When Everything is Torn Away

If you live in tornado alley, you not only respect these hulking beasts, you also get used to them. When the siren blows, you might not run right to the shelter, but you keep an eye out. While you can't live in fear for half a year during the season, being lulled into a false sense of security can be very, very dangerous. In Jennifer Brown's Torn Away, the lives of so many were changed forever with the presence of more than just a funnel cloud... it was like the finger of God himself.

Jersey Cameron grew up knowing what to do in the event of a tornado; its just that she never really had to do it. Occasionally, the family would go to the basement, but most of the time the sirens were a false alarm. So it got easier and easier to ignore them. She gets home and starts a meal like any other normal day while her mother takes her sister to dance class, but there is nothing normal about this day. This is the day that they never saw coming and will never be able to forget. 

When Jersey realizes the tornado warning is real this time, she turns dinner off and heads to the basement. Hiding down there, she quickly realizes the tornado is bigger than anyone thought. By the time it is over, she leaves the basement to see that her entire house is almost gone. Her neighborhood is almost gone. Her neighbors, and everyone around her, are either injured, or even dead. If her neighborhood is this bad, how could her mother and sister have survived? All alone, Jersey realizes just how destructive the tornado really was. 

This book starts with the destruction of a tornado, but it continues down the road of a young girl's dysfunctional family. Her mother never spoke to her own parents, and so Jersey is sent to live with her father whom she has never met. When she gets there, it is clear these people just don't give a crap about Jersey or anything she has gone through. While the premise of the book is the tornado, the continuation of the story really gets to the heart of the aftermath of such a tragedy.  It was a really amazing and heartbreaking journey for both Jersey and the reader. Here was a normal girl in a normal midwest life who had everything she ever knew or loved sucked up into a funnel cloud. What is left is damaged beyond all repair... or is it. 

This is a book about family, about healing, and also about grieving. I think pegging this book as a "storm book" doesn't really get to the heart of Brown's purpose for the story. If it was a storm book, it would have ended when Jersey was shipped to her dad's house. Instead it kept going, proving Brown had more to say. I have always like Brown's stories, because they aren't afraid to get to the dark and ugly side of things, and Torn Away is no different. I think this story, while dark and sad, would be appropriate for a variety of students. The real-life implications are deep, and a reader will have a hard time not connecting to the story. Jersey is a young woman who was dealt the worst hand possible, yet there is still hope for her with each page you flip. 

A Compulsion of Clues

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is something we all joke about having at times, but none of us really understand the extent of its control over its victims. The need to tap, count, and pay homage to rituals can be completely debilitating, and very few people understand it completely. Kate Ellison's breakout novel The Butterfly Clues explores the life of a girl who is consumed by her compulsions until the murder of a young girl in the wrong part of town becomes her biggest obsession.


Lo (short for Penelope), taps, counts, and believes in the power of numbers, not because she chooses to, but because she has to. She survives life by just getting by and trying to blend in, not letting many people know the true nature of her needs and compulsions. When a young stripper is murdered right in front of Lo, she feels a connection to the girl and a compulsion to find the murderer. Along her path, she can't help but think of her own brother who succumbed to drugs on the very streets the stripper, Sapphire, met her grizzly end. 


As Lo gets deeper into the case, she meets a young homeless guy named Flynt who agrees to help her traverse the mean streets of Neverland. She finds herself in the crosshairs of the killer and despite the warnings and attacks on other people involved in Sapphire's life, Lo can't stop herself from finding redemption for the stripper she had never met. She knows there is more to the story than the police care to investigate, and she refuses to stop hunting until she finds the truth. What she fails to recognize, however, is that the people involved will do anything to keep the truth from coming to the surface.


I struggled with this book a little at the beginning. Vital information was withheld from the reader until a good 1/3 of the way through the book, like what was going on with her brother and her compulsions. I don't think all of it needed to be kept so secret for as long as it did since it was vital to the character development of Lo and the understanding of the purpose behind the story. That being said, once I understood this important background information, the story became really interesting. It opened up and I was able to get invested in Lo's quirky character. The intertwined story of Lo's brother and Sapphire was one that adds something unique and wonderful to the mystery. It truly is the story of a girl who nobody understands finding someone who doesn't care why she is different but loves her differences unconditionally. 


This is a mature story not for graphic sexual content (although Sapphire is a stripper and Lo goes to the strip club a few times to investigate). I think it is a mature book due to the complexity of Lo's character and how she interacts with the people in her life and the world around her. An immature reader will lose themselves in her eccentricities and not get to the heart of a girl with a disorder she cannot control. Also, the confusion at the beginning of the story might lose a weaker reader where a strong reader could barrel through it in order to get to the heart of this interesting story. I really loved Ellison's characters and look forward to seeing more from her. And don't forget, Kate Ellison and Lauren Oliver will be at Oblong Books and Music in Rhinebeck for the Hudson Valley YA Society event on March 2, 2012 at 6pm! I will be there... will you?!

Because She Stayed

In her first book, If I Stay, Gayle Forman told the story of Mia, a young woman left in a coma by the same car accident that killed her mother, father, and little brother. She tells the story as she watches over her unconscious body and the friends and family who plead with her to stay. We know she chose to stay, but I always wondered where she went. Now we know...

When Mia came back, one of the only reason she returned was for her boyfriend and best friend, Adam. Now, three years later, Adam has become an angry, unhappy man. His band is famous, he is dating a famous actress, and he has the world at his fingertips, but he can't have the one thing he really wants: Mia. After she woke up, Adam stayed with her on the long, painful road to recovery. Her determination to play the cello again was one of the driving forces that kept her going. When she left for Julliard the following fall, Adam headed to the LA with his band. Although they were a continent apart, Adam was determined to stay together. what he didn't understand at first was that Mia needed to move on, from both the accident and everything that reminded her of the accident, including Adam.

After three years apart, Adam is in New York with his band, ready to continue their European tour. On a whim, he decides to stay in New York one more night, and he finds himself drawn to the concert hall where Mia is playing. After her concert is finished, she sends someone to bring him backstage. It is that choice, that instant, that changes their lives forever. The survivor's guilt, the shame, the grief, the loss, all come flooding back to both of them as they spend an awkward night together. Mia convinces Adam to take a farewell tour of NYC with her that one last night before she leaves for Japan on her own tour. He agrees, but he seems to do so in the same punishment-seeking way he is about his entire life- believing he doesn't deserve anything better. Along the journey, Mia and Adam share their deepest pains and find in one another the people they once knew as well as the people they have become.

This is a beautiful story full of grief and heartache. Told from Adam's perspective, you can understand how he grieves as much as Mia, although his grief was never realized since they technically weren't his family (although in all aspects but biology they were indeed his family). The reader can also see the grief pattern Mia has experienced where she is simply tired of being treated like the victim. For three years she experienced everyone, from her grandparents to her professors, treating her like she was fragile and would break at any moment. She hated it. She was tired of everyone giving her a free pass because of her family. She just wanted to be seen for who she was: a girl, a cellist, a person who didn't lose everything and at the same time, a person who did lose everything. Together, Mia and Adam heal one another, and it is a story you need to experience to understand.

I not only suggest this story for anyone who read the first book, but I also recommend both books as a great story for struggling readers. The story starts with a traumatizing event and continues in a full story arc through the culmination of the sequel. It is a well-envisioned and beautiful story that will undoubtedly touch anyone who graces its pages. Gayle Forman is a great author, and I am grateful she decided to continue this story.

A Summer You Will Never Forget

Covers really can be deceiving. Titles are no better. When you look at this cover, what do you think is going to happen? Girl seeks boys, girl finds one boy, boy changes girl, life continues happily? Boy are you wrong. Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer has more going on than you might think given such a deceptive title...

Anna, Matt, and Frankie were best friends. Of course, Frankie (Francesca) was Matt's little sister and Anna was in love with Matt. But that all changed when Matt professed his love for Anna at her birthday party. He asked her to keep their love a secret until he and Frankie went away with their parents for the summer so he could explain the relationship properly. Unfortunately, they never got that far, as after a month of hiding their relationship, the day before Matt and Frankie were to leave for Zanzibar Bay, the three of them decided to go for ice cream. On the way home, a car accident leaves Anna and Frankie shattered emotionally and Matt gone forever.

Now it is a year later and Frankie's parents decide they have to go back to Zanzibar Bay. Still grieving for the loss of Matt, they pack up with Anna in tow and head for the beach. Before they leave, Frankie convinces Anna to make a pact to hook at least twenty boys in their three weeks at the beach. Since the loss of Matt, Frankie has changed to someone Anna barely recognizes. Although she can only think of Matt and the only secret she every kept from Frankie, she agrees to the pact just to make things better with Frankie, and relieve a little guilt.

Once on the beach, Anna meets one boy she can't stop thinking about. Frankie continues on her quest, but Anna is torn between really liking this local surfer boy and feeling like she has betrayed her first love, Matt. When Frankie reads Anna's journal and learns of her relationship with Matt, it seems like nothing will ever bring the friends back to the way they were before the accident.

This book blew me away. The grief Anna, Frankie, and Frankie's parents suffer is so real, almost palpable. When Frankie's mother admits to Anna she knows the relationship with Matt was more than friends, you can almost feel the ache in Anna's heart. When the family arrives at their beach house, the pain will course through your body. You can see them grieve. You can feel them hurt. Ockler has delivered a story that will make you suffer and survive right along with the characters. It also shows the difference in how people grieve, which is an important lesson for people to learn. Anna turns within herself and refuses to open up. Frankie opens up to everyone just to fill the void. Frankie's mother and father are barely speaking or holding themselves together. This vacation to Zanzibar Bay was a life journey the reader should feel both privileged and saddened to journey down.

The writing is fairly simple, but this story really deals with mature situations. There is a decent amount of sex as Frankie tries to find solace anywhere she can get it, but nothing is graphic. Instead, it is usually just implied. The grief and loss is handled beautifully, but is a very heavy subject that might be too much for a student who has suffered any great loss recently. The beauty of this story is it will hook a girl who doesn't usually read serious stories with its lure of fun and beaches, but it will deliver lessons they never saw coming. If you give this book a chance, I promise you will never be the same.

Echo

Have you ever relived a moment in time, trying to judge whether anything you could have done might have prevented an inevitable outcome? When Justin's younger brother Mark dies, Justin is forced to relive the horrific day and its consequences again, and again, and again.  Kate Morgenroth's Echo depicts grief and its consequences and explores the gray area between reality and illusion.


Justin used to be popular. He used to be an athlete. Now, he's a pariah. His former friends and his girlfriend go out of their way to avoid him. Everyone tells him he has changed. The teachers and administrators at his school have lost their patience; his grief is no longer enough to account for his rudeness and hostility. Justin thinks he is doing fine until he is overwhelmed by the anniversary of his brother's death and is found at the scene of a critical accident involving his former friend Billy. Already grappling with the guilt of being a firsthand witness at his brother's death, Justin now hears a voice that makes him relive the day of Billy's accident over and over.

Each time, Justin sees the incident with new eyes and learns a little more about the cast of supporting characters. He comes to understand which circumstances he could have changed and which were beyond his control. He realizes that he is not, in fact, okay, but that he also does not have to be alone in his grief.

Echo is dark and a little raw in places. It's not too graphic, but there are a few scenes I could do without visiting multiple times. For young adults who are not too close to grief in their own lives or who have an interest in psychology, this would be an interesting read.  It is pretty compelling, and at 137 pages, moves quickly. There's a little mystery and a little raw emotion as well as a need for belonging and search for forgiveness that we can all relate to.