Book Review: Revenge Of The Girl With The Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Revenge Of The Girl With The Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg

16-year-old Lexi has had it up to here. She spends every weekend acting as lackey to her younger sister Mackenzie at beauty pageant after beauty pageant. She works a part-time job to pay for basics while her mother spends thousands of dollars they don’t have on endless gowns and “necessities” for Mac. Her sister is turning into the world’s biggest spoiled brat. And to top it all off, she’s sixteen and has never had a date. She may be considered a Girl With A Great Personality, but is it too much to hope that a cute boy will take notice one of these days?

In this charming, engaging young adult novel, main character Lexi isn’t exactly unpopular — everyone likes her well enough — but she’s not one of the Beautiful People at school by a long shot:

“In other words, I’m the girl that all the guys go to because, well, I’m the cool chick who they can talk to about the girl they really like.”

Lexi had it drummed into her head long ago that her sister got the looks in the family, so she has basically just stopped trying. She’s great at making people laugh, but her daily look at school is jeans, baggy T-shirt, ponytail, and no make-up. Ironically, Lexi’s dream in life is to study fashion in New York and pursue a career as a designer. She’s got a gift for clothes and wardrobe, but uses it to help everyone but herself.

Finally, on a dare from her best friend, Lexi decides to give glamor a whirl. She gets hair and make-up tips from an expert on the pageant circuit, puts on a dress, and voila! Suddenly, she’s turning heads, getting noticed, and getting boys. While Lexi basks in the glow of her new-found social success, she’s uncomfortable as well. The question remains: Should she have to be a different person in order to get people (boys) to like her? And if a boy who never gave her the time of day is now falling all over her, should she be flattered — or insulted?

Revenge is not just a book about a makeover. Lexi has it pretty tough in her home life. Her parents split up soon after Mac was born, and her mother’s emotional neediness has led her to unhealthy overeating, morbid obesity, horrible money management, and an obsession with pageants. Lexi’s dad is a benign absence; he means well, but just isn’t around. Lexi watches in growing dismay as her mother ignores past-due bills in order to buy new tooth covers (called “flippers” in pageant lingo) so that 7-year-old Mackenzie can have a smile just as perfect as all the other wanna-be beauty princesses.

It would have been easy, I think, for an author to take a preachy approach to this subject matter — beauty is only skin deep, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, blah blah blah. That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t help a teen girl who feels invisible every single day of her life. In Revenge, author Elizabeth Eulberg gives the reader (and Lexi) food for thought, but there are no pat, easy answers. Lexi really does feel better when she likes the way she looks. She really does have more confidence when she goes into school and people notice that she’s pretty. She seems to get a new burst of energy once she starts dressing herself with the same care that she puts into advising others on their fashion choices. And yet, she’s very much aware that the boy of her dreams never once saw her as a love interest until she changed her beauty routine, and that the party invitations only started coming her way once she changed who she was on the outside.

So should she have to change to be liked? Where’s the limit between making yourself feel good and remaking yourself to please others? If people only let you into their inner circles if they approve of your looks, is that circle really worth entering?

Lexi is a terrifically likeable main character. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s a good friend, and she tries her best to make her mother see reason. Her home life is a disaster, and I couldn’t help but feel horribly sad for her. Lexi has to shoulder a burden that’s simply unfair for a girl her age, and she struggles through admirably, trying to find a balance between duty and protecting her own wants and needs. When a final disaster pushes her over the edge, Lexi decides to take a stand once and for all, and to say that there are fireworks is an understatement.

Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality zips along, with plenty of quirk and humor to offset the sadness and pain that Lexi experiences. The writing is fast-paced and never dull, and the characters feels relatable and true to life. The biggest take-away message from Revenge seems to be that dressed up or dressed down, you have to be able to live with yourself and the choices you make. It’s not wrong to make changes to try to fit in better, if that’s what you want. The point is to be true to your own happiness, to your friends, and to your own sense of what quality of person you want to be. As Lexi puts it so winningly, as she confronts the school queen of mean:

“I have tried to be like you guys, to be liked by you. And say what you want, but I did it. You all didn’t have time for a loser like me unless I was entertaining you or doing something for you. So I guess deep down, we’re all losers who have something we want to cover up… We’re all the same. So you’re not better than me… You just like to pretend that you are. Why? To make you feel better about yourself.

So I can take off the makeup, but I’m still a good person… But there’s no such thing as bitch remover.”

Oh, snap! Lexi is on fire!

I truly enjoyed Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality. Great characters, convincingly told truths, and a plot with tons of zing — what’s not to love? Highly recommended for teen girls… and their moms, too.

Review copy courtesy of Scholastic via Netgalley.

5Mar2013

Book Review: Spellbinding by Maya Gold

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Spellbinding by Maya Gold

Sixteen-year-old Abby is used to fading into the woodwork, lurking in shadows, never being noticed. Whether at home or at school, Abby is one of those girls who’s always in the background, not especially scorned, not surrounded by friends — just kind of there. She’s used to her lot in life and more or less knows her place, although she can’t help sighing over golden boy Travis, her life-long crush ever since he showed her kindness on the playground years ago when they were both small. Travis is dating perfect-but-mean Megan, and Abby can only watch from the sidelines and blush whenever anyone takes notice of her. Sensitive and shy, Abby is the quintessential high school wallflower:

Maybe this is the flip side of being invisible: Nobody sees me, but I notice everything.

Abby’s life takes a dramatic turn when a teacher assigns the class a genealogy research project: Trace your family back from the current generation to the family member who first set foot in America. Abby knew her late mother’s side of the family arrived centuries earlier, but is startled to discover a connection to Salem in the 1600s — the Salem of the witch hunts and trials, located just a short distance from Abby’s home town.

As Abby digs further, she seems to awaken her own magical powers and a deep connection to the dimpled, adorable Rem, a mysterious boy who seems to know a lot more than he’s willing to admit. Will Abby embrace the power promised by her newly discovered abilities? Can she change her life by using magic? Should she?

Even without her magical awakening, Abby was already facing a slew of mundane problems. Since her mother’s death years earlier, Abby feels overlooked by her father, who focuses instead on her soccer-star younger brother. As her father begins dating, Abby – the household cook – is full of resentment towards the woman she sees usurping her role in the kitchen and, not incidentally, in her father’s heart. Abby’s best friend moved away the summer before, leaving Abby without the security of a BFF. Abby is smart and has talents, but not the kind to make her admired or sought after at school. This is a girl with enough to deal with — and now she has to figure out if she’s crazy or if she’s a witch, and if she’s a witch, what should she do about it?

Abby’s inner struggles are what make this book particularly interesting. She clearly has a gift, but she’s also keenly aware of a sense of right and wrong. When Abby uses a love spell to get her crush to notice her, she does it as a lark, to see if she can. But once she realizes that her magic works, she’s not so sure that she wants it. Is it satisfying to have your dream boy suddenly devoted to you, when you know that you forced it to happen? How can you be happy in a relationship if you know, deep-down, that it’s not real?

A nice twist in Abby’s growing power is that it clearly doesn’t have all the answers. Abby gains greater confidence and starts letting her hair down — literally — no longer afraid to be noticed. But she quickly finds that the notice she gets isn’t what she wanted, as the school mean girls subject her to a campaign of gossip, bullying, and Internet abuse, all of which escalate as Abby gets her guy and becomes golden boy’s new girlfriend. Greater visibility is no protection against ridicule and scorn.

Author Maya Gold has a way with words, using surprise twists and references in ways that made me sit up and pay attention as I read. A few prime examples:

It’s as if the morning is posing for June on a calendar.

There aren’t evil earth witches who look like Keith Richards with blood in their eyes.

If I’m having some kind of schizophrenic breakdown, the voices inside my head sound like Gandalf the Grey.

What I especially liked about Spellbinding is how real Abby’s inner life seems. Given the mean girls and their nastiness, having Abby consider using magic as revenge doesn’t seem like power gone mad — more like a reasonable response to intolerable circumstances. When you’re backed into a corner, who wouldn’t use their secret strength to get back into control?

Another noteworthy aspect of Spellbinding — and one that really differentiates it from the plethora of supernatural-tinged YA novels saturating the market these days — is that “normal” life is clearly the better choice. Yes, magic exists and is tempting, but it’s made clear that if Abby journeys down the path toward embracing her witchiness, she’ll be forever giving up an everyday life of family, friends, achievements, and true connections. Despite the temptations, Abby has a good head on her shoulders, and quickly comes to realize that power is no substitute for relationships that come from the heart.

Spellbinding does a great job of weaving magical elements into the broader story of a girl trying to find her way, come out of her shell, and find her place in the world. It’s not Abby’s witch heritage that really matters in the end; it’s the connections she’s made that give her strength and enable her to look forward toward a brighter and happier future. I’m very glad to have read Spellbinding. It’s a quick read, but one that should resonate with teen girls (and their moms!). The combination of romance, suspense, magic, and girl power is quite fun and full of (ahem) charm.

Review copy courtesy of Scholastic via Netgalley

26Feb2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My Wishlist Wednesday book is:

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

From Amazon:

It’s 1950 and the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie Moraine wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street.

Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test.

With characters as captivating as those in her internationally bestselling novel Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys skillfully creates a rich story of secrets, lies, and the haunting reminder that decisions can shape our destiny.

Why do I want to read this?

I’ve come across a few reviews of this new YA release recently — all raves. The New Orleans setting sounds wonderful. I like that the book is set in 1950; so much of the New Orleans fiction that I’ve read has been set in the 18th or 19th century. I’m interested in seeing what life in mid-20th century New Orleans would have been like for a young woman, particularly one growing up in such difficult circumstances. Out of the Easy sounds like a terrific mix of mystery, scandal, and coming-of-age tale. Yet another book that I can’t wait to read!

Quick note to Wishlist Wednesday bloggers: Come on back to Bookshelf Fantasies for Flashback Friday! Join me in celebrating the older gems hidden away on our bookshelves. See the introductory post for more details, and come back this Friday to add your flashback favorites!

19Feb2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My Wishlist Wednesday book is:

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

From Amazon:

Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice.

An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood? From award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick comes a book about passion and preservation and ultimately an exploration of the bounds of love.

And from Goodreads, with more specifics:

Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you’ve never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens. In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they’ve lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon – the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter’s moon, the blood moon – this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.

Why do I want to read this?

First of all, this got a rave review in my local paper last week! I’d never heard of it before, but this new YA novel sounds fascinating — dark, mysterious, a little creepy, tragically romantic. I love the idea of the seven connected stories, and can’t wait to see how they all come together. The Amazon and Goodreads summaries are really different, but between the two, I’m fairly certain that Midwinterblood is a book that I’ll love.

9Feb2013

Book Review: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

Steampunk authoress extraordinaire Gail Carriger, who made the reading world a better place by introducing us to the wonderful world of The Parasol Protectorate, now steams ahead with a new young adult series, The Finishing School.

“Book The First” in the new series is Etiquette & Espionage, in which we meet 14-year-old Sophronia Timminnick, the somewhat unruly and definitely unfinished daughter of a large country-dwelling family. Sophronia is prone to mischief and misadventure, largely due to an unbridled curiosity and an unwillingness to let fashion and manners dictate her every move. Within the first chapter, Sophronia is recruited into Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, which takes a very select few girls for “finishing”.

And what a finishing school it is! Housed in a huge dirigible which floats over the moors, Mademoiselle Geraldine’s teaches girls not only how to curtsy and flutter eyelashes, but the finer points of misdirection, covert operations, knife and poison skills, and all the other necessary knowledge of a first-rate intelligencer.

There’s action galore amidst the comedy of manners, as well as an array of mechanical wonders including clockwork maids and butlers that run on tracks and a rather adorable little dachshund-like mechanical dog (a “mechanimal”) named Bumbersnoot. Much of the plot revolves around Sophronia chasing around after a secret prototype that’s drawn the attention of a variety of baddies out to steal it, in between which Sophronia explores the out-of-bounds areas of the school, makes unlikely friends, and learns to appreciate the finer nuances of appropriate dress and accessories.

It’s all quite clever and tongue-in-cheek, with much the same spirit as the Parasol Protectorate books. The Finishing School series is set in the same world as The Parasol Protectorate — a steampunk-ish version of England, in which vampires and werewolves are a part of society and the pursuit of scientific knowledge is often cause for nefarious crimes and plots. The Finishing School takes place about 25 years before the events in The Parasol Protectorate, but still, a nice variety of familiar faces pop up in Etiquette & Espionage, and I’m hoping that a certain burly, ill-tempered werewolf will make an appearance in one of the future volumes.

Gail Carriger shows her usual flair with character names, which in this book include Mrs. Barnaclegoose, Dimity Ann Plumleigh-Teignmott, Agatha Woosmoss, and the roguish Lord Dingleproops.

Overall, while cute and entertaining, I wasn’t enthralled by Etiquette & Espionage, which disappoints me as I’d had this one on preorder for months, based on loving Soulless and the rest of the Parasol Protectorate books so very much. The tone of E&E struck me as a bit juvenile, more middle grade than young adult. The opening chapter’s set piece is Sophronia’s misadventure in a dumbwaiter, ending badly with a trifle flying through the air and landing on an indignant woman’s hat. From there, the book continues with a great number of adventures and mischief, but I never felt that there was much at stake, despite what are intended to be a few menacing sorts trying to cause trouble.

While The Finishing School is marketed as a young adult series, Sophronia, at age 14, seems a big young and green to anchor a series whose intended audience is teens. I’m assuming that Sophronia will grow up during the ensuing volumes of the series (perhaps à la Harry Potter and his seven years at Hogwarts). I’m hoping that as Sophronia ages during the remaining three books in The Finishing School, the maturity level of the storyline will age with her.

That said, I’m sure Etiquette & Espionage will be a big hit with Gail Carriger’s goggle-and-top-hat-wearing fans. I’ll be curious to see how it fares with the young adult audience, who most likely are not familiar with the quirky delights of the world featured in the adult Parasol Protectorate books. Etiquette & Espionage is a promising beginning, but to hold my attention, I’d like to see the next book take on a little more depth and move beyond E&E‘s flavor of madcap adventure into something with a bit more substance.

5Feb2013

Book Review: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan & Rachel Cohn

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I love being proved wrong about a book, and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a good example of a happy surprise for me.

It’s possible that I just picked the wrong time of day to start this book. Perhaps I was simply too tired to give it a chance. I read about 50 pages and jotted down some quick notes before heading off to bed. My notes included phrases such as “no point of entry”, “exclusionary feel”, “impenetrable”, and “can’t relate”. Not a very auspicious beginning, to say the least.

And yet… when I continued the next day, I found my attitude toward this book completely turned around. So how and why did that happen?

For starters, a brief synopsis:

Nick is the 18-year-old bass player in a teen “queercore” punk band, who feels music — and life — deeply and passionately. Nick has been dumped recently by his girlfriend, and when she shows up at his gig, he impulsively asks the flannel-wearing girl at the bar to be his fake girlfriend for five minutes. The flannel-clad girl is Norah, who has just turned down Brown University in order to follow her on-again, off-again boyfriend to a “kibbutz” in South Africa for a year, and who is starting to realize that everything in her life may be a big mistake. Nick and Norah fake-kiss… but boy, it feels good, and thus starts a night of music, clubs, city streets, drunken friends, cab rides, Oreos, and dancing in the rain.

The book is written in alternating chapters, switching between Nick’s narration (written by David Levithan) and Norah’s (written by Rachel Cohn). The pace is quick and sharp, with dialogue that is witty, vulgar, and in-your-face. Nick and Norah are a couple of angst-ridden, deeply introspective teens, who think deeply about life, love, music, friendship, and finding meaning in the world. The beauty of this book is in the inner workings of Nick and Norah’s minds and in seeing the interplay from one chapter to the next, as Nick and Norah reinterpret each other’s actions and words, and we see the chasms of misunderstanding that must be bridged over the course of one night.

I’m always fascinated by the single-night story — they meet, they share an intense moment… but will they part forever when the sun comes up? Of course, the best example, in my mind, is Before Sunrise, a movie I could watch again and again. Nick & Norah ends up fitting nicely into this mode, showing how a chance encounter blossoms into an unexpectedly delicious and slightly dangerous, extremely intense connection. The rising sun feels like a deadline, and the only question is whether to say good-bye or face a new day together. I won’t say which happens here; in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, it’s the journey that matters.

So why the about-face for me regarding this book? Again, perhaps it was just a matter of starting the book at the wrong time, but I found the early chapters somewhat off-putting due to their setting in the Lower Manhattan punk-rock scene. The club, the people, and the musicians — all seemed to be flashing the words “not for you” at me in big neon letters. I read a lot of young adult fiction. I am definitely not a young adult myself. But as I’ve said many times, the best YA fiction is just good fiction, period. You shouldn’t need to be a teen or twenty-something to read a book about people in that demographic, so long as it’s a good book with well-drawn characters. At the beginning of Nick & Norah, I felt that age would be a barrier to my enjoyment. As the story progressed, however, I began to really enjoy Nick and Norah’s explorations not just of each other but of their own fears and hopes. The more deeply the characters journeyed, the more I came to appreciate the passion and emotion expressed by the gorgeous, full-frontal, no-holds-barred writing.

I was originally drawn to this book after having read the authors’ two other collaborative efforts, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares and Naomi & Ely’s No Kiss List. Both were lovely, and both featured the pattern of alternating voices that work so well in Nick & Norah. As an added attraction, all three books read as love letters to New York, and it’s great fun to revel in this glorified, gritty version of the city, its people, and its hidden treasures.

A note: I have not seen the movie version of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and I’m not sure that I’d want to. For me, the glory of the book is in getting inside the characters’ heads, and I can’t imagine that translating well to the big screen. Plus, from the movie stills I’ve seen, the casting does not at all match the pictures in my head, and I don’t want to replace “my” Nick and Norah with the Hollywood version. (But if you’ve read the book and seen the movie, please do share your thoughts! How do they compare?)

All in all, I’m very glad that I stuck with this book long enough to get past my initial turned-off phase, as I ended up enjoying it very much. This is a short, quick, intense read, but one which really held my interest and touched my emotions as well.

4Feb2013

The Monday agenda 2/4/2013

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

Happy Monday! Looking back and looking forward…

From last week:

The Round House by Louise Erdrich: Done! A beautiful book that I can’t get out of my mind. My review is here.

I received an ARC of Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield. Very moving story. My review is here.

Finally, I managed to crack open Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan while the rest of the world was busy watching the Super Bowl.

And this week’s new agenda:

I’ve read about 50 pages of Nick and Norah, and I can’t say I’m won over yet. Perhaps it’ll just take a bit more time; I’ve read and loved these authors’ other two collaborations, so I still have high hopes for this one.

I can’t wait to get my hands on Etiquette & Espionage, the first book in Gail Carriger’s new Finishing School series. It’s due to arrive on Tuesday, and I’ll be diving in the second it arrives.

I plan to devote some time to reading the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan.

If I manage to find time for anything else, I’ll most likely start Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, which has been at the top of my to-read pile for two weeks now, although I’d also like to check out more of Sophie Littlefield’s books.

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

28Jan2013

The Monday agenda 1/28/2013

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Happy Monday! Looking back and looking forward…

From last week:

A little slower on the book front this past week:

Just One Day by Gayle Forman: Done! I liked it much more than I’d expected to. My review is here.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich: Reading now, only about 50 pages into it so far.

I read a bunch of my son’s graphic novels and reviewed them here.

My long-awaited new Fables paperback arrived last week! I loved Fables: Cubs in Toyland (volume 18), but now have the usual complaint — I don’t want to wait months for the next one to come out!

I also read the first volume of a new (to me) graphic novel series, Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. Very intriguing story; I think I’ll be be reading the rest as soon as I can get my hands on them.

And this week’s new agenda:

I think it’ll take me a good part of the week to read The Round House, which is quite good, but fairly heavy.

After that, I may tackle one or two books from my TBR pile, probably An Abundance of Katherines by John Green or Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan…

…although I’m also terribly tempted by my new arrivals, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes and The Child’s Child by Barbara Vine.

I believe this is what’s called an embarrassment of riches! Having too many books to choose from is definitely not a problem I mind having.

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

25Jan2013

Book Review: Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Another YA novel about “insta-love”? Haven’t we read enough of these already? Those were my thoughts when I picked up a copy of Gayle Forman’s new book, Just One Day. And I’m pleased to be able to report that my expectations about this book were quite wrong.

Main character Allyson is 18, fresh out of high school, and on a whirlwind, parent-sanctioned tour of Europe (“Teen Tours! Cultural Extravaganza” is the too-exuberant-for-words name of the program), along with her bestie Melanie. It’s all a big blur, during which the teens are shuttled from one significant destination to another, chaperoned and dosed with lessons about history and culture. Melanie hits the pubs and suffers hang-overs daily, while Allyson goes along dutifully, always the good girl, doing what’s expected of her.

On the final day of the program, as the group waits for a production of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon, a free-spirited group of actors (whose troupe is called Guerilla Will) invites the gang to ditch Hamlet and come see their production of Twelfth Night instead. In a rare burst of spontaneity, no doubt helped by the fact that the lead guy is so cute, Allyson decides to take a chance, and she and Melanie head off to the canal basin to see a free-ranging, outdoor, wildly inventive and exhilarating production. A perfect end to a so-so trip, and the girls are ready to catch the train to London and fly back home to their normal lives. Except… on the train, the cute guy appears, starts chatting with good girl Allyson, and in a moment that changes everything, invites (or challenges) her to hop a train to Paris — for just one day.

Cute guy’s name is Willem (he’s Dutch and dreamy), and he christens Allyson Lulu, in honor of Louise Brooks and Allyson’s new hair style. Lulu and Willem spend one fabulous day wandering the streets and alleys of Paris, living free and large, and falling — hard — for one another. Or so Allyson thinks… until she wakes up alone the next morning. Willem has left her without a trace, and Allyson’s heart is broken. Not only that, but our young lovers never got around to exchanging email addresses, cell phone numbers, or proper names (Willem only knows our sweetie as “Lulu”), so when the guy is gone, he’s gone for good.

And here’s where things get really interesting. Up until this point, I was a bit half-hearted about yet another story of a somewhat shy girl meeting the gorgeous guy of her dreams and falling instantly and irrevocably in love. In Just One Day, it’s not so simple. Allyson does fall hard for Willem, and he does seem to fall for her too — but it’s also clear that this is a guy with a girl in every city across Europe. Dude is a player, to put it mildly. So when he abandons Allyson after their one night, is it really so surprising?

Allyson heads home full of shame and self-loathing. She knew he was a chick-magnet. She saw his little black book. What else did she expect? Unfortunately, her one day of love in Paris ruins the start of her freshman year of college, and Allyson spends months in a deep depression, barely getting by academically, distancing herself from her roommates, and realizing that her friendship with Melanie has run its course as well.

The layer of all of this that’s really finely written and well-thought out is that Allyson is an only child, daughter of two parents who have raised her to be dutiful and good and to always aim to please. Allyson’s mother in particular seems to be reliving her own missed opportunities through Allyson. She picks her daughter’s classes, down to the exact time of day, shops for her clothes, and plans every moment of her life. Allyson is pre-med because that’s what her parents have convinced her she wants. She collects antique alarm clocks (weird, right?) because her mother decided it would be fun for her to have a collection. On and on, we see Allyson’s mother controlling her every move. But after Paris, Allyson finally starts to realize that maybe what she’s been told she wants isn’t really what makes her happy.

Over the course of her freshman year, Allyson slowly starts to find her own way, and it’s eye-opening. As she breaks out of her shell, she comes to realize that what she wants for herself may not match what her parents want — and more importantly, that she has the power to make her own decisions and find her own way. What I ended up loving about this book is the gradual, painstaking development of Allyson’s independence and self-esteem. She finally begins to emerge from her mother’s shadow and the sense of what is expected into a strong young woman who is willing and eager to take chances. By doing so, she’s ultimately able to embrace the choice she made to spend “just one day” in Paris, and many months later, to begin to consider the possibility that events may not have been exactly as she’d perceived them to be.

The book asks some interesting questions: Are fate and accidents really the same thing? Is there really only one great love in a person’s life? Is being good enough? How does a person figure out how to be? Through Allyson, we see a young woman’s journey toward individual growth and empowerment, and it’s actually quite lovely to watch her finally take the reins of her own life and start setting her own course.

The writing in Just One Day is fast-paced, a nice mix of introspection and adventure, and the plot zips along from month to month in engaging snippets and snapshots.

I have only two minor quibbles with Just One Day:

First — and perhaps it’s just that I’m not the target demographic and therefore can’t appreciate the underlying urge toward free-spiritedness — I have little to no tolerance for plot points that revolve around leaving important things to the whims of chance. Remember the movie Serendipity (didn’t like it) or even Before Sunrise (loved it), where the characters fall in love at first sight, but leave it up to fate to bring them back together, rather than — oh, I don’t know — exchanging vital information? Willem and Lulu/Allyson do the same thing in Just One Day, and it strains belief. Seriously, at some point it would have made sense to at least get each others’ last names… or phone numbers… or something. It’s the information age, people! Share your information!

Second, as part of my reading resolutions for 2013, I vowed that I would not start any new series. It was not until I was already half-way through the book that I saw the little blurb on the back announcing that “Just One Day is the first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels.” The follow up novel, Just One Year will be released in the fall of 2013. Gah. Of course, I’ll read the next book, but I’m a little miffed about it all.

That said, Just One Day would work just fine as a stand-alone novel. It does have a very open-ended conclusion, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The book’s end leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and it’s certainly not clear what awaits Allyson. But that’s life, isn’t it? By the end, our main character has made choices, taken risks, and gained a willingness to take a chance and see how it turns out. Anything can happen when you’re open to life, and I think that’s more or less the point.

I enjoyed Just One Day very much (had a few bleary-eyed days following a few nights of staying up past midnight because I couldn’t put the book down), and I’m looking forward to reading more by Gayle Forman. The author captures the voice of her young adult characters in a way that is convincing and true, and I found myself enchanted by Allyson’s adventures and discoveries. Also — Paris!

23Jan2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
Please consider adding the blog hop button to your blog somewhere, so others can find it easily and join in too! Help spread the word! The code will be at the bottom of the post under the linky.
Pick a book from your wishlist that you are dying to get to put on your shelves.
Do a post telling your readers about the book and why it’s on your wishlist.
Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My Wishlist Wednesday book is:

Hanging By A Thread by Sophie Littlefield

From Amazon:

In a town where appearance means everything, how deep beneath the surface will Clare dig to uncover a murderer?

Summer is the best part of the year in Winston, California, and the Fourth of July is the highlight of the season. People consider themselves lucky to live in the quaint, serene beachside town, and native Clare Knight, now a city girl, feels doubly lucky to be moving back there a week before the July festivities kick off.

But the perfect town Clare remembers has changed, and everyone is praying that this summer will be different from the last two—that this year’s Fourth of July festival won’t see one of their own vanish without a trace, leaving no leads and no suspects. The media are in a frenzy predicting a third disappearance, but the town depends on tourist dollars, so the residents of Winston are trying desperately to pretend nothing’s wrong.

And they’re not the only ones hiding something.

Clare has been blessed—or perhaps cursed—with a gift: she can see people’s pasts when she touches their clothes. And since she’s a seamstress who redesigns vintage clothing, her visions are frequent—and usually unwanted. When she stumbles across a denim jacket that once belonged to Amanda Stavros, last year’s Fourth of July victim, Clare sees her perfect town begin to come apart at the seams.

Why do I want to read this?

Sophie Littlefield is an author I keep hearing about, from other readers as well as from authors whose books I admire. Her book lists include works for adults and for teens, some in the crime/mystery genre, some with a supernatural element, and I believe some dystopian as well.

Hanging By A Thread is her most recent YA novel, and it sounds so interesting! I like the idea of a small-town setting with a twist, and I’m eager to read this one and see how it all turns out. This author has another book coming out in February that sounds completely different — Garden of Stones, a historical novel for adults focusing on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I’ve heard so many good things about Sophie Littlefield. If I enjoy Hanging By A Thread, then I’m sure I’ll want to try one of her books from a different genre to see how it compares. I’m really looking forward to getting to know this author!