Some Annotated Reading November 30

True Biz by Sara Novic is one of those books that has such a long waiting list on Libby that by the time it turns up for me, I've forgotten why I placed the hold. It takes place in a boarding school for the deaf and deals with a multitude of teenage things, but, additionally, two methods of communication for the deaf, sign language or ocular implants. Interesting point: I often complain about books for the young that appear to be written to teach them something, claiming that I don't see that in adult books. This book does seem to be written to teach adult readers something, it just seemed to do it really well. Or perhaps it's just that the deaf community is something I know very little about, so being exposed to it was fascinating.

I was looking for mystery/thrillers to read and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn had been on my Kindle for some time. I bought it on sale, but because I'd seen, and liked, the movie years ago, I didn't bother to read it. I bothered this month, and it is a very good read. I rewatched the movie this past weekend. The ending of the book is much grimmer than the ending of the movie. Interesting point: Writers often read that they must have likable characters, certainly a likable main character. One of Gone Girl's main characters is unlikable and the other is a psychopath. Yet Flynn pulls it off.

So then I decided to read one of Gillian Flynn's earlier books, Dark Places. Holy Moses, it makes Gone Girl look light and fluffy. Interesting point: Talk about unlikable characters! This one has some unlikable child victims. Again, Flynn pulls it off.

Another interesting point: All three of these books use multiple points of view, something I didn't realize was used that much in adult work. With Flynn's books, in particular, you really get different voices with the different point of view characters, something I think doesn't happen a lot with YA and middle grade, in which the characters often sound alike.

YA Thrillers

I am just beginning a new project, a YA mystery or thriller that I'm working on in order to have new material to bring to my writers' group. As part of getting myself pumped up for this, I've been reading the occasional YA mystery or thriller.

How I Would Love An Island Retreat

The Kindle edition of We Were Liars by E. Lockhart turned up on sale this past spring. It's main character, Cadence, belongs to a stinking rich extended family that has a multi-house compound on an island. Before the book starts, something happens to Caddie. She just doesn't know what.

As I began reading this atmospheric novel, I thought, I want a multi-house compound somewhere--an island, anywhere--for my family. Later, I began to think, Hey, why don't any of these kids have summer jobs? Sure, they're stinking rich, but you'd think they'd want jobs as a way to strike out on their own. Then I thought, Wait a minute. Why don't any of their mothers have jobs? Sure, they're stinking rich and all, but you'd think they'd want jobs just for something to do.

Turns out, these were significant questions.

And that's all I can say about this book, because not knowing much is a big part of what makes it enjoyable. It's enjoyable enough that I picked up another Lockhart book, Genuine Fraud.

Ah, What's Going On Here?

Turns out, I'd read Genuine Fraud before. It didn't hurt my enjoyment of this book. This was one of those deals where I remembered each event in the story as I got to it, but couldn't recall what was coming up.

I don't really feel I can say much about this book, because, as with We Were Liars, not knowing what's going on is a huge part of what's good about it. How bad is the bad guy here? How good is the good guy? I can say that a very intriguing aspect of this book is that it's essentially written backwards.

And What Did You Learn From This Reading Experience, Gail?

Theme. I read once that that is an important part of what makes YA YA, and I think it's the case here. With We Were Liars the YA theme involves place in and connection to family. With Genuine Fraud the YA theme is who am I? Who am I going to be?

Oh, also. It's good...maybe even great...to have a big reveal at the end of the story. The story, in fact, is about the reveal.

A Fine YA Thriller

You'll be happy to hear that reading Fake ID by Lamar Giles met one of my objectives for Goal 3. "Read YA thrillers." Good objective, right?

Fake ID deals with a teenage boy in witness protection with his family. They're on their third change of identity, because Dad is trouble and can't keep with the program. Nick...Steven...Tony...finds that his family has been dumped in a town that's nothing but trouble.

It's The YA Characters, Stupid

Fake ID isn't just a good thriller. It's good YA. I've read YA thrillers before that were essentially  adult books with fast cars and dangerous women. The main character is said to be YA, but doesn't act YA or appear to be YA. S/he isn't in YA situations. These are simply adult books that have been retrofitted for YA.

This book isn't like that. Nick is very much part of a YA world...dealing with high school, new people, bullies, a new girl, a possible murder. Well, the possible murder isn't typical of a YA world, of course, but the victim is a YA.  Nick has father issues, which is common with YA novels. In fact, there are two guys with father issues here. On top of that, you could say that this book deals with identity, a classic YA theme, since what is witness protection about but identity?

Fake ID involves a few of those classic mystery elements, red herrings. There are a number of false leads, sending readers after different possible culprits. But it's not giving anything away to say that even on this score this book is about the YA characters, stupid. The fundamental most basic rule of YA, as far as I'm concerned.

Thrillers And Diversity

In addition to being a good read for anyone, Fake ID is an opportunity for young readers of color to see a main character of color in a thriller written by an author of color. 

At about the same time I was reading Fake ID, I read Changing the Face of Crime Fiction: 6 Writers of Color on Writing Mysteries, Crime Novels and Thrillers in Writer's Digest. The article is a round table discussion that begins with the question "Is it really true that the crime/mystery/thriller genre is overwhelmingly white...?" The writers involved in the discussion believe the answer is yes. One of them, Gar Anthony Haywood,  says, "I think support for writers of color starts with promoting crime fiction to young readers of color at an early age. Minority readers of crime fiction tend to discover us almost by accident, after years of reading white authors exclusively, and this is a missed opportunity."

Young white readers are exposed to plenty of mysteries, crime novels, and thrillers with white protagonists and therefore expect to find more of the same for their adult reading. Fake ID gives young nonwhite readers a chance for the same experience.

If You're Only Going To Read One Book, You Want It To Be This Good

During my long summer break, and longer, actually, I read only one childlit/YA book, The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis. I got it through an eBook sale, loaded it onto my Kindle, then found it there a while later. I've had some great experiences reading like that, and The Female of the Species was one of them.

Main character Alex responds in a...shall we say, unique?...way, when her older sister's killer gets away with her murder. She's not a traditional teenager, but she finds herself in a traditional teenage world, developing both the best friend and boyfriend found in so many YA novels/TV shows/movies. That's part of what makes this book so terrific--the mash-up of these two sides of this character's life.

This is an excellent thriller. Wait. It's not just an excellent thriller, it's an excellent YA thriller. That's significant because, in my experience, it's not unusual to find so-called YA thrillers that are, essentially, adult thrillers in which the adult main character has been replaced with a teenager. Nothing else has changed. There's nothing in terms of basic situation or theme that makes the book YA.

But with The Female of the Species, you definitely get YA.

There Are Fevers And Then There Are Fevers

Okay, I've written here a number of times about the Megan Abbott book I started reading on the plane on my way from Seattle a couple of weeks ago. As it turns out, The Fever is an adult book with a child or YA main character (YA in this case), which is a particular interest of mine. I sometimes write about these  types of books here. In fact, I wrote about an earlier Abbott book, Dare Me.

The Fever is what I'd call a literary thriller. Maybe a mystery, but not a traditional one with a detective-type character of some sort. The mysterious carryings on are carrying on and the characters are enduring them with no one figure working to bring order to this world. By mysterious carryings on, I mean that the girls at a high school are becoming ill with something unexplained and disturbing. Their parents are terrified, as they should be. What is happening to their babies? What is snatching them away (metaphorically speaking), and how can they put a stop to this and get their darlings back?

Interesting Point One: Fever's main character seems to be teenage Deenie, but we often get point-of-view switches to her brother and father, meaning we're talking two generations of narrator. One reviewer described The Fever's story as being told by a family, which I think is a great way of describing what's happening here. They're not just three narrators. We see that kind of thing all the time. They're three narrators tightly bound to one another, without, say, the sexual tension we often see between dual narrators in YA.

And speaking of sex, that brings me to

Interesting Point Two: Sex is used in an interesting way here. (Not that sex isn't always interesting.) Teenage characters are becoming sexually active in this story. I'm reading along thinking, Ah, this is taking me away from who's going to get sick next and what's going to happen to them. Bring me more sick girls. Then I thought,  I guess the author is trying to create a realistic teen angsty world, and teenagers have sex. And angst about it. (Well, who doesn't?) Then I got to the end and realized that sex has absolutely everything to do with this story. It is essential to the plot. Readers just don't get that until the end. Which was a neat little epiphany.

Often in books, particularly YA books, I'll see romance/sex that appears to be there because, Oh, we need some of this. The Fever shows readers sex that truly supports the story it's in.

And Now For Something Totally Different

I just finished three fantasy books in a row, mainly because I needed to get them back to the library in a certain order. You'd think fantasy would be different, wouldn't you? As in, it's not real world stuff, so it should be different. But when you read so much of it, there's a certain sameness. And then real world YA is often very similar in its own real world way.

Which is why The Tyrant's Daughter by J. C. Carleson is so exciting. It's real world, but very different YA real world.

Laila is a princess, daughter of the murdered king of an unnamed, presumably Middle Eastern country. Except after she has resettled with her mother and brother in a seriously modest two-bedroom apartment outside Washington, DC she realizes that no, she's not a princess at all. Mainly because her father was never a king. He was a third-generation strongman tyrant and when he wasn't being Dad at the palace, he was behaving in a typical tyrannical way.

Laila has a terrific voice, slightly reserved and stiff as she describes, for instance, her appreciation of her new American friend's kindness even though she can't help noticing that she dresses like a prostitute. She's a kind person, herself, recognizing that a classmate is suffering because her parents are divorcing and becoming attracted to that nice guy who works for the school paper. But  those traditional YA experiences pale compared to those of a fifteen-year-old whose father was gunned down in his home on her uncle's command, who saw her mother covered in her father's blood, whose life was saved by a CIA operative. The Tyrant's Daughter isn't about the world of teens. It's about a teen in the world.

What's missing from this novel is cliched nasty teenagers. There are no mean girls. There are no bullies. There are no jocks trying to force themselves on girls. Adults might find the CIA operative familiar, as well as the brilliant, manipulative widowed tyrant wife. But I don't think they appear often in YA.

So that's just the basic set-up to this thing. As the truth about Laila's family is slowly revealed to her, the fact that this book is a political thriller is slowly revealed to readers. Why is that CIA op hanging around? What's he paying Laila's mother (but not very much) to do? With whom? Why is her mother talking to Laila's uncle, the tyrant who had her tyrant father killed?

And what will Laila's involvement in all this be? She is a tyrant's daughter, after all.

This is a marvelous book, extremely well written. But it's undercut a bit by the essay on women in the Middle East that follows. Even though the essayist ties it to The Tyrant's Daughter by questioning what will become of Laila after the end of the action of the novel, I think most readers are going to wonder why it's there and feel that this great reading experience is being turned into some kind of lesson.

The Tyrant's Daughter is a Cybils nominee in the YA Fiction category.

An Adult Book About Cheerleaders

If you've heard lots of good things about Dare Me by Megan Abbott, believe them. This is a terrific adult thriller about those YA cliches, bitchy cheerleaders.

Main character Addy is the beta female in a cheerleader squad. She serves her alpha "captain," Beth, and initially seems very comfortable in that spot in the hierarchy and with her relationship with the traditionally awful Beth. The two of them are tight, tight, tight. Their world is disturbed right off the bat when a new cheer leading coach comes in, one as badass as Beth. I wondered, myself, if she wasn't a former Beth, reliving the good old days as best she can. To do it, though, she has to battle Beth. Among the things they're battling for is the beta, Addy.

Oh, yeah. And there's a guy.

Whenever I read an adult book with a young protagonist, my immediate question is Why? Why is this an adult book, not a YA or children's book? Theme, I was told once, is an important factor in what makes YA YA. Dare Me falls well within the noir genre, and the noir themes that apply here are far more adult than YA. Okay, my understanding of noir is shaky. But I've been reading about themes involving a fate that can't be avoided, as well as despair, darkness, and obsession. None of the cheerleaders in Dare Me are made happy by anything they do or achieve. And their coach? She knows things aren't going to get any better.

Is this all there is? How's that for a theme? It's not one traditionally associated with YA, which usually deals with  moving into the adult world, finding a place in society, etc.

I felt the homoerotic touch was unnecessary. It risked making the story just a common all-about-love thing. On the other hand, don't noir protagonists often have at least a sexual attraction to a femme fatale? In which case, Dare Me was giving a neat twist to classic noir.

We'll See Where We Go From Here

I am a big fan of Maureen Johnson's Suite Scarlet, which I described as being a "combination of mainstream fiction and screwball comedy." I sought out her book, The Name of the Star, for that reason and because it was a contemporary thriller. I can take or leave that genre, in general, but I'm interested in it when combined with YA.

I have to say that I found The Name of the Star slow getting started. I'm not giving anything away by saying the story deals with a Jack the Ripper copycat murderer. He's carefully mentioned in each of the early chapters, but those chapters are used primarily to get main character, Rory, established in her English boarding school. I liked the premise behind the Scooby Gang that is hunting the killer, but this particular case seemed a little weak to me.

That being said, The Name of the Star is the first in a series, The Shades of London.  I'm going to pick up a copy of The Madness Underneath, Book 2. As I said, I liked the Scooby Gang, and I think it's possible that after The Name of the Star set up the universe, succeeding books could end up being stronger.

Another interesting point: That slow start I mentioned above definitely makes The Name of the Star YA. It's all about secondary school, getting along with other students, getting away from Mom and Dad, and does that boy like me? It doesn't read like an adult book whose adult protagonist has been replaced with a teenager.

A Fun Thriller With Ghosts

I am not a fan of ghost stories, but Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore is more of a thriller than it is a ghost story. It's certainly not any particular ghost's story.

It could also teeter into that adult thriller retooled for YAs category that I've been noticing recently. Daisy Goodnight (a great name) is a freshman in college and the two guys she's not quite torn between are twenty-somethings. Daisy's story is entertaining and engaging, but there's no compelling reason for these characters to be as young as they are. The story could easily be flipped for older, even much older, characters.

As I said, Daisy is a college freshman, which is a neat way of making her available to FBI agents who want her assistance. It is easier for a person that age to be off having adventures, than a younger one, even a younger one who is an orphan like Daisy. The FBI is interested in Daisy because she can communicate with the dead, helpful when investigating murders. The world of the book is one in which any number of people can do magic to one degree or another, and while it may not be common knowledge, even a criminal mastermind may use magical assistance. The Goodnight family is full of hedge witches and other magical sorts.

The book begins with a murder and involves the story of how Daisy gets drawn into a scheme to take advantage of the dead. I got lost a few times in the plot, but Daisy is definitely a charmer.

Another interesting point I must mention--No blurbs on the cover! The back cover simply says, "Daisy Goodnight can talk to the dead. And something has them terrified." And that's why I read a book about ghosts when I don't care for them.

Adult Thrillers Retooled For Teens

I just finished reading Don't Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon. (The paperback comes out next month, by the way.) I was only a few pages in when I thought, Wow, this character, Noa Torson, has a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vibe. We're talking a seriously computer literate young girl character living on her own who even has a Scandinavian name. (I think we're told it's Danish, while Lisbeth Salander is Swedish.) Clearly making that connection was not a novel idea on my part. Gagnon's website describes the book as "A technothriller: GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO for Teens."

I actually liked this book better than Dragon Tattoo, which I didn't finish because it seemed very bloated and dragged. (I saw all the Swedish movies made from the trilogy, just to keep me in the loop.) I did think the point of view switches between Noa, who, when we first meet her has just woken up on some kind of gurney and has what sounds like a pressure bandage on her chest, and Peter, whose home is invaded during his introduction by men in black types who appear to know his parents and take his laptop, slowed things down a bit. I also wasn't crazy about suddenly bringing in a third point of view around the halfway point. I think it's also around the halfway point that we come to realize that this isn't just a thriller. It now  also has what could be described a science fiction angle. I will admit, however, that that these points are all author talk. General readers probably aren't going to obsess about the kinds of things I obsess about.

For general readers, this is a book that is not a fantasy, not a mean girls story, not a romance. It's a plot driven adventure/thriller/mystery with some scifi thrown in that's set in real world Boston. I'm sure there are teenagers who would be relieved to get their hands on this. It's the first book in a trilogy, of course.

An interesting point, I think: Michelle Gagnon is the author of four adult thrillers. Don't Turn Around was her first book for YAs. It reminded me of Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber. That was Schreiber's first book for YAs after having begun his career writing horror and Star Wars novels. We're talking another teen thriller. Both books could easily have been written for the adult readers the authors usually write for by simply adding a decade to the main characters' ages.

Another similar book is I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga. Lyga isn't an adult genre writer turning to YA. He's always been a YA author. But I Hunt Killers has that same kind of adult thriller reworked for teenagers feeling to it. We're talking a Dexter-type of story, with a Dexter character as a teenager, before he goes off the rails and gives in to blood lust.

Which adult books could we see in YA next?