Come Tumbling Down - Seanan McGuire

Jack and Jill are back! This is the third Jack and Jill centric book in the Wayward Children series and more in line with Beneath the Sugar Sky. This book is not a prequel detailing the lives of a child who ends up at Elinor West's Home for Wayward Children. Instead Come Tumbling Down follows events after Every Heart a Doorway.

Jack and Jill were gone from the scene. Jill had murdered a few people trying to get back to the Moors, trying to get back into the good graces of The Master, a vampire ruler who took Jill under his wing and taught her to be cruel. Following the gruesome murder of Jack's girlfriend, Jill and Jack departed the Moors and ended up at Elinor West's. Then went back to the Moors when Jack had killed Jillian, preventing her from becoming a vampire.

And this is all normal Moors stuff because there, a dead person is never really dead. So Jack will be able to resurrect her sister, save her from an undead fate, and hopefully take up with her girlfriend who will also hopefully not dead. And all this is what happened. Until, well, Jill really wanted to be a vampire and needed a never dead body. Since Jack had a nice warm body just sitting there, they performed the old-switcheroo.

Jack became Jill and Jill became Jack and Jack-in-Jill had to run for her life through a door. When she lands back in the basement at Elinor West's to find Christopher has occupied her former room, Sumi is definitely not dead, and a mermaid girl is now in the group. So again, our folks go travelling, this time to the Moors to try to put the girls back in the right bodies, and start a war for the balance of power in the Moors.

All of our friends with their various gifts become involved. And the despair of someone like Christopher, like Cade become more acute as they see their friends called back to their homes and they remain in our world.

I'm excited for the next book in this series. None of them disappoint.

4/5 Stars. 

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me - Julie Anne Peters

Angst. I have a love hate relationship with teen angst. I felt a lot of it in my teens and resented adults who didn't "understand" and now I'm an adult and just think teens should get over it already and hate myself for it. So while the angst expressed in Lies My Girlfriend Told Me made me roll my eyes at the teen characters several times, I also couldn't figure out why the parents were sometimes being real douches.

In the story, Alix wakes up on a Saturday ready to head off snowboarding with her girlfriend, only to be told by her mom that said girlfriend, Swanee, suffered a cardiac arrest while running and has died. Alix is devastated. This was her first real girlfriend, her first love. And she was planning to "go all the way" with Swanee this weekend. Begin eye roll at exclamations of never loving again and wishing she had died with Swanee. Give major eye roll to Mom who doesn't seem to understand that her daughter is genuinely grieving, even if the relationship did only last six weeks.

Well after the weird funeral service put on by Swanee's eccentric but "cool" parents, Alix finds Swan's cell phone in her room and on this cell phone are a lot of texts from "L.T." expressing love and asking where Swan has been. Ruh-roh. Turns out Swan kind of sucked. Watching Alix come to terms with this was probably the most interesting part of the book. Because at first, Alix leads L.T. on in an effort to find out who she is and who she was to Swan.

Turns out, Swanee Durbin gave a fake name (Swanelle Delaney) to another girl in a town not far away complete with a fake facebook account. But this part of the book was a little bit of a stretch for me. LT or Leonna Torres as we come to find out, is an extremely hot cheer leader and has no idea that Swan has died. Oh she saw a report on the news about Swanee Durbin, but even after not hearing from Swan for an entire week, didn't think it could possibly be the same person. Even though Swan won the high school track state championship the year before.

Did I mention Alix and Leonna meet later in the book at a track tournament where Leonna is cheering for her high school and Alix's is competing, meaning wouldn't have Leonna met Swan at some kind of even before? I know I'm reading too much into this part because we're supposed to be focused on the fact that Alix and Leonna fall in LOVE. And then Alix has to admit that she was the one who was texting her as Swan when Leonna didn't know Swan was dead.

Look, I'm happy these two ladies found love in the end. Swan sucked and they deserved it. But the narrative was a little too convenient. As introspective as Alix is, she never quite gets the lesson as deep as you expect. Swanee's parents never made her do laundry or start dinner. Ah gentle reader, this is why Swan sucked. Swanee's parents are in a poly-amorous marriage and this is why she slept around. And yes, I want to be more like Alix's parents even while realizing they are held up as a foil to Swan's parents to explain her suckage. It's probably a little unfair to people in open marriages to assume that is why they raise spoiled unfaithful children.

Anyway, this was a well constructed teen romance with a small mystery with maybe just the right amount of angst on both sides.

3.5/5

On the Come Up - Angie Thomas

Wow! I really liked this book. Here's the thing. A lot of adults try to write a YA novel and end up sounding patronizing or hysterical when they write teenagers. Angie Thomas somehow manages to capture the angst of being a teenager in a realistic, sympathetic, and authentic way.

Reading as Bri struggles with fairness and family obligation actually made me FEEL the way I did when I was a teenager - when I could not conceive of a world that didn't see right and wrong the way I did - when I was so SURE I knew what I was doing and admitting that I had no idea was not an option.

In On the Come Up, Bri struggles to find her own voice as she is under increasing pressure from her family circumstances and societal expectations. See, she has a gift. She's a poet who works with words the way painters work with acrylics. That her father was an up and coming rap artist prior to being shot and killed hangs over her attempts to make her own name in the business.

Her mother J, and her brother Tre are her solid support system. Thomas artfully shows how teens sometimes grow up before their family is ready. And Bri is attempting to shoulder a burden her mother and brother are sure she's not even aware of. As they recognize her personhood - she blossoms and is fully ready to take on the challenges she's facing. And her challenges are many. Her mother is laid off and out of work. Her family is struggling to pay its bills. Bri and her neighbors are bused to a less diverse school but are targeted by security personnel there. A local talent promoter is trying to exploit her and present an image of her she's not comfortable with.

It's a wonderful story of finding yourself, forming bonds, the unsure footing of maturing, and romantic exploration. Thomas has crafted a story with so many people to root for, it was a pleasure to read. 

4/5 Stars. 

Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng

Who doesn't love to hate on a character now and then. In Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng gives us a whole family of characters to hate on. 

When Mia and Pearl move to Shaker Heights, Ohio, Mia promises her 15 year old daughter that for once, they will stay put. Mia, who is an artist constantly moving where her inspiration takes her, knows this kind of stability will be a gift to her daughter, who has attended more alma maters than is probably advised.

Mia rents an upstairs unit from the Richardson family - a perfectly situated family of four children (two boys and two girls) with a lawyer father and journalist mother. Elena may have at one time aspired to more than a local beat at a tier three paper, but she never went for it. Now she's content to believe her opinions and her beliefs are the best. She's managed to raise three exceptionally selfish children, and treats the youngest pretty horribly. Now I'm not saying I don't have my moments when we're late leaving the house and my child is crying about how her/his seat belt won't buckle and somehow it's my fault and they hate me, that I don't react in a way that is less than motherly, but c'mon Elena Richardson, your daughter is still a CHILD. Phew. 

So anyway, Mia is a pretty level headed person although she's got some secrets, but she genuinely feels for people. And Pearl starts to hang out more with the Richardsons, finding a kindred spirit in the younger boy, Moody, and finding a smoking hot smoldering spirit for the older brother, Tripp, who, let's face it, has had too much of his life be easy to be anything other than slightly less than an asshole. The older daughter, Lexie, is also incredibly selfish although there is a hint of that starting to change. And Moody, who we may have some sympathy for, ends up being kind of an asshole too. Which leaves the youngest daughter, Izzie, who, constantly berated and unloved by her own mother, has a bunch of issues and is seriously just looking for someone (Mia) to love her. Sad.

And all that would be fine if Elena Richardson didn't have a friend so focused on having a baby that she would railroad the child's biological mother in her quest for custody. Because she does, and that brings out everyone's thoughts and feelings on the subject. When it turns out Mia doesn't agree with Elena, Elena goes through some pretty sneaky and unethical shit to get dirt on Mia. 

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending only because I wanted Elena Richardson to really get hers but alas, this book is probably more like real life where Karma is a bitch, but not always egalitarian. Celeste does some really great work with white privilege, white saviorism, and class distinctions that work really well in the book. I enjoyed it and her writing.

4/5 Stars

Warlight - Michael Ondaatje

I've been sitting on this review all day because I felt a lot of things while reading Warlight that I wasn't sure I'd be able to succinctly describe. After a few days I'm more comfortable about how I felt about the book so here goes:

First off, I'd like to say that I listened to the audio version of this book and I believe this was a critical and exquisite mistake. Exquisite because the vocalist did a fantastic job and had a wonderful voice. Critical because the language of the novel, the dreamy quality and the trustworthiness of the narrator led to a really hard narrative to follow in audio format.

The story opens with our narrator, Nathaniel, thinking back upon a very formative period in his life during his early teen years when both of his parents left him and his sister, Rachel, in the care of strangers. Their father, an emotionally distant, blurry figure who, as an executive at Unilever has been called to relocate to the company's Singapore offices for a year. Their mother, Rose, has decided to accompany him for the year, sending the children to boarding school. Their London home is to be looked after by a boarder whom the children refer to as "The Moth." During the months after their father's departure and the start of school whereby their mother will leave, the children grow close to their mother, whom they have no real connection with, having lived with their grandparents during much of the war years.

Once they are ensconced at boarding school, both Nathaniel and Rachel determine they hate it and sneak out to return to their home. The Moth promptly visits the schools and has the children converted to daytime only students. It is once they are back home that Rachel discovers their mother's steamer trunk, carefully packed with all those Singapore gowns, tucked away in a corner of their basement. Both children feel bereft and abandoned. With no way to get in touch with their mother they are left to wonder at the true depths of their abandonment and their parents' deception.

Left to their own devices, Nathaniel and Rachel grow close to The Moth and his case of vaguely criminal friends who frequent the house. Nathaniel especially grows close to a once successful amateur underground boxer nicknamed The Pimlico Darter. While The Moth encourages Nathaniel to get his first real job, The Darter teaches Nathaniel about the back waterways and alleys of the Thames while they smuggle racing dogs of questionable provenance. Un-moored, Nathaniel strikes up a relationship with a girl whose real name he never knows and manages to become close to her while still keeping her at a distance.

And all of this was very interesting and Ondaatje's writing is really fantastic, but then... well the story changes and Nathaniel starts telling the story of his mother, for reasons I don't want to say in this review for risk of spoilers. And given the wonderful distance and mystery Ondaatje spends the first 1/3 of the book creating, the credibility of the knowledge of the last 2/3 is stretched and destroyed by what Nathaniel is able to share about his mother.

The novel is really 1/3 a telling of a child's story from a child's point of view, and 2/3 a telling of a child's story from an adult point of view. It brings up questions and vulnerabilities that are touching and deeply moving and asks us to look at our parents anew from the distance of hindsight and the earned wisdom of adulthood. But it doesn't undo the damage done and the hearts broken in accepting a new perspective.

So all this is to say there were things I really really loved about this book, but when it's all put together it left me wanting a more believable mechanism for getting to the heart of Rose's story without damaging Nathaniel's credibility.

3.5/5 Stars.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Carol Rifka Brunt

I'm torn on this review. I started out really liking this book, then it started to wear on me. Really really wear on me. And then it ended well enough. So this is probably a 3.5 Star review, for what it's worth.

This is a classic YA coming of age story about June Elbus, 14 yo Renaissance fan and her dying uncle, Finn Weiss, who, in 1986 is dying from AIDS related complications. June and Finn have a special relationship which is full of inside jokes and stories. What doesn't work in this premise is the reliance on YA tropes. June is "quirky" and feels unloved and misunderstood (she's not). She thinks she's ugly and doesn't understand why anyone would like her (sigh). But Finn loves her, and she believes he loves her above all others. So she has a romantic crush on her own uncle, and she has a lot of self-loathing associated with this fact. 

When my sister and I were little, we spent weeks in the summer and over Christmas Break at my grandparent's house in Canada. My mom's much-younger brother still lived at home until my sister and I were approaching Tween years. We both loved him desperately. Not in the romantic way June feels about Finn, but close enough that the truth of love, and child love felt real about the book.

In any case, Finn dies and June learns that he's had a boyfriend for nine years. Toby seeks June out to try to have a relationship with her - seeking kinship in the one other person he believes is grieving Finn's loss as much as he is. June is hurt to learn that Finn led another life separate from her. This is common enough for children on the brink of adulthood, to learn that the people they love have other lives and interests. But man does June take it hard. She becomes a paragon of self-absorption and jealousy. It's not pretty. And if I was just left with Carol Rifka Brunt's great phrasing, it may be okay, but it goes on too long, becomes too much. 

Poor Toby. He has no one, and Finn leaves a note for June, asking her take care of him. But instead of really feeling for the Toby character, I found him a little creepy, and their budding friendship, built on mutual grief, somehow never seemed to blossom to me. Toby gets June hooked on cigarettes and even gets her drunk. He's in his 40s. I think it's meant to show what a mess he is, but it's hard to really feel for an adult who lets a 14 year old get wasted on volcano bowls. 

In the background is June's malicious sister Greta, her uninvolved boring father, and her uptight vicious mother. None of these characters were endearing, except maybe toward the end, Greta became redeemable. The stuff this family was willing to say to each other, good god. There was a jot of jealousy flying around here and a lot of self-righteousness that got old and felt staged. In the end, it was just a bit much and took a lot of shine off an otherwise nice looking apple.

3.5/5 stars