The 2017-2018 Gateway Award nominees

I like to try to read the books that are in contention to be considered for Gateway and Truman literary award lists for the state of Missouri.  I tend to really enjoy the great majority of them, and it's fun to try to decide which ones I think will have the biggest appeal.  Consequently, I have read over half of the books that were recently announced to be on next year's Gateway Award list.

The 2017-2018 list and what I know about it so far:

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven- My rating: ★★★★
It's great. Everyone who has checked it out from my class library has come up to me and commented about it, which is always a good sign!   It's a must-read for fans of Thirteen Reasons Why, Tell Me Three Things, and Eleanor and Park.  It's been optioned for a movie, and I'm pretty sure it's in production.  Read it before you see it!

Inherit Midnight by Kate Kae Myers
It's on my TBR list, and I just checked it out electronically from Mid-Continent.

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon My rating: ★★★ (I loved the story. It was just a teeny bit predictable for a very experienced reader.  Still highly recommend.)
Once this one gets book talked, it never sees the shelf again.  It's highly engaging, and I've heard that it has also been optioned for a movie.  It's going to be a good one for sure!

Losers Take All by David Klass
I have it in the class library, and I'll definitely be reading it soon!  It looks like a pretty funny sports book-- wide appeal!

Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee
I stayed on a waiting list for this forever, and when my turn finally came, school was starting and I didn't have time to read it right then.  Now that it's made the list for next year, I'll put my name back in the reservations!  It sounds like a good read-alike for fans of Armada or Ender's Game.

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee       My rating: ★★★★★
I listened to this as an audiobook one day when we had a snow day, and I loved it!  I marathoned it while I did other stuff around the house, and I wanted the narrator to read faster so I could know what happened.  While it had a few obvious echoes of Mulan, I have to say I enjoyed it tremendously.


Made You Up by Francesca Zappia    My rating: ★★★★★
I may have to secretly root for this one, because I'm friends with someone on the Gateway committee, and I am the one who brought it to their attention.  The cover is beautiful beyond words, and I read this story of living with mental illness in just one day. It's in the class library, and since I told the Gateway people about its worthiness, I obviously highly recommend it!

Emmy and Oliver by Robin Benway My rating: ★★
It was an okay relationship book. It wasn't one of my favorites on the list, but it wasn't awful either. I see the potential for lots of people to enjoy it.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Bardugo is really an up and coming author!  I have this on my TBR through audio-reading on my Audible account.

This Raging Light by Estelle Laure    My rating: ★★★★
The cover. Really?  Seriously?  I saw this book so many times and hated the cover, so I kept walking.  Then it made the list, and I read it and truly enjoyed it.  They have done a great story a terrible disservice with that misleading cover art.  It's a debut novel, and I certainly hope the author follows with more.  Don't make my mistake.  Don't judge it by the cover!

A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis      My rating: ★★★★
I loved this book.  It was a spring of mental illness books, and this one was an outstanding one! I will edit this for read-alikes after I give it more thought.

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider     My rating: ★★★
I hate it when people say for fans of The Fault in Our Stars, but... It is.

The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zakby Brian Katcher        My rating: ★★★★
Tons of read-alikes on my shelves.  This will be a romance you love or... not.  It was cute.

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir   My rating: ★★★★
This one will be a struggle for some, but I really enjoyed it!  It's definitely going to be one people either love or abandon.  I'm anxious to see where my students fall.


Ruthless by Carolyn Lee Adams
I heard your recommendations, and I listened! It's on my next Amazon order, I promise!  It sounds amazing.  That cover looks creep-tastic!

The Life We Bury by Eskens-- Book Review

I have always been a sucker for a well-designed cover or an extremely catchy/intriguing title.  The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens was already on my radar with both those features, so when I found it on a list of titles recommended for reluctant male teen readers, it was an easy sell!  I tend to love books that make those kinds of lists because they are usually page-turners, so decided to give it a go. I have no regrets!

Joe Talbert, a college student, has landed in an English class in which he is assigned to write someone's biography. After procrastinating as long as possible on starting his assignment, he finds himself at a local nursing home in search of a person about whom he can write.  Through a set of complex circumstances. he ends up interviewing and writing about Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping, murdering, and burning the body of a 14 year old girl many years ago.  Iverson, a cancer patient, has recently been released from prison to the nursing home because he is not expected to live long.

As Talbert interviews Iverson, investigates his case paperwork, and digs into his past, what seems like a fairly open and closed case against a man who should be reviled starts taking on the complexity of a kaleidoscope pointed toward the light. He cannot reconcile the man he is getting to know both in person and on paper with the cold-blooded perpetrator of the awful crime.

He takes it upon himself to investigate the leads that were available while the case was being prosecuted, and in doing so, finds himself in life-threatening situations on more than one occasion. Someone is not happy.  Someone wants Carl to quietly die and have the blame buried with him.

This harrowing tale made me simultaneously feel like I HAD to continue reading, because it was essential to know what was going to happen, but sometimes I just could not make myself turn the page, knowing that something awful was just around the corner.

Although the novel does present a captivating story that pulls the reader through page after page with a need to discover the secrets they hold, I am not entirely confident it will hold the promised appeal for the reluctant adolescent audience. It is a great read, and it will absolutely click for many who like to read while perched on the edge of their seats, but at a tiny bit over 300 pages, the length might be off-putting for the truly reluctant reader. It's definitely worth a shot, though!

The Diabolic by Kincaid-- Book review

It is easy to make judgments about people based on stereotypes, generalities, and who you think they are afterjust a few observations. Whether we want to admit it or not, we do it all the time. Sometimes this can be a positive, helping us develop empathy for people we don’t know all that well, but unfortunately it is much easier to do the opposite and jump to negative conclusions, possibly because it protects us from being disappointed by others. Sometimes, though, we end up cheating ourselves out of relationships with good people. We also sometimes allow ourselves to be shoved into other people’s images of us, defining ourselves by what is reflected in their eyes. The young adult science fiction novel The Diabolic by Susan Kincaid shows how important it is that we grow into who we are meant to become rather than allowing others to determine what we are. Nemesis, the main character, is a Diabolic, which means she is a humanoid teenageer who has been genetically and physically engineered to be a bodyguard and companion for Sidonia, the daughter of a galactic senator. It is not supposed to be in her nature to have any emotions other than those that promote her devotion to Sidonia, therefore she is willing to do anything necessary to protect her, whether that means killing someone in cold blood or sacrificing herself. As the story opens, we learn that Diabolics have been outlawed and ordered destroyed, but the family chose to discreetly disobey that command. When the Senator, Sidonia’s father, angers the Emperor and he summons Sidonia to his starship as a consequence of that, they fear for her life and decide to disguise Nemesis and instead send her as an imposter. As a Diabolic, Nemesis is not expected to care for anyone other than the one to whom she is bonded, but as she travels through deep space and arrives at the Emperor’s starship, she slowly begins to emerge as a person in her own right-- one with feelings, morals, and desires that are surprisingly human. She experiences situation after situation that push her to grow, explore, and sometimes become increasingly uncomfortable with her newly developing self-image. It is somewhat ironic that a creature designed to be physically dominating and emotionally almost indestructable is in the end actually just the opposite. This very human side of her personality becomes pivotal as the book reaches its climax and conclusion. Nemesis was put into a tough place. She essentially lost the person who was her very reason for living, had multiple layers of social norms to suddenly learn with no assistance while simultaneously attempting to blend in better than a chameleon, and had to decipher layers of intrigue and deceit few humans could successfully navigate. Like almost every human teenage female on Earth, she swung wildly back and forth between self-confidence and self-doubt, selfishness and self-sacrifice. Many times throughout the story, she doubted her worthiness to be where she was, and she constantly second-guessed herself because of the role she was “created” to play vs. how she was actually living life. Even though her situation was far removed from what we would define as normal, her thoughts about emotion and self-image would fit into almost any high school in America. Nemesis may not have technically been fully human, but her emotional experiences are things that can be related to by many different audiences. It is a rare person who never feels self-conscious when interacting with others or who never second-guesses decisions based upon what others might think. Nemesis is a good example of allowing yourself to be who you are and to change into who you are meant to be, regardless of whether or not others agree with or approve of your decisions, making The Diabolic a worthwhile read, particularly for fans of science fiction and dystopian novels. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Also, I read this and posted the review on Amazon in November but somehow neglected to cross-post.  Darn!

Book review: Some Boys by Patty Blount

Sometimes it's possible to be lonely in a room full of people.  It can be especially lonely in a room full of people who know your worst secrets, many of whom despise you for them. Some Boys by Patty Blount is far more than a story about the loneliness a girl faces after a rape, it also shines a spotlight on the blame-the-victim mentality our society so readily embraces and illustrates the importance of standing against it-- even if one must stand alone.

Grace counts the days since her world changed.  She dons her armor of heavy makeup and severe, spiky clothes and boots every day then climbs into a battle that begins each time she steps aboard the school bus.  Thirty-two days ago, a horror story happened in her world. She went to a party and was raped. She had been surrounded by people she knew and considered friends, yet no one intervened.

Now, thirty-two days (and counting) later, she's increasingly isolated as people turn against her and even bully her for speaking out against her rapist, Zac, a star lacrosse player for the school.

Grace is surrounded by people who try to make her life a living hell.  She faces physical aggression, verbal taunting, and online criticism and attacks almost too horrible to imagine.  She continues to stand strong in the face of their onslaught, but in doing so, she ends up facing a disciplinary consequence at school. Her penance is to spend the week of spring break cleaning lockers with another student who is also on punishment-- Ian.  He, unfortunately, is Zac's best friend.

In their turbulent time together, each is forced to face some realities about one another and about the whole situation. They form a truce and cautiously begin to consider a relationship together. Neither arrives at that emotional place easily, but as a reader, it was a huge relief to finally see someone in Grace's world finally begin to show some basic human decency toward her! It was also heartening to watch her begin to heal, at least a little bit.

This was definitely not an easy read!  It is hard when a story holds itself up as a mirror that reflects society and shows its ugliest of faults. It was, however, an important book to both read and discuss if we ever hope to get past the crime of endlessly blaming-- even attacking anew-- the victim.

Book Review: There Once Were Stars by Melanie McFarlane

I have been an avid reader of YA dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction since its emergence in the late 1990s and have shelves of just such books lining the walls of my classroom. I will happily read from either genre, although I prefer it when the two blend seamlessly together into one story. When the two stand apart, they each tend to follow a pretty predictable story formula, but when they merge, it becomes more like a recipe grandma makes-- cooking by taste rather than measurement, with subtle changes every time. Sometimes those differences are a delight; other times they miss the mark.

There Once Were Stars by Melanie McFarlane is a dystopian + post-apocalyptic blend that includes many familiar ingredients from each category and tries to bring them together for a fresh, new taste. In some ways, it manages to do so.

Natalia Greyes, the main character, resides in a world that has experienced a virus outbreak which killed much of the world’s population, and even her parents indirectly fell victim to its spread. She lives with her grandparents and other survivors in a community encased within a dome built for their protection. They are not allowed to leave, and given all the risk they believe to be outside its walls, certainly have no reason to do so! As dystopian societies go, it strictness level is about mid-range. As the story opens, she is turning eighteen, and you could say she is having a bit of a rough birthday. As is true of most dystopian main characters, what she believes about the world is upended, and she spends the rest of the book fitting all the pieces back together again.

In predictable fashion, McFarlane includes a sprinkling of romance, but it fails to provide any sizzle or zing in the story. The corrupt leaders are a bit trite in their behavior, but when their motives are revealed, it leaves an aftertaste that makes the reader ramp up the generally accepted dislike for their kind and actually dislike them in particular. Natalia, like most dystopian heroines, is a stubborn young thing that doesn’t fit the mold of her society. That definitely works for her, and her particular blend of waywardness-- when accompanied by her motive and quest for understanding-- does add something new and fresh to the field!

Overall, it was a decent addition to the buffet of YA dystopian titles, and I enjoyed watching the story unfold. It was not a stay-up-late-to-finish worthy read, but it was worth a few of my evenings for sure. If dystopians with a twist of the apocalypse are your thing, it is worth at least a glance.

Disclaimer: I received a free ARC e-book of this title in exchange for an honest review.