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Young Adult Archive

Friday

9

January 2015

0

COMMENTS

Weekend by Christopher Pike

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three stars

weekend

Sorry folks. I really should stop reading these books. But this one was available at the library. I was helpless. And I can’t promise that I won’t be going back to the library for more; apparently there’s a five-book vampire series that came out this century, so I kind of feel obligated to check it out.

But back to this one, brought to you by the year 1986. Same basic premise as Slumber Party – a bunch of friends are getting together for a weekend away, and one of them was seriously injured (poisoned to the point that her kidneys no longer work) at a party a few months prior. This takes place at a beach, not a lodge, and there are guys already part of the group. It is set at a fancy house on the Mexican coast (Mr. Pike seems to enjoy his super-rich kids). There are cat-fighting girls. There is a mystical man (one guess as to his described ethnicity). There are snakes.

This one had one twist that I saw about two chapters in; there was another twist that took me maybe four chapters. What I’m saying is that there isn’t a lot left to the imagination. And sometimes the writing is kind of hilarious – Mr. Pike is clearly trying to paint pictures with words. Sometimes he is really successful (I have to say I have no problem conjuring up his worlds in my mind) and sometimes he just goes overboard.

Am I glad I read it? Sure. Can I recommend it? Eh. If you’ve got 90 minutes to kill and want to dive into a little YA fun, you could do worse.

Thursday

8

January 2015

0

COMMENTS

Slumber Party

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

slumber

So I think I’ve decided that thrillers set before cell phones and Internet research work well. It’s a lot easier to accept that someone going missing might just be them out on a walk if they can’t be reached by text message. As this book was written in 1986, it makes sense that when, say, one member of the group disappears, it’s totally reasonable that she’s just gone somewhere else. Or when someone seems suspicious, it makes sense to just feel things out, because you can’t exactly Google them to see if their story checks out.

I definitely remember reading this book when I was younger. So it’s hard for me to say whether the book is super predictable, or it was predictable because somewhere in my mind I remembered what happened when I read it 20 years ago or so. The premise is a bunch of high school ‘friends’ (in Mr. Pike’s world, young women always seem to be more like frenemies than true friends) go to a giant house in a ski area for a weekend away from their parents. Skiing and meeting boys are the two main objectives. Oh, and one other thing – Nell, the one whose parents own the house, was burned during a freak accident about eight years prior, when the same group of girls were together at a sleepover. Nell’s younger sister Nicole was killed in that same accident.

Nell’s face was pretty badly burned, so there’s that underlying issue. And of course her dead sister (although she is apparently rarely discussed). There’s Rachel, who is blond and gorgeous (but also mean, because of course); Mindy, Rachel’s dim-witted friend who chews a lot of gun (excellent character development); Dawn, who is a bit pudgy (again, that’s about all we get); and Lara, whose third person perspective is the view we get in the book. Lara and Dawn are clearly close, as are Mindy and Rachel. Lara also brings along Celeste, a new girl at school who is a couple of years younger than the girls.

Things happen. Lara and Rachel end up interested in the same guy, Percy, who is friends with Cal, a guy who apparently got way too fresh with Dawn when they were alone together. There is a party, there is a disappearance, and there is the fear of murder.

When the twist comes, you will either go DUH, saw it coming from a mile away, or you will smack yourself because you SHOULD have seen it coming a mile away. This is not Shakespeare, it is not deep, there is not any sort of serious character development. But it was fun to read on the elliptical this morning.

Friday

18

April 2014

0

COMMENTS

Great by Sara Benincasa

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

Great

I first learned about Ms. Benincasa in 2008, when her Sarah Palin videos were making the rounds online. I can’t recall what happened to bring her to my attention a couple of years later, but I started listening to her “Sex and Other Human Activities” podcast (R.I.P.). Thankfully that led me to “Radio Dispatch” and my now-favorite daily news/cat stories/activism show “Citizen Radio”. In 2012, her first book, Agorafabulous!, was the first book I purchased for my first e-reader. So what I’m saying is, I enjoy her work. We don’t always agree politically (I think she’s a bit more ‘just chill, it’s a joke’ than I am about things), but her tweets make me laugh, and her memoir was a really great, humorous look into her experience with depression.

She hinted that she was working on a Young Adult version of The Great Gatsby over a year ago; a bit after that she said she was setting it in modern times, with younger characters and a gender switch for a couple of the main characters. I had to look this up online, but Nick has become Naomi and Jay is now Jacinta. In case it isn’t obvious, I should probably admit here that while I’m sure I’ve read The Great Gatsby, I … don’t remember it. Really at all. At this point I think every mental image I can conjure up about that book is more likely to be from a preview of Baz Luhrman’s movie. I know. So keep that in mind when I say that I LOVED THIS BOOK.

Seriously. I really enjoyed it, to the point where I put off a whole bunch of chores to make sure I finished it today. There were bits that I could tell were direct references to the original work (the green light is a computer charger port light, the billboard is now one advertising plastic surgery), but it still felt original, if that makes sense. The book is tightly written, easy to read, fun, sweet, and clever. The setting works really well, and while some references may become outdated (Facebook plays a bit of a role), I don’t know how one could write a book about teenagers set in modern times and just pretend that social media doesn’t exist. She also handles the fact that these young adults do have parents without necessarily making it all about those relationships. It’d be odd if 17-year-olds just existed in the Hamptons with no reference to the adults raising them. There’s clearly some ‘yeah, right’ feel about some of the actions of these kids, but it’s much more believable than, say, Gossip Girl.

I’m glad I bought the electronic version, because I’m pretty sure it’ll become my go-to relaxation read.