the same when you're done. Once I started, I felt this visceral need to finish the story, and I didn't want anyone interrupting it. It's hard to immerse yourself in the world of this girl whom this terrible thing has happened to, and then look back up at the real world and realize life is going on.

I feel like two elements had a huge impact on this story.

First, Hermione's fierce best friend, Polly. If anything tragic ever happens to me, I want someone like Polly there to stand up for me and hold me together. Polly was there every day when Hermione needed someone to take care of her. She was also there when it was time for Hermione to be strong on her own. Polly defended her, protected her, and told her the truth when she needed to hear it. She was profoundly unselfish in a way that I imagine it's hard for anyone to be. I want my own Polly and I want to be that strong for someone if anyone I know ever needs it.

The second element was the fact that Hermione didn't remember her rape. This made her post-trauma experience very different. She knew that she was raped, but since she remembered no part of it, she didn't feel like she was raped. She didn't have flashbacks or nightmares. She wasn't frightened to be around men or have someone touch her. She mostly behaved throughout the book like any other teenager, and had to make sure those around her treated her like one. She was relatively emotionally stable. The book demonstrated how different assault experiences have different effects. Just because she wasn't in hysterics doesn't mean it didn't happen, and I think it's an important comment on how our culture responds to rape. The book brings up important questions of victim-blaming and coping mechanisms. Hermione has a loving and supportive family, friends, a team, a therapist. There are numerous people for her to turn to if she needs help. This certainly made a huge difference in her healing process. Those who don't have such a support system in place are at a huge disadvantage.

I don't know if 'love' is the right word for how I feel about this book. It was impactful. It was riveting. It made a strong impression on me. And it was so worth it.