wordcandy.net

Could it really be true?

Will 2012 really bring us a Diablo Cody-penned Sweet Valley High musical? And is the world ready for that much after-school-special-influenced cheese?

Labels: music, teen literature

The Game of Triumphs, by Laura Powell

15-year-old Cat Harper, the orphaned protagonist of Laura Powell's debut novel The Game of Triumphs, is not your typical wide-eyed fantasy heroine. After witnessing a murder, streetwise, pragmatic Cat becomes an unwilling participant in the Game of Triumphs, an ancient magical contest based on the rules of the Tarot. Success in the Game can win a player fame and fortune, while failure means suffering and loss, but Cat is only a "chancer"—the Game's equivalent of an accidental bystander. With no prizes on offer, Cat has every intention of simply ignoring the weirdness the Game has dragged into her life... until she discovers a horrifying link between the Game and her parents' deaths, twelve years earlier.

The Game of Triumphs kicks off with a bang (Cat is neck-deep in danger well before the end of the first chapter), and the hell-for-leather storytelling pace is maintained throughout. There is an impressive amount of Tarot-related information stuffed into the novel, but the author deftly balances exposition with action. We wish Powell had spent a little more time exploring her characters' pasts, but The Game of Triumphs is only the first installment in a series, so we're hoping the next book will manage to be equally entertaining and a little richer on the character-development front.

On one final note, may we say how pleasant it was to read a fantasy novel about a dangerous game that doesn't feature the majority of participants dying horrible deaths? We understand that The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner were best-sellers, but we have been sent piles of gore-filled YA novels this year. Even stories of pearl-clutching horror are boring when done to excess, so we want to commend Ms. Powell for having the imagination to propose different—but still meaningful—stakes.

Review based on publisher-provided copy.

Labels: Book Reviews, Fantasy, teen literature

Werewolves on the Titanic!

My e-mail this morning included a promotional note about Claudia Gray's recently-released novel Fateful, which I skimmed with tepid interest. The cover didn't catch my eye, and our "To Be Read" shelf has enough historical YA romances on it to supply a mid-sized bookstore. But as I kept reading, my interest level grew exponentially. According to the plot description, this book features:

A) an Upstairs, Downstairs romance between a long-suffering housemaid and a rich young man with a dark and mysterious past,

B) a setting aboard the RMS Titanic, and

C) werewolves. (Seriously.)

I am going to read this book; I like an author who's not afraid to go big or go home.

Labels: Romance, teen literature

The Nine Lives of Chloe King hits Hulu

The first episode of ABC Family's The Nine Lives of Chloe King (based on the YA novel by Celia Thompson) is now available on Hulu. Here's the trailer, which looks entertaining enough, if a little cheeseball:

Labels: teen literature, TV

Exposed, by Kimberly Marcus

Kimberly Marcus's Exposed is a YA novel written entirely in free verse. It's a gimmicky approach, but the poetry format proves to be a perfect fit for this book—it takes a dark, gripping story and boils it down to its essence.

Exposed is told from the perspective of 16-year-old Liz, an aspiring photographer with a great boyfriend, loving parents, and a lifelong best friend, Kate. The girls have a minor spat during their monthly sleepover that leads to them sleeping in separate rooms. Liz is quick to apologize, but Kate seems determined to end the relationship entirely. Liz can't understand such a huge overreaction... until Kate announces that she was raped by Liz's older brother after Liz left her alone downstairs.

Marcus's poetry skills might fall short of, say, Sylvia Plath, but she does a more-than-adequate job of conveying Liz's confusion, misery, and doubt. The verse format also eliminates many of the more irritating elements of "normal" teen literature. I have reviewed so many pages of couture-clad bullies and pointless love triangles that I tend to think of those things as unavoidable aspects of modern YA fiction. It was with surprised delight, therefore, that I read the following:

"Soon, others stroll in:
Javier, the Hoopster.
Nathan, the Nuisance.
Brenda, star of The Brenda Show."

See? In less than twenty words Marcus describes a jock, a class clown, and a snotty school princess, without resorting to boring (and instantly passé) descriptions of shoes, hairstyles, and cell phones. It's the teen literature equivalent of a Christmas miracle.

Exposed is Marcus's first novel, and she clearly embraced the "Write what you know" axiom: she's a clinical social worker who specializes in the treatment of traumatized children and adolescents, and she lives in Massachusetts, where Exposed is set. One wonders if her next book will venture into different territory, or if she'll try to make a career out of writing stories about Serious Teen Issues, à la Chris Crutcher. Either way, I'll be keeping an eye out for her second book, because a debut novel this creative and moving promises great things for the future.

Review based on publisher-provided copy.

Labels: Book Reviews, teen literature

Jessica and Elizabeth ride again

This in-depth look at Francine Pascal and her Sweet Valley High books is a fascinating read. (No joke.) My parents never let me read the Sweet Valley books when I was in middle school, and I have little interest in reading the new installment in the series (Sweet Valley Confidential, which comes out tomorrow and features the Wakefield twins in their late twenties), but I still appreciate the Daily Beast's fearless reporting on this relic of my childhood.

Labels: teen literature

Torment, by Lauren Kate

As I turned over the final page of Torment, the second book in Lauren Kate's best-selling Fallen series, my first thought was Aw, man... now I'm totally gonna need to read the third one. Not the world's most enthusiastic recommendation, but a step up from her first book, which I damned with even fainter praise*.

The love triangle established in Fallen is sidelined in Torment. Fallen angels Daniel and Cam have declared a temporary truce in order to protect 17-year-old Luce from the "Outcasts"—fallen angels rejected by both Heaven and Hell. Continuing his hot streak of being infuriatingly patronizing, Daniel stashes Luce in a Northern California high school for children with angelic ancestors, hoping that her fellow students will be distracting enough to keep Luce from falling into the Outcasts' clutches. Naturally, he doesn't share his plan with Luce, who grows increasingly testy as her otherworldly suitor refuses to explain a single damn thing to her.

I found Torment infinitely more fun than Fallen, mostly because Luce is beginning to notice what was obvious from the first book: Daniel is a bossy, condescending creep. (Unfortunately, his actions are occasionally redeemed by an out-of-character moment of stupidity from Luce, but those are few and far between.) I suspect they will end up together—the laws of teen supernatural love triangles are probably too strong for any other outcome—but I'm still excited by Luce's baby steps towards independence. The final chapter of Torment does a solid job of setting things up for the next book in the series, but I don't care so much about all the angel/demon/Outcast stuff. I just want Luce to kick Daniel to the curb until he gets over himself, and I'm gleefully looking forward to seeing it happen.

*I said it was much better than Twilight.

Review based on publisher-provided copy.

Labels: Book Reviews, Lauren Kate, teen literature

Sherlock Holmes (as portrayed by Justin Bieber)

Ever since I heard about this project, I've been keeping an eye out for the first book in a new series featuring Sherlock Holmes as a teenager. The Times liked Andrew Lane's Death Cloud, and it's been endorsed by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle... but look at that cover! And check out that title! And couldn't they have chosen a writer whose biggest claim to fame was something other than writing boatloads of Dr. Who spin-offs?

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Sequels, teen literature

Everybody's doing it

Huh. The Go Fug Yourself ladies have apparently written a young-adult book.

Labels: other websites, teen literature, Upcoming Books

I do like her haircut, though.

I've never been particularly impressed by Emma Watson's acting, but maybe I'm alone in that: she's apparently starring in two buzzed-about YA movie adaptations: Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Catherine Fisher's Icarceron.

I'm far more interested in the latter, which sounds like it should feature lots of special effects and sci-fi-y twists. The former sounds weepy (one strike!), melodramatic (two strikes!), and will co-star the dread Logan Lerman (twenty-seven strikes!), who played the title character in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. (Admittedly, I don't remember his acting in that atrocity being that bad, but I hated the movie so much I don't think I'd be able to stomach watching him in something else.)

Labels: Movie Adaptations, teen literature

The Gallagher Girls series, by Ally Carter

I charged through Ally Carter's YA caper novel Heist Society like a rhinoceros on a mission, so I was hoping her Gallagher Girls series would prove equally absorbing. Unfortunately, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You and its sequel, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, were disappointingly light on plot despite the charms of their "teen girls at spy school" premise. Happily, the series won me over with its third book, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover. It has plot developments oozing out of its ears, making it an excellent pick for reluctant readers and balancing out the flimsiness of the two earlier installments.

The Gallagher Girls books are told from the perspective of Cammie Morgan, a high school student attending the Gallagher Academy, a top-secret boarding school for female spies-in-training. Cammie has spent years studying hand-to-hand combat, foreign languages, and advanced encryption, but her real skill is the ability to fade into a crowd. She's a gifted pavement artist—a spy who specializes in following people in public.

The first book in the series focuses on Cammie's feelings for Josh, a civilian boy with a gift for picking her out of a crowd despite her spy training. One wonders if Carter originally intended to make their relationship an ongoing one, but by book two Josh has been replaced by Zach, a mysterious spy-in-training from the Blackthorne Institute, the male equivalent of the Gallagher Academy. Carter might have been better off condensing the first two books into one. As it is, the romantic drama from the first is a non-starter in the second, and the two books feature embarrassingly similar climax sequences. Combining the stories would have created more personal conflict—which boy should Cammie pursue?—and given that poor, overused plot climax a rest. (Plus, it would have saved me nine bucks. What is up with charging $8.99 for a 288-page paperback, Hyperion?!?) Thankfully, book three finally gets the plot moving. There are new enemies, deepening relationships, and a fun twist ending, making it a huge step forward for the series.

I'll be reviewing the fourth Gallagher Girls book on the main site tomorrow. It features the series' best blend of plot elements and relationship evolution to date, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, if you're unwilling to wade through hundreds of pages of pointless teen angst just to get to the butt-kicking/name-taking bits, skip this series entirely and pick up a copy of Heist Society instead. It's cheaper*, it works as a standalone novel (although Carter is planning a sequel), and it offers a similar blend of romance, suspense, and cheesy-fun action.

*Amazon is currently selling it for a mere $6.80!

Labels: Ally Carter, Book Reviews, Suspense, teen literature

Gimme a Call, by Sarah Mlynowski

Contest Book #17

I've been following Sarah Mlynowski's career ever since the publication of her first novel: 2001's Milkrun, one of the first offerings from Red Dress Ink, the now-defunct Harlequin imprint devoted to modern, stylish "chick lit". I found the heroine of Milkrun grating and the plot so pointless I could barely finish the book, but look at how cute the cover was:

Fast-forward a few years, and I ran into another Mlynowski book: 2005's Bras and Broomsticks. It came out several months before Twilight, making it one of the earliest entries in the current YA fantasy/romance boom. Again, I thought the book was obnoxious, but again, it had an cute, eye-catching cover:

By this time, I was familiar with Ms. Mlynowski's strengths and weaknesses. Her books feature irritating heroines and unsatisfying plot lines, but she gets in early on literary trends and has a positive gift for scoring attention-grabbing cover art. I promised myself I'd never read another one of her books ... but check out last spring's Gimme a Call. Doesn't it look fun?

Clearly, I am weak. Gimme a Call is classic Mlynowski: the heroine is infuriatingly self-obsessed, 95% of the plot is wheel-spinning, and what little resolution the book offers comes late and falls flat.

Gimme a Call is the story of Devi Banks—actually, it's the story of two Devi Bankses. When seventeen-year-old Devi drops her cell phone into a fountain, she discovers a surprising new feature: the phone only calls her fourteen-year-old self. This development comes at a particularly useful time, as Devi has alienated all of her friends, recently been dumped by her longtime boyfriend, and finds herself scraping the bottom of the college barrel. Devi is convinced she needs to change her present by altering her past, even if she has to run her younger self ragged trying to do it.

Time-travel books make my brain hurt, but I do my best to suspend disbelief. Unfortunately, most of Gimme a Call was so repetitive—younger Devi obediently makes a change, the change backfires on her older self, lather, rinse, repeat—I was left with nothing to do but ponder the many reasons the book made no sense. (Older Devi's reality keeps changing, but Mlynowski skirts issues like how one would handle the sudden switch from rudimentary to advanced classes, or from playing mini-golf to being the school's golf champ. Instead, the story focuses the important stuff, like what dreamy boy Devi is dating now.)

I actually found Gimme a Call the most irritating Mlynowski book I've read to date, probably because it was the first one that had real potential. The "If I knew then what I know now..." set-up was fun, if clichéd, and the younger Devi was sweet and appealingly awkward (particularly in contrast with her manipulative, selfish older self). If the time changes had ended halfway through, forcing the older Devi to actually grow up and fix her warped new reality, the book could have been great. Sadly, Mlynowski settles for riding her paper-thin premise into the ground, skipping any pretense of character development, and ending things with a quickie moral about making your own choices, leaving Gimme a Call a weak, dumbed-down version of what it might have been.

[Review based on a publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Holiday Contest, teen literature

A gift from Scholastic to you...

The fine people at Scholastic have made Alexandra Bullen's YA novel Wish available as a free e-book download. From now until January 3rd, click here to read Wish in its entirety. (You can also preview Ms. Bullen's upcoming sequel, Wishful Thinking, should you be so inclined.) Enjoy!

Labels: ebooks, teen literature, Wordcandy on the cheap

The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar

Contest Book #14

Seventeen-year-old Alton Richards, the protagonist of Louis Sachar's novel The Cardturner, is furious when his parents insist he spend the summer working for his wealthy great-uncle Lester. Lester is blind, testy, and a master bridge player, so Alton foresees a long, dull summer spent driving his uncle to his club and helping him play the world's most boring card game. But as Alton begins to understand the rules of bridge, his interest in the game—and his uncle's unexpectedly colorful past—deepens.

Bridge is not exactly a hot-button topic for today's youth, so we're giving Louis Sachar full props for guts. It's possible to read The Cardturner without delving into the intricacies of bridge, and the book features several conventional teen-lit subplots (romance, family conflict, etc.). However, Sachar makes no secret of the fact that he wrote this book to encourage a new generation of bridge players, and—remarkably—his novel-length advertisement for the game might even work. We're pretty certain the only surefire way to revive bridge is to release a version for the PS3 that somehow incorporates semi-automatic weapons, but Sachar's novel makes it sound like a fascinatingly complex and challenging game—even for a generation accustomed to having their entertainment enhanced by every imaginable bell and whistle.

[Review based on a publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Holiday Contest, teen literature

Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater

Contest Book #10

Writing the middle novel in a trilogy must be tough. Authors need to sustain their momentum and provide at least a little plot resolution, but they also have to leave enough loose ends to justify writing a third book. This delicate balancing act has created a lot of disappointing second series installments, including, alas, Maggie Stiefvater's Linger, the sequel to her hugely successful 2009 novel Shiver.

We're not knocking Stiefvater's writing style—on the contrary, the delicate, somber atmosphere that made Shiver so memorable is equally evident here. We are, however, knocking the way that Linger literally undoes most of the progress of the first book. Shiver was the story of a human girl named Grace who falls in love with Sam, a boy who transforms into a werewolf when the temperature drops. Linger is Shiver's mirror image [SPOILER]: by the end of the book, Sam has become fully human and Grace is seasonal lycanthropy's latest victim.

Thankfully, Linger is totally readable, even if the A-plot feels like it's moving in reverse. Grace and Sam remain a compelling pair, and Stiefvater promotes two of book one's minor characters from also-ran to co-starring status. That doesn't fully make up for resetting most of the events of Shiver back to zero, but it's enough to keep us hooked until book three—Forever, due out next summer.

[Review based on a publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Holiday Contest, teen literature

The Flappers: Vixen, by Jillian Larkin

Contest Book #7

Note: Since we didn't get a chance to post yesterday's review, you'll be getting two contest titles this evening.

Vixen, the first book in Jillian Larkin's new Gossip Girl-meets-Thoroughly Modern Millie young adult series, has a lot going for it. The cover looks great, Larkin has a wonderful time with period slang, music, and clothing, and flappers are totally hot right now. Unfortunately, the book doesn't have much bite to it—but we're not ruling out the potential for bite in future installments.

Larkin's booze- and jazz-soaked debut focuses on three teenage girls dreaming of love and independence in Prohibition-era Chicago. Wealthy, sheltered Gloria is engaged to one of the city's most desirable bachelors, but she's fighting an attraction to the black piano player at the local speakeasy. Her best friend Lorraine spends her days pining after her own unattainable man and brooding over the way Gloria's problems always seem to overshadow her own. Meanwhile, Gloria's new-in-town cousin Clara is acting like a country bumpkin, but she's desperate to conceal a past full of damning secrets.

Lying, cheating, and backstabbing are vital elements in the booming sub-genre of books about tempestuous female friendships, and Vixen boasts its fair share of all three. Unfortunately, none of Larkin's heroines are out-and-out villains, and the drama provided by Gloria's interracial romance falls flat. (It could have been highly dramatic, of course, but Larkin downplays the dangerous nature of their relationship, blithely ignoring the fact that a love affair between a poor black boy and a rich white girl in the nineteen twenties could—and probably would—get the boy killed and the girl shipped off to whatever convent was currently accepting flappers.) However, the next book in this series will introduce an additional girl to Larkin's troop of would-be femme fatales and shift the action to New York City. We're hoping these changes will be enough to fully realize this series' potential as a deliciously over-the-top historical soap.

[Review based on a publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Holiday Contest, teen literature

I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore

Contest Book #6

Before we begin, a small disclaimer: I have never read James Frey's notorious “memoir” A Million Little Pieces, but any man who compares writing a falsified autobiography to Picasso painting a Cubist self-portrait is the kind of guy who I think deserves a solid punch to the face. I don't know much about Jobie Hughes, either, but I note that the two books he is currently writing are called Agony at Dawn and At the Gates of Pyrrhus, and only one of the eighteen authors listed as favorites on his website is a woman. Clearly, I find both writers obnoxious, but I attempted to set my personal prejudice aside and judge their novel I Am Number Four on its own merits...

...if only it had any.

I Am Number Four is formulaic to the point of becoming self-parody. I spent the first half of the book looking for a sign that the authors (who co-wrote under the pseudonym "Pittacus Lore") were in on the joke, but eventually realized the story was meant to be taken seriously. Lore's protagonist is "John Smith", a teenage alien hiding out in an Ohio high school. John is a refugee from an interplanetary war between Mogadore and Lorien, two Earth-like planets from a galaxy far, far away. When the greedy, planet-snatching Mogadorians launched a surprise attack on Lorien, John was one of a handful of Loric children who were sent to Earth, hidden amongst the human population, and given a protective charm that forces their enemies to kill them in a particular order. Unfortunately for John, three of his fellow survivors are dead, which means his number is up.

Hughes and Frey have cobbled together a collection of clichés borrowed from Superman, Twilight, and every B-grade drama aired on The WB in the late nineties. There's a brooding hero, a nerdy sidekick, a meathead jock, and an implausibly perfect love interest. (She used to be a cheerleader, but now she's into photography and kitten rescue, because she's deep. No joke.) Profitability—not originality—is clearly the authors' main concern, and they're well on their way to making a zillion dollars*. I can't remember the last time I read a book so relentlessly trite, or more clearly written with a future TV/movie adaptation in mind, but I suspect Frey and Hughes will be able to soothe the pain caused by negative reviews by rolling around in their massive piles of cash.

*In addition to the upcoming movie adaptation and the contract for four to six more books, there's the five weeks I Am Number Four spent on the Times' best-sellers list.

Labels: Book Reviews, Holiday Contest, teen literature

Artemis Fowl the movie: MIA

Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch column has posted an article guessing at the next YA book to be adapted for the big screen. Most of the story is pure speculation—will Hollywood ever made a 3-D adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time? Who knows?—but it does provides several updates on various book-to-film projects that seem lost in limbo, including Artemis Fowl, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and Sweet Valley High.

Labels: Movie Adaptations, teen literature

Right there with you, NPH

Wow, this movie (based on the YA book Beastly by Alex Flinn, and inspired by the "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale) looks seriously terrible:

I'm actually almost impressed by how bad this looks.

Labels: Fairytales, Movie Adaptations, teen literature

Build your own book review

I had never heard of Common Sense Media before yesterday, but their purpose statement sounded innocuous enough: they're a nonprofit organization dedicated to "improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology." Unfortunately, this School Library Journal article paints a more disturbing picture. CSM's reviews break literary content down into various categories, including appropriate age levels, "good stuff", and "what to watch out for". Thus a book like Lauren Kate's Fallen gets a high rating, because it contains relatively low levels of violence, sex, drug and alcohol abuse, bad language, and consumerism. (Plus, the author of the review feels fallen angels are "more charming" than vampires, although no reason was given for that assessment.) The fact that Fallen was poorly thought out and featured an emotionally bipolar love interest doesn't bother CSM one bit, apparently.

Ugh. Look, if you're worried about what your kid is reading, read it yourself. Don't rely on someone else (no matter how well-respected) to tell you what's safe and what isn't. And just think: young adult and kids' books can be fun. You might even enjoy yourself!

Labels: Kids' books, other websites, Reviews, teen literature

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Could it really be true?

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Game of Triumphs, by Laura Powell

Monday, October 03, 2011

Werewolves on the Titanic!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Nine Lives of Chloe King hits Hulu

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Exposed, by Kimberly Marcus

Monday, March 28, 2011

Jessica and Elizabeth ride again

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Torment, by Lauren Kate

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Sherlock Holmes (as portrayed by Justin Bieber)

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Everybody's doing it

Monday, February 14, 2011

I do like her haircut, though.

Monday, February 07, 2011

The Gallagher Girls series, by Ally Carter

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Gimme a Call, by Sarah Mlynowski

Thursday, December 23, 2010

A gift from Scholastic to you...

Monday, December 20, 2010

The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater

Friday, December 10, 2010

The Flappers: Vixen, by Jillian Larkin

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Artemis Fowl the movie: MIA

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Right there with you, NPH

Monday, July 12, 2010

Build your own book review