In The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters

Summary:

The year is 1918. Not only is World War I in full swing, but there is a Spanish Influenza pandemic as well, which is killing even more people than the war, and has lowered the average life expectancy to thirty-nine years of age. Virtually no one leaves the house without donning a gauze mask to protect themselves. The medical technology available to protect people against the flu is crude at this time, so most people rely on home remedies such as wearing strands of garlic and eating an abundance of onions. Among all this death, the spiritualism craze is all the rage. With the advent of photography, spirit photography is extremely popular. As so many people are dying, the loved ones they left behind find solace in the hope that they might capture the visage of their deceased loved one in a photograph with them. People are lined up around the block for this opportunity, and will pay dearly. Our main character, 16-year-old Mary Shelley Black does not believe in ghosts, but she is forced to reconsider her stance when her sweetheart dies in battle. Stephen, Mary’s love, haunts her in spirit form, and she must find out what he wants.

Review:

I’ve been anticipating this book since it first came out in April 2013. I’ve owned it on my Kindle since August 2014. The only reason I can think of to justify why it took me so long to pick this novel up is why fear of disappointment. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, but I can’t really say why. This book has all the elements I love. I became extremely interested in spiritualism and the early 1900s a couple of years ago. In 2014, I went to a lecture on spiritualism at Dragon Con, explaining how it was all fake, why so many people fell for it, and how many people claiming to communicate with the other side, such as Teresa Caputo from Long Island Medium and John Edward are frauds and how they do what they do. While I don’t believe in spiritualism, I am extremely interested in the subject, and I love reading about the paranormal in my fiction. Frankenstein is probably my favorite classic, so the fact that our main character is named after the author of said classic won me over immediately. I don’t typically like books about war, but this one was different as it focused on how the war affects people (civilians, and soldiers) and there was a good balance between spiritualism, influenza, and WWI. I didn’t know that there was an Influenza pandemic in 1918. I think this is something that I learned in grade school but promptly forgot. There was so much going on in 1918, I’m sure it was hard to cope. Reading this novel makes it easy to understand why so many people turned to spiritualism. This novel reads like apocalyptic science fiction, but many of the events actually happened. What a scary time to be alive. Photography was also a relatively new invention, which probably seemed liked magic to many people in and of itself, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for some to believe that you could capture the image of a ghost in a photograph. As I mentioned earlier, I’m really not sure why I didn’t enjoy this novel more as the subject matter was very interesting to me, and well-handled. The only thing I can think of is that the main character was a little boring. Plus, I anticipated this novel for so long and built it up so much in my head that it had little hope of meeting my high expectations. I gave this 3.5 out of 5 stars. This would be a great book to teach students at the same time that they are learning about WWI and the Spanish Influenza in history class.

Winters, Cat. In The Shadow of Blackbirds: A Novel. New York: Amulet, 2013. Print. 

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Summary:

At 12:07 AM Connor, a thirteen-year-old Irish boy, wakes up to see a giant, tree-like monster standing outside his window. It’s not the monster Connor’s when expecting. It’s not the monster from Connor’s nightmares.

Connor’s mother has breast cancer. That’s something Connor has really been struggling with. He may have to live with his grandmother, and his doesn’t like her. Connor’s father doesn’t want Connor to come to America to live with him; he has a new family now. But that’s not the horrible secret that Connor struggles to live with, the secret that gives him nightmares, the secret that brought the monster to Connor’s window and into Connor’s life.

Review:

This is a young adult/middle grade novel that has been on my radar ever since it came out five years ago. For one reason or another, I never picked it up, even after I purchased it in February 2013. This is yet another novel that is being adapted into a film which comes out in January of next year. The movie and this class gave me the push I needed to finally read this. I’m very much a mood reader, and this novel is not my usual fare. Plus, everyone kept talking about how sad this novel was, and I have not a particular fan of sad books. While books that make the reader sad often contain important and necessary subject matter, sadness is just not an emotion that most people, myself included, tend to seek out. After reading this, for me personally, this novel was not as sad as I expected it to me. The reader learns right from the outset that Connor’s mother is dying from breast cancer, so that information provided me with all the mental preparation I needed. The novel was well done, and it included illustrations which would work well for adolescent readers.

The twist on what the monster actually is (it’s not the cancer, like I was expecting) was really well done. I also think it was a very apt metaphor for what many children of cancer patients must go through. Personally, I grew up with a mother battling Crohn’s disease and also had a grandfather diagnosed with Stage 5 leukemia when I was 19-years-old, who died two months after his initial diagnosis. So, while I haven’t gone through anything quite as life-altering and traumatic as what Connor is battling, I’m also no stranger to having to watch my loved ones suffer with illness. I would definitely teach this novel. I think it’s perfect for the eight and/or ninth grade class. While it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, I could definitely appreciate it for being a well-done example of what it was meant to be.

Ness, Patrick, Jim Kay, and Siobhan Dowd. A Monster Calls: A Novel. Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2011. Print. 

The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

Summary:

The Dead House is a young adult novel that takes place at a boarding school. The novel focuses on one student named Carly Johnson. Carly has dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder…. or does she?! The novel asks the question: what if everything is not as it seems? What if everyone thinks you’re crazy, but you’re actually two souls living in one body…two souls that eventually become possessed by a demon? But, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Carly’s “case of DID” is interesting, because her alter, Kaitlyn, is only present during the night. Carly gets the day, and Kaitlyn gets the night. Of course, Carly’s parents are dead. The event causing their death has escaped her memory, and her psychiatrist (whose name escapes me now, and I just finished the book) believes her parent’s tragic death (murder?) triggered her DID. Something happens one night that disrupts the balance between Carly and Kaitlyn’s existence. Carly appears to be, well, gone. Kaitlyn can’t figure out what happened to Carly and is losing her mind trying to get her back. Some dark magic is unleashed and a lot of people die.

Review:

I was immediately drawn to this book, because it not only deals with mental illness, it also puts a paranormal twist on it. My favorite genre is fantasy, probably paranormal fantasy most of all. My favorite topic other than literature is psychology, so this was a match made in heaven for me, or at least that’s how it appeared at first blush.

My first problem with this novel was the juvenile writing style. It is true that the writing style in young adult novels is often a little more simplistic than adult fiction, largely because many teenagers get bored easily, so the authors hesitate to add too much detail or flowery writing. However, this was among the most simplistic writing that I have ever read, and I read middle grade fiction as well. The novel uses different media such as pictures or “video stills” and most notably, diary entries written by Kaitlyn as well as interview and video transcripts. The diary entries were just too juvenile for me. I understand that the author was trying to make the entries seem believably written by a teenager, and she did achieve that, but it pulled me out of the story. The simplistic writing did not fit with the really dark tone of the novel.

That’s the thing. Normally, I would recommend a novel with such a juvenile writing style to a younger age group, perhaps 13 to 15-year-olds. However, the violence depicted in the novel would prevent me from recommending this book to that age group whole-heartedly. There were also several YA tropes present, such as the ubiquitous boarding school, absent/dead parents, teen angst, and loneliness.  In the end, I thought the novel’s technique did not live up to its concept. I thought this was mediocre, and I only gave it a 3 out of 5 star rating on Goodreads.

Kurtagich recently released another novel, entitled The Creeper Man in the UK (where she’s from) or And The Trees Crept In for us here in the US. While I am hesitant, I do plan on picking up her second novel. There was, of course, a teaser at the end of The Dead House that intrigued me, and I was already intrigued after hearing a lot about And The Trees Crept In. Also, most of my issues stem from Kurtagich’s technique, so I’m excited to see if her technique has improved upon her second attempt.

Kurtagich, Dawn. The Dead House. N.p.: Little, Brown for Young Readers, 2015. Print.

The Thickety: A Path Begins by J.A. White

The Thickety: A Path Begins. Digital image. Amazon. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2016. 

 White, J. A., and Andrea Offermann. The Thickety: A Path Begins. N.p.: Katherine Tegen, n.d. Print.

 I want to preface this post by saying that this novel was by far my favorite out of the three which I have read for this project so far. I thought that this novel was the most vividly imagined, fully fleshed out, and truly deserved to be the first book in a series. This novel is sometimes classified as a middle grade novel rather than young adult. I believe that the main character is twelve or thirteen years old. However, the subject matter is very dark and certainly leans towards older rather than younger adolescents. Also, since this book is set in a Crucible, witch trials type setting of the 1600s, Kara (the protagonist) is quite mature for her age, so she reads more like a modern teenager rather than a middle-school-aged child.

Kara’s mother was actually burned in their village for being a witch when Kara was a little girl, around five years old, and her brother, Taff, was just a baby. After this tragedy, Kara’s father is basically useless being so wracked with guilt and grief over his wife’s death. He did not play a part, but he also did not do anything to prevent her death. At the center of this fantasy novel, is the infamous grimoire, or witch’s book. Kara finds her mother’s grimoire and realizes that she may be a witch as well. She has always questioned whether her mother was actually a witch in a first place, whether she was evil as the villagers think, etc. Kara quickly becomes consumed by the grimoire and it functions in her life as a drug, and she is the addict. As the town outsider and someone responsible for taking care of her family and unable to connect with her emotionally distant father, she is a most willing victim to the grimoire and Sordyr, the forest demon who wants to feed off the dark power that Kara wields through the grimoire. Grace is Kara’s polar opposite in every way: Kara is the town pariah and Grace is the most popular and adored girl in the village. Kara has dark hair, and Grace has platinum blonde hair, Kara is believed to be a bad seed but is actually a very good person, while Grace is perceived to be an angel and is actually evil. Grace is very Regina George-esque, actually.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to continue the series—a true rarity for me these days. It is complex, dark, and full of fantasy elements—some qualities that I often look for in a book, but rarely find.

Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher

Stolen by Lucy Christopher. Digital image. Hooked 2 Books. Hanover Public School District  Webpage, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Sept. 2016. 

Christopher, Lucy, Steve Wells, and Christopher Stengel. Stolen. New York: Chicken      House/Scholastic, 2010. Print. 

Stolen has a more unique premise than most YA fare. This is a novel all about perspective. It tells the story of sixteen-year-old Gemma who is kidnapped, not by a creepy older man, but by a young man in his early twenties. Gemma, arguably develops Stockholm Syndrome, which is fascinating to me and something that I would love to teach my students and open up discussion with them about. The only problem I would have if I chose to teach this book is that it is left open to the reader whether Gemma’s kidnapper, Ty, is “good” or “bad.” I am a strong believer in gray area when it comes to morality, but I personally feel that it can be dangerous to expose adolescents to this concept. Teens are at such a young and vulnerable time in their lives that they are already in danger of becoming unsuspecting victims to seemingly charming adults. I wouldn’t want to teach this novel and have any student consequently get the impression that a stalker is ever romantic or that his or her actions are validated. Putting the controversial subject matter aside, there is a lot of teachable content here, such as the epistolary, second-person narrative. The entire novel is written as a letter from Gemma to Ty. I also think that the writing style is quite sophisticated for a young adult novel. I personally liked this novel, but I did take issue with a teenage girl viewing her captor in a somewhat positive and romantic light. Maybe that is the whole point of the novel. I certainly thought that it was realistic. However, since it is written from Gemma’s perspective, the narrator is somewhat unreliable (another teachable moment), and it is quite unsettling. I think I would have enjoyed this novel a lot more if it was written from a grown woman’s perspective or if I had read it as an adolescent myself. As a twenty-eight-year woman, I was too concerned about Gemma’s well-being and fragile state of mind to be swept away by the narrative. However, I will say that Lucy Christopher is such a good writer that I was also somewhat concerned about and felt for Ty—no small feat. As can be expected, his backstory is not a pretty nor a simple one. I would certainly say that Ty is mentally ill and as someone who never had love in his life, he was looking for love in an extremely problematic (not to mention illegal) way. I liked this book, but it was not a favorite nor one that I would reread.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Kit, Borys. Raven Boys. Digital image. The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 14 Sept. 2012. Web. 11    Sept. 2016. 

 Stiefvater, Maggie. The Raven Boys. New York: Scholastic, 2012. Print. 

So, as it happens, I was shockingly (note sarcasm here) already reading a young adult book when the semester started, and you informed me of the Book Pages Project. Not only was I reading a young adult book, I was reading an extremely popular young adult book that is part of a series, or quartet, if you will. The fourth and final book in the series just came out in April of this year. So admittedly, I am late to the game, which is usually how it happens when there is a book that is wildly popular but doesn’t sound quite like my thing—especially when that author has written another novel that I read, and really didn’t like *cough…Shiver…cough* and particularly when said novel is the first in a series. For someone who reads a lot of young adult fiction, the series is an unfortunate trend, because: a) most series could have been one book, but it's simply a cash grab because series are “in” right now (see: The Hobbit trilogy of movies for a 200 page book) and also b) as someone who owns hundreds of young adult novels that I want to read and hundreds more that I want to read, which I haven’t purchased yet, I simply don’t have time for a book I read and like to turn into a three plus book commitment. But I digress: Let’s talk about The Raven Boys! This book is about a sixteen-year-old girl named Blue Sargent who lives with her psychic aunts and clairvoyant mother. The meat of the plot is that Blue has been told by her family that if she kisses her first love, he will die—think Snow White in reverse or Romeo & Juliet to the extreme. Talk about star-crossed love! Blue goes with her family to the cemetery on St. Mark’s Eve (which is a typical family outing for them to mark the holiday and commune with the dead, or soon to be dead, in this case). St. Mark’s Eve is the one day of the year in which the spirits of those who will die before the next St. Mark’s Eve are revealed to mediums (weird and confusing, I know). Blue’s only ability is to make her aunts’ and her mother’s powers stronger; however, on this auspicious day, Blue sees a spirit called Gansey. Her Aunt Neeve explains that the reason Blue could see his spirit was either because he is her true love or she will kill him…or both. Blue finds out that Gansey goes to Aglionby Prep and hangs out with a group of friends that all go there (the raven boys). Personally, I was really underwhelmed by this book. At first, I was intrigued because the book is a unique mix of contemporary and supernatural elements. Also, the question of whether Blue is going to kiss or kill Gansey is interesting as well. However, I feel that the novel quickly devolved into mediocre fare and fell prey to many of the common tropes found in YA fiction. Although it was subtle, I definitely sensed a love triangle between Adam, Blue, and Gansey. Furthermore, I don’t think very much happened in this book, especially when you consider its 468-page count. As is commonplace with so many YA novels, it is the first book in the series, which makes it little more than set up for the book to follow. After reading 468 pages of text, I still don’t know the answer to the central question: How are Gansey and Blue linked? What is his fate? I am my suspicions, but that’s all they are, and they haven’t changed since I started reading the book. As for connections to adolescence, there is something that teens can get out of the novel: Blue is something of a “black sheep” in her family, Adam is really poor and feels that he has to compete with and prove himself to his rich friends all the time. Adam also has an abusive father, and a mother who not only looks the other way, but asks Adam to protect his father. Gansey has a detached family with no real emotional connection. His family is extremely wealthy. As a result, they seem to care about things more than people. Gansey is also somewhat of a black sheep in his family. Ronan is the troublemaker, and wiseass who doesn’t get along with his brother (which is putting it mildly). I think that a teenage boy might get more out of this than a girl, because I think that they are bound to identity, at least partially, with one of the boys. Also the boys’ characterization is pretty well fleshed out, while Blue feels a little cookie-cutter to me as a character (a common pitfall in a genre that is flooded with female protagonists aka the Mary Sue). I liked the novel okay, and I’m glad that I finally read it and found out the source of the hype, so that I can stop wondering about it. However, it is very forgettable, and I will not be continuing the series.