I
n What I Leave Behind, Alison McGhee has created a devastating masterpiece that manages somehow be just as uplifting as it is tragic. Written in an almost lyrical style, with one hundred words on each page (there are also one hundred pages), What I Leave Behind tells the story of sixteen-year-old Will, three years after his father commit suicide. Will is an almost normal high-schooler, working at the dollar store while his mom never seems to come home, but there are a few things that set him apart: he makes cornbread, and he walks. He walks everywhere, past Superman, the homeless man of First; past the dog-of-insanity who is always chained and always barking; past the little butterfly dude, who sits in his yard waiting for butterflies. The only places he doesn’t walk are the places where it is painful, like the bridge on Fourth Street where his father was found dead; his old friends Playa’s house who he hasn’t really spoken to for much too long; the store with a hundred Chinese blessings nestled at the back.
As for the cornbread? Only one person knew the recipe, and he kept it in his head. Now that Will’s father is dead, no can replicate it. No one even seems to try – except Will, who tries and tries and tries, never succeeding.
When something unexpected happens to Playa, Will starts to turn himself around and becomes a gift-giver, helping others through their struggles while inadvertently helping himself. But can Will help the person most important to him when he hasn’t had a real conversation with her in years? Playa needs his support and he needs to find a way to give to her.
This is a beautiful, heartfelt story about friendship, loss, and self discovery. In ten thousand carefully chosen words, Alison McGhee winds the threads of Wills life into an incredible tapestry, one which I couldn’t help but fall in love with. This is a book I would recommend to just about anyone, especially people who are be struggling with a family loss or broken friendship, and I feel that it deserves a place on every bookshelf.
Category Archives: Reviews
Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl
Neverworld Wake, by Marisha Pessl, is a stunningly put together story. It tells of a girl named Beatrice who recently lost her boyfriend, Jim, at the end of her senior year of high school. Jim’s death reveals a bounty of unanswered questions, and Beatrice needs to get to the bottom of them. She returns to Wincroft, the mansion belonging to her old best friend. Beatrice and all her friends were separated after Jim’s death. While searching for answers, Beatrice gets swept up into the craziness of the night, and can’t escape. They become trapped, stuck in time. Beatrice and her “friends” are introduced to a confusing place called Neverworld Wake, where they live a century inside a second.
Neverworld Wake is thrilling. It’s impossible to put down. Once you get sucked into the wake yourself, there’s no coming out until the story is finished. It’s hypnotizing; the mere idea of this wake is captivating. There is drama, sadness, adventure, edge-of-your-seat anticipation, and plot twists you could never imagine. This book is bound to become popular among YA readers. It is one of a kind, and I urge everyone to read it. Neverworld Wake is one of the best books I have ever read, and a great addition to the YA genre.
From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon
Sandhya Menon, you have done it again! I thought there couldn’t be another great Desi-American teenager overly problematic life/love story after When Dimple Met Rishi, but of course, you proved me wrong. This book is all that and more…It’s basically 327 pages of me laughing-crying-screaming in the best way possible!
From Twinkle, With Love is Sandhya Menon’s sophomore novel, a young-adult contemporary ystory about an Indian-American teen filmmaker, Twinkle Mehra, who tells her story through letters to her favorite female directors.
Menon did a great job portraying Twinkle – a teenager, who is smart, but shy; is trying to free herself from her image as a wallflower; makes impulsive, foolish mistakes; has a passion for cinematography, and wants to build a career in it. but like most teenagers, she is also figuring out and doing her best to handle high school, boys (and trust me there’s more than one), Friendships, oh, and of course parents…
When Twinkle gets the opportunity to direct a movie for the film festival in school, she knows this is her chance to show the world what women are capable of doing, voicing her strong belief in women empowerment. Everything’s going perfectly – new friends, first crush first love, getting to do what she loves the most – directing. But life’s not a movie, and she realizes there’s more to it than just happily-ever-afters!
There are so many important, vital messages nestled into this wonderfully sweet book and they’re all handled extremely well, with writing that is seamless, characters that are charming and small plot twists which continuously pull the reader in.
Furyborn by Claire Legrand
A fantasy novel packed with magic,
elemental powers, prophecies, and two furiously headstrong, stubborn, badass female characters. The book alternates between the perspectives of Rielle and Eliana, who have been born with powers – power that could mean they are one of the prophesied Queens-
the Queen of light and salvation or the Queen of blood and destruction.
Rielle Dardenne has kept her power
hidden since she was a kid, but when an assassination attempt is made on Prince Audric – her best friend and her first and only love – she unleashes her power, in order to save him, revealing everything she has tried so hard to conceal. Hoping to prove her
allegiance to the kingdom, she has to go through various magic trials or be executed. She has to convince everyone, especially herself, that she is the ‘Sun Queen’. All while trying to keep Corien, an angel who has certain plans of his own, from poisoning
her mind.
Eliana Ferracora – an assassin for
the king – has a connection to Rielle, despite being born a thousand years later, when the story of Queen Rielle is nothing but an age-old legend. However, in a world where magic has long been eradicated, she possesses certain powers that she herself hasn’t
yet discovered fully. When females of all ages start vanishing from her kingdom, including her mother, Eliana teams up with her enemy, Simon (aka the Wolf), who seems to know a lot about who she is, and sets off on a journey to save her mother, and possibly
her empire, while discovering who she is and what she is capable of doing.
Furyborn is nothing short of an adventure,
especially the untangling of the connection between the two characters, that will have you hooked to the last page!
Bookish Boyfriends by Tiffany Schmidt
Bookish Boyfriends, by Tiffany Schmidt, is a modern day combination of Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice. A mix of all the chaos, surprises, and romance of those two masterpieces. This book is relatable and insightful by letting you identify with the characters of old stories. It is about a high school girl trying to find her own story.
In Bookish Boyfriends, Merrilee Campbell is obsessed with books. All her free time is spent reading and summarizing her stories to her two loyal best friends, Eliza and Toby, and basically anyone who is around to hear it. Merrilee always talks about how boys are so much better in books than in real life. Until one day, she meets a mysterious boy at her new high school who seems suspiciously like Romeo. Merrilee thinks Romeo and Juliet is the greatest love story of all time. She wanders through the halls wondering if she will ever be his Juliet. Is this her story?
This never before seen combination of two classics has all the right components. If you are a fan of Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, or romance in general, you will love this book. It’s a perfect read for people trying to find their own stories, and their own bookish boyfriends.
Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian
When Princess Theodosia of Astrea was six, her life was ripped apart. Her peaceful island nation was invaded by the fearsome Kalovaxians, her mother slaughtered, and her people enslaved. Over a decade later, Theodosia is still imprisoned in the palace she once called home. Theodosia is forced to watch as the Keiser runs her country into the ground, and slaughters her people, as each small act of rebellion is etched onto her back with the Theyn’s whip. But with the reappearance of a childhood friend, everything changes. Theodosia has been the Keiser’s pawn for too long, and for better or worse, she soon finds herself a Queen in a perilous game of deception and betrayals. One wrong move means death, and if she wants to win, Theodosia will have to be cunning, brave, and ruthless in order to save her people— and herself.
Theodosia is by far the smartest— and possibly the most ruthless protagonist I have ever read. She’s cunning, manipulative, brave, and unlike most heroes, has excellent survival instincts. But she’s also human, and even as she gets closer to her goal, she finds herself inexorably drawn to the crown prince that she swore to kill. Theodosia soon finds herself trapped, caught between her people, and the boy she may be growing to love.
Ash Princess is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of a girl who has lost everything, and is willing to do anything in order to survive. The writing is beautiful and compelling, the characters diverse and colorful, and the plot a masterpiece of twisting, interlocking tales. Ash Princess is undoubtedly one of the best fantasy novels that can be found on the YA shelf.
MunMun by Jesse Andrews
In MunMun, by Jesse Andrews, a different world is taking place. A world where your amount of money determines your size. For littlepoors, the world is dangerous and full of huge cats, crazy cars, and people accidentally stomping on them. For middles, the world is comfy; everything is their size. They have average lives, but live in fear of becoming poor and being scaled down at any moment For bigs, the world is tiny. They tower over literally everything, and are never completely full or hydrated. They have to eat entire cows and move in slow motion and whisper in order not to kill anyone smaller than them. The whole point of living in this world is to scale up, but the question is, where do you stop?
Warner is born littlepoor, along with his sister Prayer and friend Usher. They travel throughout their little, terrifying lives and try to find ways to scale up. The only problem is, it seems the world is built for everyone bigger. It’s difficult to scale up when it feels like everything is against you
MunMun is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s a very interesting take on how money impacts people’s lives. It’s full of adventure, plot twists, betrayals, and interesting friendships. Andrews writes this in a different way, with fascinating spelling/grammar and impeccable descriptions. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a truly crazy story formed from an idea no one has ever seen before.
After her father was sent to a rehab, Kira was sent to live with her aunt in Seattle, leaving behind everything and everyone she loves. Now she’s back to her old town and her father, wanting for everything – from her relationship with her dad to her bond with her friends – to go back to normal. But she soon realizes, despite her hopes, it’s not going to be easy to pick up where she left off.
Her dad invites three friends from the rehab – Nonnie, an old lady who, later on in the book, starts to almost fill the gap that Kira’s grandmother left after she died, Peach, who is a motherly type and cooks some delicious food, and Saylor who helps Kira with her homework and is working hard to become a yoga instructor – are living in her house when she gets home and are trying to put their lives back together as well. She is freaked out, for two reasons. First, she wants to be able to trust her father again and now three strangers are living with them, and second, if her social worker found out, Kira fears she would be sent away again.
Her three best friends are mad at her for not trying to stay in contact with them after she left, and totally neglecting their effort in trying to reach out for her (who can blame them), so there’s definitely a huge hole she needs to climb herself out of. Oh right, also, one of her best friends has started dating her ex-boyfriend, Jay, who Kira was madly in love with. This plot-twist definitely spices up the drama in the book. And of course, there’s sweet, caring Alex, who probably is the only normal person in her life, since her return, but her growing feelings for him, and her old feelings for Jay puts her, as well the readers, in a dilemma, though the answer becomes super obvious mid-way of the book.
As she starts to settle back into her life, and accept the changes around her. We see a development in Kira’s character as well as her relationship with the people in her life. The book also sheds light on the enormity of alcoholism, but rather than describing the darker aspects, it emphasizes on the lighter, more hopeful side of it, which brings the whole story to a bittersweet ending.
Looking for Alaska by John Green
When Miles asked his parents to send him to his father’s old boarding school, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. All he was looking for was an escape from the loneliness and drudgery of his everyday life and judging by his fathers wild stories, Culver Creek might be just what he’s looking for. And if he isn’t the most experienced in the wild shenanigans his dad described, well, its high school, what’s the worst that could happen?
What Miles didn’t anticipate was his new roommate Chip, who calls himself the Colonel. The Colonel introduces Miles— newly nicknamed Pudge, to a secret world of midnight pranks, bad alcohol and forbidden adventures. And at the center of it all is Alaska Young; clever, daring, unpredictable, gorgeous Alaska Young.
Looking for Alaska is— surprisingly— among the most insightful and intense books I have encountered in YA literature. Looking for Alaska is, in a way, a more modern and well written version of A Catcher in the Rye, with language and experiences that the twenty first century teen will understand and identify with. Whether you’re a teacher looking for an interesting and meaningful story for your students, or a teen yourself, Looking for Alaska is a fascinating and philosophical story filled with vivid characters and an intriguing plot.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Simon Spier is just your typical teenager. He has a small group of close friends, gets good grades, plays small roles in the school musical, oh, and he’s gay. And nobody else knows. Nobody that is except Blue, the guy he’s been secretly emailing since August. Blue’s also gay, also in the closet, also at Shady Creek High, also the perfect guy for Simon. The only problem is that neither of them has a clue who the other is. And Blue wants to keep it that way. Which Simon is okay with. Totally
Things get even more complicated when Martin finds out Simon and Blue’s secret. Martin has a crush on Simon’s friend Abby, and if getting a date with her means blackmailing Simon into setting them up, then so be it. Now Simon must find a way to help Martin get what he wants, or face the consequences.
Soon to be made into a major motion picture, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a wonderful coming-of-age style book with a wide and varied cast of characters. The reader will find themselves relating to Simon, to his friends, the mysterious Blue, and even Martin. Between the friendships, the secrets, and the way other kids handle learning that Simon is gay, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a well written and timely novel for teens to read.